merging ahead
Want to predict the future? Look to the recent past, especially what the “big 4” have snapped up in the way of capabilities. To whit:
Apple
Audio, camera, AR, speech, machine learning, mo-cap, facial/image recognition, education. What does that mean? Well, Apple really wants to be able to sense the user – what they are doing, what they are feeling, and enhance that experience. Mataio was probably the best “user friendly” AR software around, and when you fold in the previous edu purchases, Apple should be making a big play into the education space with mobile, wearables (watch) and AR.
Other than what you’d expect for Google (ads, and…um…everything), it is about “surround” – sound, photos, modifying those (editing), and delivering them. Tilt Brush is especially interesting as that brings the create rather than consume side of things to the equation.
Microsoft
A little harder read here. I think Microsoft is still in the midst of redefining the company, so there is a little of everything, with a bunch of more enterprise acquisitions here. While Win10 is a big deal for MS, they still want to own the enterprise – which has been slipping away to Google, and will continue to leak to Apple and Facebook as well.
Facebook, like Apple, wants to understand the user and use that information for their advantage. In this case, ads and information. Profits are up, user base remains massive, and Oculus will finally ship. Will be interesting to watch who FB buys next, but it may wait a bit until VR gets market penetration and they see where that leads.
Yahoo – sorry, they’re probably toast:
Ya gotta spend money to make money…and they’re aren’t.