IMC Hawks Blog

Tag: Android

  • An “Augmented” Look Into the Future of Advertising

    Last week Google unveiled Project Glass, their latest developmental project set out to design and build augmented reality eyeglasses. Google upload a video to YouTube entitled “Project Glass: One day…”, which shows viewers what Project Glass could potentially look like. Project Glass would allow you to communicate with friends, schedule appointments, get directions, take pictures, and even hold video conferences all by using the augmented reality interface and voice commands. While this technology is in the earliest stages of development, Project Glass has the potential to be a realistic and marketable product in the future.

    While the announcement of Project Glass is only a week old, there is already concern about user privacy and advertisements. Google already uses search terms to customize advertisements, and are even beginning to push ads based on your location, so just how far would Project Glass go? Would advertisements pop-up in front of you if you are close enough to a store? Could marketers use where you go and what you look at throughout the day to better understand what type of consumer you are? The parody video below shows how pop-up ads with Project Glass might look if they were implemented:

    While this idea of “forced advertising” seems a bit extreme, it’s already happening with several other projects. Twitter now adds Promoted Tweets to your timeline, which are sponsored announcements from businesses that merge together with the other tweets from people you follow. Pop-up ads are common with free Android and iPhone apps, and some applications even send ads as a notification. Amazon sells discounted Kindle e-Readers with “special offer” advertisements that appear on your screen. It seems that with every new piece of technology, the first idea that is addressed is how to advertise on it. With Project Glass, the possibilities for customized advertising are much more personal. How will marketers adapt to changing technology? Will consumers be willing to sacrifice their privacy and accept interruptive advertisements in order to use Project Glass? Only the future will tell.

    -Hunter Wilson, Joshua Vester, Ashley Oliver, Molly Jacques

  • Not So Fast Apple

    Believe it or not, Google is nipping at the heels of Apple in smart phones and tablets. While in some circles Apple has won the popularity contest with Blackberry they have had some serious competition from Google’s Android network. According to Eweek.com 2,200 application developers were polled by Appcelerator and IDC. The polling revealed that 87 percent of responders were very interested in writing apps for smart phones compared to 92 percent for the iPhone. The iPhone is still king in the market place we are starting to find that application developers are eager to work with the Android network. There is still growth for the Android in the tablet market.

    The Google Android 3.0 Honeycomb was introduced at the 2011 Consumer Electronics show and is going to make a splash in March 2011. Respondents from the Appcelerator-IDC say they are very interested in developing for the Android tablets. They claimed that price was the most important factor, and most want to develop for the Android 3.0 Honeycomb. As you can see the Honeycomb’s popularity keeps growing daily before its release. The most impressive part about the Honeycomb is the tab browsing which you can sync with your Google Crome Bookmarks. The selling point for the New Android tablet is multi-tasking.

    It seems that 2011 is ushering in new competition for Apple. Google is growing by the minute and while I love the versatility of my Blackberry the Android phones seem to have a lot of potential. Apple is on top of the market, for now, but this could be a big year for Android. The brand competition between Apple and Android is something we will be focusing on all semester, and as Google continues to grow I expect Apple will adapt to its market.