Mobile-related technologies for the past week, in 3 (or almost) words: Apple In Google Play, Messages-Based Apps, News From Facebook

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THE WEEK IN 3 WORDS

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SEASON #02 – WEEK #46

3. APPLE ON GOOGLE PLAY
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Apple is launching its second Android application.
The first one was a kind of provocation: it’s a helper application to facilitate users’
switch from an Android smartphone to an iOS smartphone (“Move to iOS”*).
The second one has been launched this week and seems
much more strategic in a battle against Android and its
dominant position in many markets. Apple Music, launched
as a beta version for Android, has 2 goals: first reach a much wider audience in the
audio streaming market and second give a glimpse of iOS to Android users to make
them switch to Apple’s devices.
Interesting: Apple Music make use of Android standard UI and… pay commission to
Google when a purchase is made!
(*): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.movetoios

5. MESSAGES-BASED APPS
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Messaging applications (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, etc.) are heavily
used: several billions of active users are sharing messages every months on those
applications.
This gave ideas to some developers to actually use messages to do more than
communicating with friends. Magic or Operator, for examples, are UI-free applications,
that fully rely on texts to provide their services.
Users simply texts what they want (or need) to a number operated by those companies,
and, based on the user’s profile (collected when the user first used the service and
probably completed as they solicit it) a human assistant tries to best serve them.
The concept could be compared to a fee-less conciergerie, but it especially emphasizes
that messaging is an intuitive action for users, fully part of their daily life. And it opens a
perspective of value-added services without needs for a UI...

7. NEWS FROM FACEBOOK
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Last week was about Mark Zuckenberg putting the emphasis on virtual reality,
saying it’s a key business development opportunity for Facebook.
This week, Facebook already rolled out its first initiative: 360 video in news. Apps
users have the possibility to watch to 360 video either by moving into the video
using the touch screen, or by coupling the smartphone with the Samsung Gear VR
(only for Samsung…) The company is also partnering with camera makers to have
end-users be able to upload their 360 video in one click directly from the camera (or
its companion app, probably).
As an initiative should not come alone, Facebook also released an application,
Notify, to push notification for their news on the lock screen, just as Twitter is
already doing.
Final goal is of course to convince marketers to produce high quality 360 video to
publish on Facebook, and end-users to not go anywhere else than Facebook!