I’ve just watched Benedict Evan’s super clear and insightful presentation on the huge new global opportunities that mobile / embedded software is just beginning to open up across traditional industries such as retail and automotive.
###Preamble
We already know mobile is eating the world as we pass 2.5 billion smartphones on earth and head towards 5 billion. And not only is the s-curve of innovation for mobile passing PCs, but it’s moving into the deployment phase. Which means the questions have shifted from “Will this work?” and “Who will win?” … to “What can we build with this?”
So what happens when this new kind of scale for technology — and new kinds of computers (with cameras and sensors in everything) changes other industries, like cars and commerce for example? What happens as companies like GAFA move from “mobile-first” to “AI-first” with machine learning and more? And what can we build as we stand on the shoulders of giants?
In this update of Mobile Eating the World — delivered at a16z’s recent inaugural summit event — Benedict Evans takes us on a journey along the s-curves of mobile and beyond.
I’ve watched it twice already. There is so much knowledge and clarity in it that I’ve goosebumps just thinking about the future.
The slide that showed the huge drop in error rates in ML-driven speech recognition truly makes the Star-trek universal translator a thing of near-term reality. Imagine analysing thousands of hours of local Nigerian dialects (a dataset that’s easy to get) and using it as a basis for real-time translation. Accessible to everybody’s fingertips. Killer app.
For online shopping experience of the future, I’m imagining this: I want to buy a shirt or pair of trousers, I open my preferred online store’s app, tap on the app’s full body selfie camera icon and take a whole body picture of myself which captures my actual body measurements with it (just like in ultrasound imaging) and then the 3-D image of myself is used by this app to virtually fit every available shirt and trousers on me, allowing me to see how I really look in these shirts and trousers, before I decide to select which ones I’m interested in buying.
It’s use cases like that one, that make me believe that AR will be a lot bigger than VR.
Also, checkout the Google tango project and realise that that will come sooner than we expect
Great idea. If you set your phone on a stand, step back, and take a HD video of yourself whilst doing a 360-degree, arms-out spin, you can probably recreate an accurate representation of your body shape. Especially if you do it with a green backdrop. With the 3-D model saved in the cloud, or on your phone, the path to the recommendation and visualisation experience that you described is pretty linear with today’s technology.
We are at the beginning of a number of new technology & market s-curves.
The next decade is going to usher massive shifts across every industry.
To put Benedict’s presentation in context you have to understand the difference between and implications of Big Data, Machine learning, and Deep Learning.
I think “Magic Leap” are at the front of this technology, but they are extremely secretive. It’s amazing to see where mobile computing is heading to. But bros where are we in Africa? This thing dey fear me atimes…
Actually I think we have a good chance at being a the fore front of the application of many of the solutions that get built off Mobile/AI/Machine Learning etc.
The technology is inherently not as important as the applications that will be built as a result. African markets are ideal for the deployment of many of these applications.
All phones with Android 7 and above will ship with daydream compatibility which means in 2-3 years, if the daydream headset becomes cheap enough, VR will be accessible to everyone. So if you’re interested in vr, target that platform and leave oculus & vive which will be limited to too few people because of the price.
Same will happen to AR when tango ships with more phones. The hololens is just too expensive to ever be ubiquitous.
Barring and new company disrupting VR and AR, Google will win simply because it is building something that will be cheap enough for most people.
This will be in Africa and Nigeria at almost tgw same time as the rest. Because it will be based on the Android OS.
So start now so that you are ready for it. Ignore the high end platforms focus on Google and Android if you want to reach Nigerians
Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz, reveals that the company posted a misleading product demo last year showcasing its technology. The company has also had trouble miniaturizing its AR tech from a bulky helmet-sized device into a pair of everyday glasses, as Abovitz has repeatedly claimed the finished product will accomplish.
The revelations undermine one of the most secretive firms in the technology industry, casting Magic Leap as a fast-growing startup that has overhyped its product with wild marketing stunts and unrealized ambition.
Not disputing your source @gabe, but this guys ( Alibaba (Lead) Jack Ma,
Joe Tsai, Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity Investments, Google (Lead) Sunda Pichai
JP Morgan, K2 Global, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Legendary Entertainment, Morgan Stanley, Obvious Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Paul E. Jacobs, T. Rowe Price, Vulcan Capital, Warner Bros.
Wellington Management) putting pen to paper with Leap, looks like something serious is cooking over there. In relation to the CEO’s tweet, I’ll see how it affects my small community. Cheers.
