Chatbots and conversational UI are among the most hyped technologies of 2016. Early excitement about chatbots has given way to the realization that many challenges remain in both technology and understanding of what users are looking for when chatting with computers. …

These days everyone and their uncle is talking about chatbots as the next thing after apps. But ‘Chatbot’ is a rather poor name for explaining the changes taking hold in mobile. ‘Chatbots’ are a mental model suited to developers. The term means very little to users. …

(An earlier version of this post was published on TechCrunch) We recently published a report showing that e-commerce doubled in popularity as a business model for Internet of Things (see Commerce of Things report for details). But what does an ecommerce business model really mean in the case of Internet…

Conversational UI and messaging bots are becoming one of the defining tech trends of 2016. The idea of mobile messaging as a B2B2C channel has been proved in China by hugely popular Tencent’s Weixin/WeChat messaging platform. Messaging dominates time people spend with their phones. Why not use messaging to connect…

The fact Donald Rumsfeld is now in the app business is not the only reason to believe that mobile apps have reached a plateau. The mobile app industry, it seems, is settling down: Android and iOS have formed an entrenched duopoly, the same few familiar publisher names dominate app store…

There is growing consensus that fully autonomous cars will become a reality by 2020. Google self-driving cars have driven over 1.2 million miles. Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, predicted in September 2015 that Tesla cars will have fully autonomous capability in 3 years. …

Back in 2008, Nokia sold 468 million phones making the company the undisputed king of the mobile phone market with over 40% market share. This same year, Apple sold little over 10 million iPhones and launched iPhone App Store with just 500 third party apps. By the end of 2010…

Facebook is now starting to hit physical limits to its digital growth. Facebook’s average revenue per user in the “rest of the world”, where most user growth is coming from, is 10 times lower than the average revenue per user in North America ($0.80 vs. $8.32 per user respectively). …

The media and blogosphere reaction to Apple Music was mixed at best. Bob Lefsetz, who has written about the music business for over 25 years, says: It’s toast. Bob is making a very common mistake: He assumes that Apple Music is a product aiming to win market share in the…