I can’t remember the last time I sat down at my desk and actually typed something on my laptop. These days, most of my work is done on my smartphone or tablet. Productivity apps allow me to work faster and more efficiently while being 100 percent mobile. I’m getting more work done than ever before, with no downtime between meetings.
More and more executives are mobile-first these days. I may be an early adopter of the trend, but this is the way business is moving. In fact, with more than 2.5 billion smartphones in the world today, nothing really matters right now but the smartphone.
When I head down to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, I’ll be spending the majority of my time in meetings at the Aria and Cosmopolitan with others in the ad tech and media industries. I’ll also be visiting the show floor as much as I can. While I’m there, there are a few trends I’m expecting to see, and another handful I’m hoping to see. They’re all centered around mobile, which I suspect will be dominating the event:
More innovations in augmented reality (AR).
AR is connected closely to mobile, as we saw in 2016 when Pokemon Go launched. The first true mobile AR game was a mere taste of the ways in which AR allows us to bridge the digital and analog worlds using the cameras on our smartphones. While short-lived, it also showed us how AR can truly captivate the public. I’d like to see more Pokemon Go-like experiments. Snapchat lenses and filters are another great example of how augmented reality is becoming mainstream. Our phones become a throughput for AR, and I hope to see more innovations like this, as well. Given the rumors about AR on the iPhone 7 and that Facebook has already dipped its toe in the pool, I think there may be some very interesting entries into the space at CES this…