The iPhone groundswell has swept over the smartphone market like a veritable tsunami. In April, Apple reported that 5.7 million iPhones had been sold to date, more than half of its stated goal of 10 million by year end 2008.

Pandemonium in San Francisco. Harry Potter movie? Celebrity picture signing? No, it’s “iDay”: the Apple iPhone line on June 29, 2007. Expect a repeat performance this June.

While RIM now has more than 14 million BlackBerry users worldwide, its share of the U.S. smartphone market declined from 45% at the end of 2006 to 40% today. Most of that change was due to the 17% share the iPhone grabbed in its first six months.

And there are rumors that AT&T will subsidize iPhone sales with a $200 rebate, which could result in a doubling of sales, if the 110-million-sold Motorola RAZR is any indication. Motorola saw RAZR sales rocket once its initial $500 asking price was cut to $150 in 2006 and $100 later.

The potential market is huge. Of the 2 billion mobile phones sold in 2007, about 125 million were smartphones — a number that analysts expect to soar. In fact, worldwide smartphone market shipments jumped 60% in the last three months of 2007 compared to a year earlier, according to IDC.

The iPhone is teaching consumers how to surf the Internet on their mobile phone. In February, Google reported to The Financial Times that iPhone users perform 50 times more searches than any other mobile handset.

The path to success for any programmable device is paved with developers, an area where Apple has more experience than any other phone maker. More than 200,000 SDKs (Software Development Kit) have been downloaded since Apple released the iPhone SDK in March.

While R.I.M. opened the BlackBerry to outside Java developers in 2001, its add-ons have been simpler and more primitive than what is due to hit the iPhone. Even using the Safari browser interface that current developers are limited to, has resulted in some very cool applications, like Schmap.

That users are impressed with the iPhone’s pacesetting interface is underscored by a ChangeWave study of 3,600 professionals, which found that 72% of iPhone users said they were “very satisfied” with their devices, compared to 55% of BlackBerry users.

The ascendancy of Apple as a global consumer brand was underscored by the company’s dropping of “Computer” from its name. Not only has the iPhone become a major consumer retail hit since, but the company’s stores have also redefined retailing. From packaging to “Genius Bars” to roving sales associates who wirelessly ring up sales, Apple stores are a study in retail innovation.

Apple is not only revolutionizing the consumer electronics business but it is setting the standard in retailing and packaging too. The more than 170 Apple Stores, once dismissed as a flawed strategy, now ring up $4 billion in sales each year.

It’s evident that Apple is doing for the mobile phone what it did for computers, which will lead to a major shift in the way the Internet is accessed. By the early part of the next decade, mobile phones will double the size of the Internet, leading to yet another explosion in productivity. Now that’s worth getting in line for.

Ubertrends: Unwired, Digital Lifestyle
Value Propellants: Connectivity, Convenience, Convergence, Freedom, Speed

Their scientific review, to be published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, found that guzzling water to “flood toxins” out of one’s system was not supported by any scientific study. And as far as improving skin tone that’s “probably folklore,” Goldfarb said.

“The kidneys clear toxins. This is what the kidneys do. They do it very effectively. And they do it independently of how much water you take in. When you take in a lot of water, all you do is put out more urine but not more toxins in the urine,” Goldfarb noted.

SoBe’s Life Water is one in a wave of “multi-functional” waters that promise to do more than just quench thirst. Life Water is enhanced with vitamins designed to “shield” or “enlighten” life.

While that’s not good news for the bottled water business, the study is not likely to halt industry momentum. The U.S. bottled water business grew 800% in the past 20 years, reaching $9 billion a year and zipping from virtually nowhere to the No. 2 U.S. beverage, behind soft drinks. At its current pace, bottled water will surpass soft drinks in the next 10 to 15 years, predicts Beverage Marketing.

In fact, bottled water is the U.S.’ fastest-growing “refreshment beverage,” says the research firm, with 2006 bottled water consumption increasing 9.5% from the year before. Beverage Marketing predicts that by 2011, bottled water’s share of the liquid refreshment beverage market will be 29% — while soda — which currently holds about 42% — will dwindle to 34% that year.
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The musical was “Hair.” And the message was clear: hair was “in.” But over the next 40 years, a sea-change shift occurred: body hair became the bane of humankind.

The 1968 debut of the Broadway musical “Hair” made long hair an icon of hippie culture. Today, long hair is out and, esthetically, body hair is out altogether.

The trend began in 1915, when Harper’s Bazaar ran the first ad to feature a photograph of a young woman with shaven underarms. The ad read, “Summer dress and modern dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable hair.”

The underarm shaving trend then spread to women’s legs during World War II, when pin-up posters showed movie star Betty Grable with shaven legs. As they did in the 40s, Hollywood stars and movies are helping spread the hairless doctrine.
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Brain fitness is on its way to becoming a big business. Nintendo’s uber-popular Wii videogame console is now being used to help memory-impaired patients recover some of their lost mental dexterity. One facility offering this new form of therapy has dubbed the treatment, “Wii-hab.”

Since its launch in May 2005 Nintendo has sold 17 million copies of Brain Age, a Nintendo DS videogame created by Tohoku University professor Dr. Ryuta Kawashima.

In San Francisco, a new “brain gym” promises to exercise your brain. vibrantBrains claims its “Neurobics Circuit Training” enables participants to work on such skills as memory, reasoning, visual scanning, word recall and quantitative facility using games and exercises. Industry reports suggest that the “brain industry” already generated $250 million in 2007.

As 450 million baby boomers in the western world head into retirement, they’re confronted with something no generation has ever faced before: a massive collective memory loss. Culprits: faster living, multitasking and less mental exercise.
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The trend began in earnest in 1996 when British Airways launched the industry’s first seats that could lie completely flat for a superior sleeping experience. As globetrotting executives and jetsetters increasingly log more miles to monitor their far-flung activities, the trend caught on with Virgin Atlantic, Emirates and, in 2005, with the emergence of all-business-class airlines.

British Airways was the first airline to offer a real flat-bed seat in 1996. At a recent company event in San Francisco, BA shows how it has upped the ante with even more experiential seats.

While the major U.S. carriers have yet to test the model, international airlines are forging ahead. In 2002, Lufthansa tested an all-business-class flight between Newark and Duesseldorf, Germany, a service it has since expanded. British Airways and Virgin Atlantic Airways have announced plans to start all-business class flights of their own.
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Like mobile phones, laptops are quickly becoming an extension of one’s persona. They’re such an essential part of the consumer’s communication toolbox that users now refer to their notebook computers as “my lappy.” The computer has evolved into a digital pet of sorts, one deserving its own diminutive.

ASUS fueled the mini-laptop trend last June with its Eee PC. Less than a year later, a host of marketers are launching their own offerings. HP’s Mini-Note ($500) has all the usual laptop features in a size deserving of the “lappy” nomenclature.

IDC expects notebook shipments to rise 26% in 2008, reaching about 137 million shipments worldwide, up from 109 million in 2007. Desktops shipments, meanwhile, totaled 151 million in 2007, essentially flat at 4% growth.

While laptops now make up 42% of global shipments, at its current growth pace, laptops will surpass desktop sales by 2009. The result will be a vastly expanded marketplace presenting new opportunities for innovative marketers.
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It was during the Maharishi’s early rise to fame that small yoga ads started appearing in such local alternative weeklies as The Village Voice in New York City. Fast forward to the decade of the aughts. After bubbling under the surface for more than 30 years, yoga’s popularity is surging.

Vancouver-based lululemon athletica, whose wares have been featured on “Desperate Housewives,” has seen sales double every year since it was founded in 1998, reaching $149 million for the 12 months ending January 2007. Its Omega logo is now the “Louis Vuitton” equivalent of yoga.

In a time-compressed world, its meditative powers are now appreciated by an estimated 16.5 million Americans who practice this 5000-year-old art, according to a February 2005 Yoga Journal/Harris Interactive study. That’s more than triple the number a decade earlier when a 1994 Roper poll found 6 million yoga practitioners.

Yoga has gotten so big there’s a demographic audience dubbed “Yoga Mamas” – a desirable marketing target due to its heavily networked nature, both in social and technology terms. Yoga Mamas and other devotees helped create a $1 billion yoga fashion apparel market.

The mainstreaming of yoga “street fashions” has floated the boat of lululemon athletica, the premier yoga apparel brand. On July 27, the company raised $328 million from Canada’s largest initial public offering in 2007. lululemon’s shares rose 56% on the first day of trading, jumping $10 to $28 on Nasdaq, giving the Vancouver-based company a market value of $1.9 billion. Its shares (LULU) now trade at $32, as this story is written.
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“I think [TV advertising] really starts to be less effective as PVR penetration takes off, which we’re anticipating will occur over the next two years,” Aditya Kishore, The Yankee Group’s analyst who authored the report, was quoted as saying.

This week, The Nielsen Company said that playback from DVRs is actually increasing the amount of time people spend watching television, with viewing increasing 3% at 9:00 p.m. and 5% between 11:00 p.m. and midnight.

The periods compared were November 2005 and November 2007, during which time the DVR penetration level in Nielsen’s sample nearly doubled from more than 11% to nearly 22% in U.S. households.

TiVo, the company most identified with the DVR trend, has been unable to capitalize in any significant way on surging DVR sales. But its vaunted interface recently launched on Comcast cable TV in the Boston area, bringing hope to TiVo aficionados everywhere.

While Nielsen has yet to specify how much advertising DVR users are skipping, it appears that rumors of TV advertising’s imminent death may be premature.

The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) mandated that U.S. analog television broadcasting cease by February 17, 2009. Worried that unwitting consumers might be caught unprepared by this digital switch, the FCC also instructed stations to air ads to notify viewers of the impending change.

As a result, consumers will not be able to watch TV without hearing about the digital TV transition, and the remote possibility of losing reception after the switch.

A few days before the start of the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Warner announced that it would support the Blu-ray format exclusively, virtually sealing the fate of HD-DVD and unlocking more hi-def sales. This will help such new players as the Philips BDP7200, which ships any day now for $400.

We say remote because the transition will only directly affect the 12% of U.S. TV households, about 13.5 million homes, that receive over-the-air broadcast signals, according to The Nielsen Co. The Consumer Electronics Assoc. (CEA) reported on December 28 that 50% of U.S. households, or 56 million, already own a digital TV set, virtually all of whom likely receive TV via cable or satellite.
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Says Levy irreverently, “At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, but once a story like ‘I had sex with a robot and it was great!’ appears someplace like Cosmo magazine, I’d expect many people to jump on the bandwagon.”

On May 13, The Associated Press reports, Honda’s stair-stepping Asimo robot will lead the Detroit Symphony Orchestra when it performs “The Impossible Dream” from “Man of La Mancha” during a program featuring the cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

A skeptical University of Edinburgh robot scientist provided this sober counterpoint: “who,” he asked, “would want to marry a robot?” The reality is we already live in a world where some people don avatars and lead double lives in Second Life. A few have even gotten married in their virtual-reality world, so the question is what does our robot future hold?

While scientists at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics labor away on their vertical-application robots, around the globe in the Far East, a totally different attitude rules the emerging world of robots.
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