What the future looks like

Wednesday, 16 March 2011 03:44

Written by Resti Reyes. Jr.

The internet is a bridge. Like all the other media channels – print, radio, television, outdoor – it provides marketers access to the island known as the consumer’s mind. What sets it apart is that it has two-way traffic. All other media channels are mere one-way conduits, delivering advertising messages to the bottomless pit that is the consumer’s mind.

The internet is unique in that it can replace the other traditional media channels. Television, radio and print can all be converted into digital versions and carried on the net. And perhaps eventually it will (what an old PLDT TVC used to tout as “convergence”). Maybe not completely and not all together nor at the same pace, but slowly and surely, traditional media – as a commodity consumed by homo sapiens – will migrate and assume a digital format. We have been evangelists preaching this “good news” for about 15 years now. It has been slow in coming into being, but the transition rate has been accelerating.

Gordon E. Moore in 1965 (Moore’s Law) predicted the capacity of computer chips would double every two years – later modified to every 18 months – is now much more clearly materializing before our eyes. At the same time that capacities are doubling, costs are eroding. Maybe not at the same pace, but eroding just the same. Laptop computers are now cheaper than mobile phones. And with growing economies of scale, all related peripheral costs are crumbling. Next to the cost of hardware, broadband internet access would be the most significant cost item. And you can now buy broadband access in sachet style, via prepaid USB plug-ins. A third major cost item would be software. And this item is now becoming virtually free. No, Microsoft is not giving its prized Windows programs away. But what has happened is that a new generation of Open Source operating systems and applications has evolved (Linux and Open Office), and they are completely, totally, and absolutely free.

Analysts are saying 2011 could be the year we will see the “tipping point” in the transition from analog to digital media. Last year we predicted that internet access would breach the 50% mark for the general population. It may not have happened last year, but it sure is going to be happening this year. A major factor contributing to this is the advent of the tablet computer – the emergence of an in-between product, in between a laptop and a smart phone, best exemplified by the iPad. Yes, 2011 is the year of the Tablet. And this new product category illustrates the accelerating pace of development so graphically. In less than a year, about a dozen “me too” tablets have emerged from every major manufacturer – Samsung, Toshiba, Motorola, Dell, and so on and so forth. PLDT even offers a version bundled with their landline DSL internet service. Not wanting to risk being overtaken by any challenger, Apple launched the iPad2 last week, staying two steps ahead of the pack.

In tracking the trend of how media is becoming digitalized, we’ve seen uneven patterns, where the more developed countries quickly adapted to the latest technologies. But it has also allowed developing economies to leap-frog into more up-to-date technologies as they become available. Best illustration is how mobile phones in the Philippines made landlines virtually obsolete. In the US, it took longer for people to take to carrying mobile phones. Mainly because people didn’t need it – there were public phone boxes at every street corner. You could make and take calls practically anywhere just by using the public pay phone system. That clearly was not the case here in the Philippines. Typically, it took more than 10 years to apply for a landline, and mere minutes to get a mobile phone. Not surprisingly, people simply forgot about applying for landlines and availed of mobile phones. Almost overnight, the telephone to population ratio shot from something like one phone for every 200,000 people to where it is now, almost a 1:1 ratio. In a population of about 90 million, there are 78 million mobile phones, or 8.6 phones for every 10 persons.

Killer apps. And as the hardware became more affordable, the killer applications made a, what else? – a killing. Texting, or SMS – we are the texting capital of the world, with more than one billion SMS messages sent out every single day. But current trends are already pointing to a declining popularity for the SMS. The hot new killer app is SNS, or social networking sites, particularly Facebook and Twitter. Earlier SNS pioneers like MySpace, Friendster, and Multiply are falling by the wayside. Multiply is evolving into a marketplace, where members buy and sell merchandise to each other. Friendster has plans to reinvent itself into a configuration more attuned to its young subscriber base. And MySpace is simply fading away.

Some of the older, pioneering icons of the now maturing web 2.0 era of the internet have gotten stronger: Google is now mightier than Microsoft. Yahoo! has partnered with MSN to fight Google for the search market. Amazon has settled in comfortably in its online retail business, even introducing its own version of the tablet – an e-book reader called the Kindle. It is not as much a playful toy as the iPad, but it certainly provides the best digital device for reading a book – just ask my law school sophomore daughter. In the online auction business, eBay has no equal. And as for user-generated content, or UGC, YouTube is king. Did you know that there are more video materials uploaded into YouTube in the last five years than all the video materials ever broadcast since the advent of television more than 50 years ago? But for serious media and tech analysts, the big battle to watch will be Microsoft versus Google. Next week we will look at more interesting statistics.

In the meantime, let’s take a look at what our future looks like, here’s a mind-blowing video courtesy of a high-tech company that evolved from the ancient traditional craft of blowing glass: