Apple’s Keynote: 3 Game-Changing Announcements

Apple didn’t fail to disappoint last night at their keynote speech.

Apple don’t necessarily bring new ideas to the market, but they manage to package ideas in such a way that they achieve mass-market appeal – successfully bridging the gap between Innovators and Early Adopters (ref: Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations curve).  By doing this they set technology trends in motion that other companies will follow and develop on, and launch technology which is integrated even deeper into our lifestyle and achieves a greater degree of ‘connectedness’.

Of the entire keynote, three such game-changing announcements were made:

• Voice-Operated Personal Assistant (Siri)

Voice control becomes mainstream.  It’s yet to be seen how successful this is going to be – voice control can be exceptionally difficult to achieve. But if Apple are investing in the technology (Note: Techcrunch estimates they paid $200m in Aug 2010 to acquire Siri), this means that it’ll remain supported and companies will continue to develop applications.

• Seamless synchronisation between devices (iCloud)

This isn’t new, but Apple have done it in such a way that the user doesn’t need to be remotely technical to understand how to do it or why someone would want to.  It just makes sense.

• The iPod Nano – wearable technology

Watch faces and straps, and exercise data are very clever additions.  All of a sudden we have wearable technology which is being adopted by the mainstream market.  Take this forward a year to 18 months, and you can envisage the iPad Nano being able to access the internet, make phone calls, be your personal assistant… all while wearing the technology, rather than holding it as a handset.

You might ask, “are these really game-changing?”. In short, yes, as they will create new revenue opportunities and growth across the technology ecosystem.

Each of these 3 announcements will have a profound impact on personal technology (our phones, our MP3 players, our computers etc) and how we use it.  They also create new revenue and growth opportunities across the consumer-technology ecosystem. Therefore, you can expect to see even more consumer-tech out there in the market in the next 12-18 months with these features (although, Apple will still undoubtedly dominate the use of it for a few years!).

Watch the iPhone 4S video and the Keynote at Apple.com

Read Everything You Need To Know About Today’s Apple Event on Techcrunch