Author: Rebecca

Will a smartphone battery charge itself one day?

A growing number of reports are indicating that companies – including Motorola Solutions – are working on it.

Because of the broad scale dependence that much of the population has on their mobile devices, when a smartphone battery dies, it can cause people to experience anything from a slight frustration to a large amount of panic.

Companies are now starting to come up with new strategies to make sure mobile device batteries stay charged.

While a considerable amount of this effort is being focused on developing a slimmer, lighter and more powerful smartphone battery, others are working on the challenge of creating devices that don’t need as much power in order to run all the features a user wants for his or her everyday life. Consumers, themselves, have been doing what they can to get the most battery life from their devices, including dumping power draining apps and bloat-ware, when they can, and reducing certain activities – such as streaming video – when they’re on their last bar of battery.

However, some efforts are now focusing on unique strategies such as a self-charging smartphone battery.

Smartphone Battery - Self-ChargeWhile there may be more than one company working on such an effort, Motorola Solutions has found itself in the spotlight for just this reason. At the time of the writing of this article, the claims have only been as official as a rumor, but they are starting to appear in a growing number of places and are pointing to the company’s efforts with increasing detail. It is important to note that it is Motorola Solutions and not Motorola Mobility that has been identified as a part of this development.

Motorola Solutions is the result of a 2011 division of Motorola (the other half being Motorola Mobility). The Mobility side is the Moto and Droid side of the business and is also behind the Moto 360 wearable technology. On the other hand, the Solutions side of the company provides public safety equipment (such as police scanners and radios) and network solutions. Essentially, Mobility is the consumer electronics side, while Solutions is the public side. Solutions, unlike Mobility, was not sold to Google and then Lenovo as was the case with Mobility.

While this type of automatically recharging smartphone battery may seem to have appeal, it is still in a rumor phase and is far from the market. Until then, we will need to continue with careful power saving strategies and good quality external battery charger products.

Mobile marketing is falling under viewing trends

Only 10 percent of digital ads are delivered in a way that is compatible with smartphones and tablets.

According to recent research findings from JW Player, only 10 percent of all ads are mobile marketing compatible, which has – according to the report on the results – revealed that advertisers are greatly missing out on a highly engaged target audience that is considerable in size.

Advertisers are not properly leveraging the mobile channel when it comes to their ad placement, said the report.

The research showed that around the world, audiences are watching video content on their mobile devices 30 percent of the time. This is particularly true on smartphones, as only 6 percent of video viewers use their tablets to do so. However, it pointed out that mobile marketing is not focusing on that very large number of viewers, despite the fact that it represents nearly one third of the video watchers.

The founder of JW Player has cautioned firms that mobile marketing will be critical for their future success.

Mobile Marketing TrendsJW Player founder, Jeroen Wijering, explained that “It is vital for content creators to stay up to date on the currently industry trends and technology usage in order to best advance their online video strategy.” He went on to point out that while there has been an overall solidification in the market, there has yet to be a widespread adoption of the most strategic video standards across the industry, particularly when it comes to marketing firms.

The company is hopeful that their Trends in Online Video Report will help to provide the insight that is necessary for greater HTML5 adoption so that viewers who prefer to use mobile devices will be able to see online video that is supported by their technology of preference.

The JW Player video mobile marketing research discovered that beyond adapting to new formats over smartphones and tablets, advertisers also have ad blocking tech that they will need to overcome. This is particularly the case among European audiences. The global ad blocking rate currently sits at around 10 to 30 percent of users. According to JW Player, one of the primary drivers behind the use of the blockers is that viewers are increasingly frustrated by the intrusive banner ads that they are forced to see, and they want more control over their video experiences.