Weekly Digest #10: Android Users - you get more ads, Google & Apple developers - you get more money
June 16th, 2016
The biggest global mobile marketplaces Apple and Google decided to raise app developers’ earnings - almost simultaneously and to the same level. Android’s move of the week was to help businesses annoy users with ads and notifications. In the meantime, Microsoft is launching Apache Spark service on Azure HDInsight.
get notified about special offers near you
Google has proposed a new way to notify users about promotions, special offers, and about nearby shops, cafes, and bars. This is possible due to Nearby Bluetooth technology for Android. This tech will share useful information with the user that’s relative to his / her location. For app developers, the availability of such technology means they can now integrate communication functions into their apps between apps and special Bluetooth beacons located in stores, museums, or just on the streets. Users will be able to receive notifications, such as special offers at the stores or current exhibitions in museums, right on their mobile devices as soon as they come into the area. The technology is similar to iBeacon for the Apple iOS and will become a part of Google Play Services platform. For Nearby Bluetooth to work, your device should have geolocation turned on. You get the first request and if you agree to receive notifications, they will be sent to your mobile device wherever the beacons are set. (You can also refuse to receive such tips and promotional offers.)
Spark abilities available to scientists, marketers, analysts
Besides the sudden purchase of LinkedIn, Microsoft announced the launch of Apache Spark cloud service for Azure HDInsight. This means that the Azure HDInsight Big Data Analytics cloud service users will get access to the Spark abilities. This technology, developed to overcome the limitations of the distributed computing model called MapReduce, allows to process requests hundreds of times faster than traditional Big Data solutions, using a user-friendly API. Along with the announcement of Apache Spark for Azure HDInsight, Microsoft has integrated Spark with Azure Data Lake Store cloud repository. Because of this integration, developers will be able to process and store data of virtually any size. Also, not only developers will be able to use Spark for HDInsight - the access will be available and understandable for scientists, analysts, marketers, and others. For mobile developers, this means developers can integrate Spark features into their applications.
At the same time, Microsoft has announced the release of a free R-client to work with Microsoft R Client data. This tool can also be used to work with data from HDInsight, Spark, SQL Server R Services, and R Server for Hadoop.
Monitoring your vitals becomes easier
Internet of Things and Digital Health are the two rapidly developing sectors. Philips and Pegasystems suggested using Internet of Things in medicine, more specifically in patient care. They combined two of the products - Pegasystems Pega Care Management and Philips HealthSuite platform - to remotely monitor the patient’s condition and immediately see all vitals. Moreover, the system will be useful both for doctors and nurses as well as ordinary people, who are caring for sick relatives. At any time, they can check the condition of the patient - for example, to see if the blood sugar level is within norm or if the patient has pneumonia or bronchitis, it is easy to check the oxygen level. In the meantime, the patient also can see his / her own health indicators and vitals to be able to make a decision on whether to call a doctor or increase the dose of medication. The information about the patient and his status is available to the attending physician in real-time.
Digital Health by Microsoft
Right on their heels is Microsoft that decided to combine data analysis, artificial intelligence, and digital health together. The largest software corporation proved the effectiveness of diagnosis by search queries. The first step, taken by Microsoft employees together with experts from the Columbia University, was to find people who developed pancreatic cancer and then analyzed their search queries that were done long before they got first symptoms. The authors of the study were able to distinguish which of the search query was a result of ordinary worry and which of them were the manifestation of the first signs of the disease. The study authors chose to examine pancreatic cancer due to the fact that it leads to a large number of deaths, usually associated with late disease detection.
This isn’t Microsoft’s first experiment with trying to connect diseases with search queries. Three years ago, the company tried to tie the search results with side effects of medicine ingestion. The company has learned to identify the symptoms long before they were discovered and made public by the USA’s Food and Drug Administration office.
Recent Research
Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Complete Forecast for 2015 - 2020 announced several Internet growth indicators for five upcoming years. Analytics expect that the number of new Internet users will grow by a billion and there will be 10 billion new connected devices. By 2020, there will be 3.4 connected devices per person in the world.
The main driver of the IP-traffic growth will be the increasing number of Internet of Things devices and gadgets. The number of M2M-devices (Machine-to-Machine) - sensors, displays, counters - will triple by 2020 ($4.9 billion right now to $12.2 billion). These will comprise 46% of all connected devices.
Digital health is the fastest growing category. Experts predict that the number of digital health IoT-devices will grow fivefold in the next five years - 144 to 729 million. In terms of quantity, the largest sector is smart home devices - their number will increase from 2.4 billion in 2015 to 5.8 billion in 2020.
Among the leaders in applications are the video services and content transfer tools. By 2020, the share of video in the global Internet traffic will be 79%.
HD and UltraHD formats videos share by 2020 will be 82% of the total video traffic.
In general, the amount of online video traffic will quadruple in the next five years. 82% of all consumer traffic will be video traffic and 66% of business traffic will also be video.
Social networks not as popular as they were
If previous figures were optimistic, the following aren’t really. Experts predict a loss of social network popularity. Experts from SimilarWeb research company came to this conclusion. Instagrammers spend 23.7% less time using this social network than last year, Twitter users - 23.4% less time, and Facebook - 8%. In addition, users are less likely to install social networks’ dedicated apps. SimilarWeb analysts explain this trend by growing user interest to messengers, explaining that people desire more closed, personalized communication.
the smartphone market development
Gartner analysts predict a reduction in smartphone market growth rate. In 2010, this market grew most actively - 73% growth. In 2015, this rate slowed down to 14.4% and predicted to fall to less than 10% growth in 2016 and never reach double digits again. The study authors attribute this to the market saturation and increase of this device type’s lifecycle. However, this doesn’t mean that people are about to give up their smartphones. The popularity will simply switch to other devices, for example, smartwatches (which will work independently from the smartphone).
Earn more with your mobile apps
On a happier note, great news for mobile applications developers - both Apple and Google announced that payments to the developers will increase. Apple’s, starting from June 13, will increase from 70% to 85% if the buyer of their application will renew the subscription for the second year. Google has also announced the increase of payments up to 85%, but without any conditions. These payments will be increased from the beginning. In addition, Apple is preparing to launch contextual search advertising, the purpose of which - to help developers advertize their applications and to promote them to the target audience.
