As Irish and international publishers struggle to survive in the face of falling ad revenues and copy sales, the boss of the world’s largest ‘publisher’ believes print media will move to mobile digital devices faster than most publishers anticipate.
Speaking at the Activate 2010 summit, organised by the Gaurdain last week, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google said the internet is the most disruptive technology in history and replaces scarcity with abundance, “so that any business built on scarcity is completely upturned”.
Bad news for traditional publisher in the face of companies providing real time search information (Twitter being the best so far).
Schmidt says three fundamental trends will change the way people access the information they want: mobile web connectivity, cloud computing and networking (social and business).
“Mobile is the hottest area of computer technology,” enthused Schmidt, saying all the smart developers are now creating mobile apps rather than writing code for desktop operating systems.
Schmidt believes apps will lead the next stage of the ‘news’ and publishing evolution.
“What does the news reading experience look like years from now? I think it’s delivered to a digital device, which has text, obviously, but also colour, and video, and the ability to dig very deeply into what you are supplied with … the most important thing is that it will be more personalised,” he said.
Something like what Wired magazine’s app is doing (above)?

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