In its 2012 1st quarter sales figures, Apple sold 37.04 million iPhone’s across the planet accounting for 53% of all of its revenue.
More people across the planet now take home new iPhone’s every day (402,000 units per day), than take home human babies (300,000 human births per day).
The figure needs to be seasonally adjusted as it includes Christmas sales, but nevertheless the numbers are huge and the implications for consumer preferences for their tech and connectivity needs even bigger.
In this weeks FutureTech segment Jason Jordan of Perth’s 6PRand I chat about what this means; what technological road we’re going down and where to from here for mobile technology.
Zombie games players, bank ATM’s, cafes, road signs, train timetables and pictures of friends all flash before your eyes as you walk around your local suburb. No you haven’t gone completely mad, instead you’re using one of the newer kids on the technology block – augmented reality.
Jason Jordan of Perth radio’s 6PR and I chatted this week about turning your smartphones camera into a set of binoculars and pairing it with an app that let’s you find physical locations and people and then be guided on screen right to them.
These kinds of augmented reality apps together with the ability for our mobile technology to know exactly where we are on the planet (aka Geo-Aware) are also showing up in our cars as heads up displays, are being used by surgeons to guide them skillfully through the human body and by the armed forces to walk them confidently through hostile foreign terrains.
Listen to this week’s segment now to see how augmented and virtual reality apps using geoaware smartness are all a part of your mobile future.
This weeks segment marks my sixth year on 6PR Perth radio and we kicked off with Jason Jordan and I talking about the world of possibilities that exist online and offered through our nearly 7 billion people on this planet.
We chatted about CrowdFunding and the ability to get loans and investors for your projects, ideas and brands. It is the online equivalent of traditional joint venture partners, angel investors or hitting up your family for your great can’t lose world changing business idea.
We also chatted about CrowdIdeas and the growing online industry that let’s you pay other people to do your thinking; before wrapping up talking about that enormous industry of CrowdBuying or buying online.
All in all a great start to the summer season of FutureTech.
Dreams and heaven come in all shapes and sizes, but for a tech and futurist guy in January of each year they only come from one place, the Consumer Electronic Show.
This annual Las Vegas based event is the canary in the cage for what might be ahead as manufacturers and wannabe’s show off the kit they have innovated and want to sell in the years ahead.
In this weeks radio segment Ted of 6PR Perth and I discuss the many things CES which this year seems to come in 5 basic flavors – 3D, PC tablets, smartphones, connected appliances and video games, it is also the first year we have seen car and gaming manufacturers as major exhibitors.
What’s interesting for me is that we are seeing a true divergence of technology with so many devices and applications sharing common tech and spilling over between themselves. There is a plethora of toys on show that encourage us to take our tech into the home, into the office, into the car, into the streets and share it and play it seamlessly one device to another, one location to another.
This is the commercial mainstream beginning of an attitude where the device is not as important anymore, but what is is that we have continuous seamless access to our digital life wherever, whenever and however we find ourselves.
Jesus has just knocked out Angry Birds in the fight for the most downloaded app. It is available across 8 mobile platforms and has had over 12 million downloads in 2 years.
This free interactive Bible app from Life Church has taken the virtual world by storm with 4 billion minutes clocked up already by its users reading the new testament and in Dec 2010 through Jan 2011 there on track to achieve 1 billion minutes of bible reading – now there’s a business apportunity, just waiting to happen!
We also went on to chat about supermarkets self checkouts, NFC (near field communications) coming to a credit card and store near you and Skype app’s imminent arrival onto iPhone 4.
This plus some post Christmas merriment and great conversation make up this week’s on air radio chat between 6PR’s Ted Bull and Morris Miselowski.
Facebook is being blamed for 1 in 4 divorces in the United States and in our in-depth comical discussion we seek to find out why and perhaps that it’s not Facebook that’s causing divorces, but people – ah if only they would use it for niceness instead of evilness (Maxwell Smart circa 1960).
Ted Bull of 6PR and I then go onto to travel through Lonely Planet’s and Google’s top tourist destinations for 2010 and those predicted for 2011 and work our way through some really interesting travel apps and websites – ah, where’s the holodeck when you really need it ?1?.
I’ll see your Black Friday and raise you a Cyber Monday!
