New Phone, Who Dis?
I recently returned home for my grandmother’s birthday and spent a few days winding back the clock by living in close quarters with my immediate family. Being a 25-year-old with two older brothers, spending time with them like this has become somewhat of a rarity. Growing up in the 90s, dinner time was spent eating and playing cards while watching whatever program our preferred network of 9 had to offer, usually a combination of Friends re-runs and a guessing game with Eddie McGuire.
Today, dinner time has changed vastly. Us, like the majority of the westernised world out there, were glued to our various sized smartphones blindly perusing, scrolling and watching. These devices that seem to be getting smarter by the year are continually integrating themselves further and further into our day to day lives. The constant rollout of new and improved smartphones as well as advancements in user tailored platforms poses serious questions for traditional media outlets.
One thing is for sure, there is no shortage of smartphones globally. Currently, smartphones such as the Apple iPhone or Samsung Galaxy contribute to the staggering 2.7 billion global users today, a number that is consistently rising. According to Adobe CMO, Media and Entertainment websites witnessed a 5% decrease in overall traffic last year. However, there was an 8% growth in the amount of visits via smartphones. One conclusion that could be drawn from this is that consumers are straying away from devices such as desktop computers and laptops and are opting to utilise smartphones as their predominant device. Programs such as Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages, (a staple for any major publisher to increase page loading speed on mobile devices) are a major contributor to this rise. This increased usage of online devices has provided content producers with an abundance of data to then use to enhance our, the consumers, overall experience. An example of this is content king, Netflix. Netflix success can be largely credited to the company’s ability to identify consumer trends and capitalise on them. Platform features such as their offline viewing (where a subscribed user can download shows or films directly to their hand held device where they can be viewed later without using data) is just one way content providers are capitalising on this rich data provided by the smartphone of today.
Now that over thirty percent of the world has access to a smartphone with high speed broadband capabilities, traditional television avenues are feeling the effects. Now, TV is wherever you are, provided you have a healthy amount of bars in both your battery and data service. Given this, consumers are no longer feeling the need to have cable channel subscriptions as there are more convenient, ad free, OTT (over-the-top) options available such as Netflix, Hula or Apple TV. This phenomenon has been coined “Cord Cutting”, based on the figurative sense of consumers cutting the cords that once provided them with their beloved content. This is happening at a rapid rate and it is predicted that in America by 2021, some fifty million people are expected to drop their respective cable or satellite subscriptions.
The much anticipated rollout of the newly introduced 5G service, an upgrade of the previous 4G service, will see users have download speeds immensely faster than previously. This upgrade in provider service will allow consumers to access their content faster than ever before, as well as providing new and exciting possibilities for disruptive technologies such as VR (virtual reality). This poses further problems for not only cable television providers, but existing broadband companies as well. If 5G carriers can offer sufficient data for consumers day to day lives as well as the newly boasted speeds, it could potentially end the need for an internet provider at home.
The continuing advancement of this pocket-sized pc we have all come to rely on poses exciting and quite possibly alarming possibilities. However, Technological advancements will continue to occur and push the boundaries of what is possible. Elon Musk’s recent announcement of his new venture Neuralink (a device which will allow the human brain to connect and transfer data with a computer), is a prime example of the science fiction pathway the world may be headed down. It may be that within just a few years’ smartphones could become as obsolete as a family all sitting together to watch Friends.
