In the future, smartphone apps will need to overcome their current reliance on the concept of “on” and “off” to deliver the most value to consumers, writes Saar Gur, a general partner at Charles River Ventures.
Gur sees features he calls “Smart Mobile Services” having an impact on the future of mobile. For example: Gur uses Sonos, an app that offers a user control of the music playing in each room of a home. But what’s stopping Sonos from automatically turning on, Sonos wonders, when that user pulls up into his driveway at home? Another example Gur offers is dieting: could my fitness/exercise app automatically send me a text message when it thinks I’ve walked into a fast food burger joint?
To be sure, we’re already starting to see these sorts of services built into smartphone apps. Square was among the first to build geo-fencing technology into a purchasing app; its Card Case app (now called Pay With Square) allows users to make purchases at their favorite stores without any physical exchange whatsoever.
The next iteration of this technology could be offer pushes; that is, when a consumer walks by a retail store, a marketing system could automatically send that potential customer a discount offer to try to convert them into a buyer.
Read all of Gur’s column, a guest entry at TechCrunch, here.