Every year Cyber Monday – America’s online equivalent of Black Friday the largest retail sales day of the year – is growing in momentum and tomorrow’s online sales are no different.
With Australia’s great exchange rate and more of us shopping online we too can take advantage of the sales and have it shipped to Oz, listen in as 6PR’s Ted Bull and I talk about the where and how of how to cash in on this annual online shopping bonanza.
And if you’re not sure what to shop for, we’ve got that covered as well with the top 5 gadgets for 2010.
It’s not evil, it’s FaceBook! Ted Bull of Perth radio’s 6PR and I kick off our discussion this week with a look at what FaceBook is and what it’s not.
My constant message is that FaceBook and all social media are opt in and a conscious deliberate choice you make. You’re only in it if you want to be and the other big caveat is never to say anything online that you wouldn’t shout out at your local market.
Having said that, Social Media and FaceBook are just the newest form of communication on steroids.
It is the modern day version of the radio, the fax machine, the mobile phone. Each and every one of them was considered evil in its day and despite them being invented and supported by the devil we have survived and thrived using them.
Rise and rise of YouTube, iPad, Apps, Amazon sells 1.8 eBooks to every hardcover and why FaceBook is not at all evil were just some of the topics that Ted Bull and I chatted about as we reviewed the past six months of what’s happened since the weekend show went on its winter break.
But it’s summer now and FutureTech is back for its fourth (4th) year as a weekly segment on Perth’s 6PR Big Weekend program – ah, it’s good to back.
Yeah I know that’s obvious, but for many it seems like only yesterday and 40 years from now we will be sitting in the year 2050 thinking back to 2010 and trying to convince ourselves that 2010 was the good old days we all yearn for.
We will believe that :
2010′s property prices were cheap.
2010′s family values were traditional and exemplary.
2010′s communication tools were rudimentary and simple.
2010′s education system was better equipped to upskill our children for what lies ahead.
What a load of nostalgic twaddle.
The next 40 years are going to both evolutionary and revolutionary.
The discussion this week on my 6PR radio segment with Brendon was about how the Australian Government sees the next 40 years.
In their recently released Intergenerational report, the Government tells us our population will increase to 35.9 million an increase of over 50% (as of today our population is 22,144,950), as high as this seems I’m betting we’re going to be closer to 39 million.
They rightly claim that at the moment (2010) we have 5 people working to support every Australian over 65 years of age and in 2050 we may have 2.7 people working to support every 1 person over 65 years of age.
Our ageing population means that we will have double the number of 65 – 84 year olds we have now and quadruple the number of people we have now that are older than 85.
Our population growth will slow down to annual rate of 1.2%, slightly less than the 1.4 we have had for the last 40 years.
We will have climate change issues and water issues to contend with that are vastly different from today’s
To this I add just a few basic assumptions:
Our technology will also have advanced, medical breakthroughs will have found work arounds and cures for many of today’s common ailments and killers, but we will have discovered a new range of illnesses related to our longevity and changing environmental issues.
Our work will be different with many of us in careers and jobs we can not fathom today, working very differently, using the entire globe as our backyard and remaining in work well into our 70′s.
The world over the next 40 years will in many ways be vastly different and incomparable to today, I still maintain that in the next decade will we progress 100 years and in the next 40 some 500 years in technology, but in many ways we will be the same, a humanity working to “better understand” our relevance and purpose and playing with a whole new set of toys to do it with.
Our challenge then for the next 40 years is how best can we use the small insight we have of what lies ahead to achieve our ambitions and create our own exquisite future.
Listen in as Brendon and I chat our way through this discussion and try and figure out what it all means, how it will actually effect us and who and how are we going to pay for it all. Recorded live 7th February 2010.
Morris Miselowski, Futurist Guru: your eye on the future
The highly-regarded principal and founder of Success through Focus since 1981, Morris Miselowski's speciality is future-vision.
He's a business mentor and consultant, a venture capitalist, an academic, and a dynamic presenter whose mission is to inspire, to encourage, and to motivate his audiences to embrace the unlimited opportunities of their future.
Each day he consults with business leaders around the globe, helping to shape their businesses so they can be first to take profitable advantage of tomorrow's business opportunities.
Morris foresees an unlimited future for those companies which take the time to prepare and strategize for the future NOW.