The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Starcom Mediavest Apple Carat

What do Apple's WWDC revelations signify? - Starcom MediaVest, Carat, DigitasLBi and more discuss

By Ishbel Macleod, PR and social media consultant

DigitasLBi

|

Apple article

June 3, 2014 | 6 min read

Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) took place in California on Monday 2 June, with its sights set on taking on Dropbox, launching iOS 8 and creating a HealthKit.

Some of the announcements did not come as a surprise - it has been predicted that Apple will move into the health market following a raft of hires in the sector - but all will play a different role.

The Drum caught up with some industry leaders to see what they think are the most important announcements, and what they will mean.

Stewart Easterbrook, executive director of performance and digital development, Starcom MediaVest Group Europe

I think there are two interesting elements to Apple’s WWDC announcements. Firstly, we are seeing the further ‘connectedness’ of our lives. Apple, Google and others are quickly developing the capability to allow us to join up our home, health, networks and a wealth of other personal information. With storage capability as well, this ‘one stop shop’ starts to become a very attractive consumer proposition.Secondly, and as a result of this connectedness, I think we will start to see the likes of Google and Apple offering predictive, as well as personalised, services. They will know what we are likely to want and do next and create more services around that.

Matthew Knight, head of innovation, Carat

Last night’s WWDC brought a range of innovations to iOS, some “borrowed” from other applications (to quote WhatsApp’s @JanKoum) and others firmly squared at taking chunks out of the competition (Dropbox, Snapchat, even Google got popped at).The most interesting consistent takeaway for me though is Apple’s attempt to organise connected smart devices and continue to develop a ‘platform strategy’, where even if Apple doesn’t own the hardware, its devices play a central role in the connected internet of things.Whether it be the extension of airdrop, the ‘handoff’ concept, which allows you to seamlessly start a task on one device, and complete it on another, perhaps a phone call, an email or a game of 2048, or the broader HealthKit and HomeKit stacks, which start to connect objects in the home or in wellbeing – many of the key aspects of the conference were about putting Apple devices as THE screen to control or aggregate all other objects. Rather than every internet of things device having its own interface, this positions the smartphone as the defacto interface, a mega-hyper-super-remote control.Undoubtedly Google will establish parallel approaches, and a new standards war may emerge to which interoperability platform makes the most sense for hardware manufacturers to adopt, as it could lead to consumer confusion and frustration, rather than the holy grail of seamless integration across your smart objects.

Ilicco Elia, head of mobile, DigitasLBi

With ‘Continuity’ Apple is tying the Mac, iPhone, and iPad closer together than ever before and, as is Apple's habit, building in features that others (e.g. WeChat) have pioneered with not a whisper of acknowledgement. For consumers, this provides a seamless cross-device experience, while for Apple it further promotes the purchase of Mac computers to the huge number of iPhone users. In effect, making the Mac an iPhone accessory.We really like the idea of family accounts, where up to six people can share their purchases. No more children's devices with parents' Apple IDs, or unexpected in-app payment bills, and a subtle form of lock-in to boot.From a developer perspective, a new language — Swift — is a bold move. It's a modern, elegant language, with some very promising development tools. However, for us extensions are the key highlight. They break the traditional app silo model by making it easier to integrate functionality and share data between apps. In the same way HomeKit and HealthKit provide an app agnostic platform for managing smarthome and health devices in the Apple ecosystem. Apple essentially becomes a gatekeeper for both these areas even without releasing a single accessory of its own. Sneaky.

Nishat Mehta, EVP of global partnerships, dunnhumby

Today’s announcement by Apple that it was helping to consolidate health data from numerous apps into one place delivers the right first step into giving customers choice, control and preference into their sensitive data, how it is used, and how the consumer benefits from its use. Over time, I think we will see the generation of more consumer-owned data so all advertisers will have to deliver more value to the consumer to convince them to share that data.While many rumours floated over the past week about Apple introducing a digital home hub, I don’t see the need for an additional piece of hardware in the home. Instead, a mobile phone connected to a network, and therefore, the cloud, seems like the longer-term solution. Both Google and Apple have the pieces and I believe both will continue to dominate this space creating the impetus for further innovation.

Maani Safa, VP innovation and creative, Somo

We saw Apple update a vast array of iOS elements at WWDC, like security, where it positioned itself to be a friend and trusted tool to businesses and enterprises. With iMessage, it took the best communications functionality from across different platforms and services and brought all of it back in to the iMessage ecosystem. However, we’ll just have to wait and see if that’s enough to make iMessage the number one messaging app. Cross-platform applications will always have a strong play against one that is stuck to a single one – at the very least; it’s the most attractive choice out of the single platform messaging products. One of the really cool things that we’ll be working with clients on, is the ability to be able to design and create widgets on iOS, something that, if done correctly, will be incredibly impactful for brands. With HomeKit and HealthKit we’re seeing two key trends people have been talking about for a while: the smarthome and quantified self. Looking at HealthKit this is a massive indication that Apple is starting to build an ecosystem in preparation of launching its own wearable tech come September. HomeKit is something we’re very excited about. We’ve been calling out for someone to come in and own the space and with the partnerships Apple has lined up and Siri’s integration for voice control, it’s going to make for an incredibly attractive smarthome option. It just remains to be seen how quickly Apple can pull this together and roll it out. Prepare yourselves for another significant tech launch come September.

Starcom Mediavest Apple Carat

Content created with:

DigitasLBi

Find out more

Starcom MediaVest Group

Find out more

More from Starcom Mediavest

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +