Predictions: Apple’s New Mobile OS to Include Shoot & Share 360º Virtual Tour Photography; 2011 is the Year of 360º Virtual Tour Marketing

July 19, 2011 • Atlanta, GA – 2011 is the Year of 360-degree panoramic virtual tour marketing: super-charged by Apple. And, Apple’s new mobile OS – to be introduced soon – will include shoot and share 360-degree virtual tour photography. These are my predictions for 2011.

Here’s Why! And, Why This Matters To You

The world is rapidly moving to mobile because of the speed of innovation by Apple in the mobile space with its iPhone and iPad mobile iDevices. Mobile app usage now surpasses web usage, according to a study released in June 2011. Smartphone purchases have overtaken feature phones in the U.S., according to a Nielsen mobile study also released in June. Apple reported today (7/19/11) that iPhone 3Q11 sales (20.34 million iPhones: more than double than 3Q10) grew by 142% and iPad sales (9.25 million iPads in the quarter: 29 million iPads to since its launch April 2010) grew 183% with record revenue up 82%, according to Apple’s press release.

By September 2011, Apple will release its new iPhone 5 and its new iOS 5 mobile operating system that will, for the first time, include the ability to shoot and share 360-degree panorama virtual tour photos.

Why 2011 Will Be The Year of 360º Virtual Tour Marketing

1. Know The Code: industry trades report that Apple’s iOS 5 code includes pano and panorama: these are keywords in the 360-degree panoramic virtual tour photography space.

   Free Tour Wrist App on an iPad

2. Apple iTunes App Store: Apple is sharing its over-the-top love for virtual tour photography to help grow the space in time for its by September 2011 launch in this space. The Apple iTunes App Store Great Free Apps; Staff Picks; What’s Hot and New and Noteworthy frequently include 360-degree panoramic photo apps such as Tour Wrist; Photosynth; Dermandar; and Jetsetter. For example, between Saturday (7/10/11) and today (7/19/11), Apple iTunes App Store Top 100 Great Free Apps list includes these four 360-degree photography apps.
3. Big Players in the Space: Microsoft has a panorama app (Photosynth) and platform (Bing maps) for sharing virtual tour photos; and, Google Street View spawned the new Business Photos from Google (shooting 360-degree panoramic view) service. Apple sees the success of big players in this space and knows that it can do a better “it just works” user experience.
4. Tour Wrist API – The Tour Wrist API (first press release 4/27/11), second press release 7/18/11) will enable millions of iPhone users to easily and seamlessly shoot and share 360-degree virtual tour scenes via Tour Wrist – free. Six developers have already expressed interest in integrating the Tour Wrist API into their 360-degree virtual tour shooting app, reported Fast Company and WIRED on July 5, 2011. Will Apple and Microsoft be among the developers that leverages the Tour Wrist platform (mobile, web and social) by enabling its iOS 5 panoramic shooting capability to publish to the open Tour Wrist platform the YouTube of 360-degree virtual tour images – or pursue a proprietary platform strategy – or both?

“A race is underway to map the world’s interior and exterior spaces,” says Tour Wrist CEO & Founder Charles Armstrong. “With web and mobile technology advancing by the day and consumers keeping pace, the ability to travel remotely will soon change the way we market, discover, share and engage with business and one another.”

“Google and Microsoft, the biggest existing virtual tour platforms, continue to show that their motivation is to index properties to create the virtual tour equivalent of a white pages directory rather than yellow pages,” says Armstrong. “Tour Wrist – the YouTube of virtual tour images – gives business the ability to market themselves proactively, stand to unlock a significant consumer buzz generator and mainstream revenue channel.”

Why This Matters To You

Marketers of cable TV, entertainment and travel/tourism are quickly positioning their brands now to benefit from Apple’s “it just works” innovation that will (soon) result in millions of iPhone users easily and seamlessly shooting and sharing their life experiences within 360-degree geo-tagged virtual tour images. Crowd-sourced user generated content (UGC) will quickly and efficiently map the world where Google Street View can’t take you – inside – all of the world’s spaces.

Free Tour Wrist App on an iPhone

By getting started now, you can be ready Fall 2011 – concurrent with Apple’s newest iPhone 5 and iOS 5 releases so you can benefit from tons of media coverage; social media; web and world-of-mouth regarding what brands are doing with 360-degree virtual tour photography. In the Fall 2011, everyone will discover the next generation of 360-degree panoramic photography.

So why use the Tour Wrist virtual tour platform (mobile, web and social) when you could opt to build a virtual tour strategy around Microsoft’s Photosynth app and Bing maps; Business Photos from Google and Google Maps; or Apple’s shoot and share 360-degree photography integrated in its soon-to-be released iOS 5?

Watch Out Goliath, Here Comes David

In a world of slow-moving Goliaths, there is always an opportunity for agile Davids to win the battle.

“Tour Wrist is a total reinterpretation of what it means to shoot, publish, host, search, view and share virtual tours with a platform [mobile, web and social] designed for consumers and marketers,” says Armstrong. “We see great momentum with consumers, content providers and a range of marketing partners since we launched Tour Wrist commercially on January 1, 2011.”

Tour Wrist has added more than 20,000 360-degree virtual tour scenes in just months of its launch.

“Now that we have released the free Tour Wrist publishing Application Programming Interface (API), we anticipate many panoramic image apps, software, and even cameras – to upload and host images on the Tour Wrist platform – free,” says Armstrong.

Top 10 Reasons Why Tour Wrist is Positioned To Contribute to – And Benefit From – 2011 is the Year of 360º Virtual Tour Marketing

“Tour Wrist has an early lead in the race to bridge virtual tours via mobile tools; social media and user generated content from millions of iDevice owners,” says Armstrong. And while I have a Tour Wrist platform bias – my company, GREAT! is the marketing agency for Tour Wrist and has a meaningful interest in the success of Tour Wrist – my sense is that Tour Wrist has – or will have – the right mix of:

1. Crowd-Sourced Consumer Content – to map the world’s interior spaces via user generated content (USG) leveraging the Tour Wrist publishing API (as Twitter has done with opening its API) – free for consumers. “The old perception is that closed data is a competitive advantage,” reported Read/Write Web in 2007 in discussing the open Twitter API. “The new reality is that open data is a competitive advantage.”
2. A-list Media and Entertainment Brands – major A-list media and entertainment brands providing both celebrity content and marketing muscle to drive viewership and downloads of its free Tour Wrist app (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch). While Tour Wrist was created for the travel/tourism space, innovation often comes when marketers in different industries use a tool in a new way – a mashup – that may not have been envisioned by its inventor: disruptive innovation. For example, please see my That’s GREAT! story about how cable TV channels and movie marketers will use disruptive innovation to leverage Tour Wrist: Two-Screen Marketing: TV and Movie Marketing Meets ‘Tour Wrist’ Mobile Experience Meets Immersive Consumer Engagement Experience
3. Hobbyist and Professional Photographers –  producing virtual tour content sourced from the 6,000+ members of the Panoguide community powered by Tour Wrist and its freemium; $5 per month Hobbyist; and $30 per month Professional membership pricing.
4. A-list Anchor Content Provider Brands – A-list anchor brands in travel/tourism, real estate and vehicle manufacturers will provide tonnage in 360-degree virtual tour image content. For example, hotel chains and cruise lines already have thousands of virtual tour images that can be re-purposed on the Tour Wrist platform (mobile, web and social) Content and marketing are provided by consumer and business users in the course of providing and promoting their Tour Wrist content.
5. Social Media Promotion – Consumers share their 360-degree virtual tour scenes with family and friends via Facebook, Twitter, email and other social media share tools.
6. Scalable Business – Tour Wrist lives in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) – via the Heroku cloud application platform for Ruby on the Rails open-source web framework – and not tied to fixed infrastructural costs. The Amazon EC2 cloud enables Tour Wrist to easily scale digital content storage and usage spikes created by national media promoting Tour Wrist content.
7. Smart Leadership – In addition to being a brilliant, creative, passionate and energetic technology visionary, Tour Wrist CEO and Founder Charles Armstrong is a great leader, team builder and motivator.
8. Great User Experience – Charles’ obsession with the design esthetic meets user experience – recognized by Communication Arts magazine – resulted in Tour Wrist being the YouTube of 360-degree virtual tour photography.
9. Venture Capital –Tour Wrist will soon benefit from millions of dollars in investment capital that will accelerate its consumer marketing; technology development; and Tour Wrist white label re-skinned and custom apps for business to leverage its existing platform, proprietary technologies and expertise. Within just months of its commercial launch, Tour Wrist has already produced five white label app versions of Tour Wrist: a) Eckerd College; b) ProTours360; c) Drink Wine 360; d) Home Tours Florida; e) University of Florida’s CrimeSeen 360 (password required); f) 360iTours; g) City of Redlands, CA and h) Redlands PD [Tour Wrist will create additional white label apps.]
10. Great Timing – While both Google and Microsoft have paved the way for the next generation of virtual tour photography, Apple’s “it just works” innovation and introduction of a 360-degree virtual tour shooting and sharing built into its mobile OS will empower millions of iPhone users to shoot panoramic images. Instead of limiting Tour Wrist content providers to 6,000+ Panoguide professional photographers using nearly $3,000 or more in camera gear/software and advance photography skills, millions of people will soon use their iPhone and iPod Touch to shoot and share virtual tour images – free (and without any special gear/software or training).
11. Bonus: Just as opening the Twitter API helped accelerate the success of Twitter, opening the Tour Wrist publishing API will enable many virtual tour app developers – and camera gear manufacturers – to integrate Tour Wrist into their customer experience resulting in millions of people easily and seamlessly shooting and sharing 360-degree virtual tour scenes – free via the Tour Wrist platform (mobile, web and social).

www.TourWrist.com on a Desktop

So, knowing that the future arrives by September 2011 when Apple bursts on the 360-degree panorama virtual tour scene, if you get started today with your test and learn strategy … you’ll be ready to benefit from the media coverage, social media and world of mouth in the Fall of 2011 and beyond.

So, how good am I at predicting the future of emerging digital media trends in the United States? Should you believe me and act now to be ready when the future arrives Fall 2011?

On June 12, 2010, I proclaimed 2010 as the year of the quick response (QR) code in the U.S.

In 2010, did your company even know what a QR code was?  In 2011, is your company still asking, “What’s the ROI on QR codes?”

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Virtual Tour Photography Resources

1. Tour Wrist Publishing API Developer Site
2. Tour Wrist Publishing API Documentation

App Developers

1. 360 Panorama (Occipital)
2. AutoStitch Panorama (Cloudburst Research)
3. Bubbli (Bubbli Co)
4. Dermandar (Dermandar (Offshore) S.A.L.)
5. Pixeet 360 (Pixeet)
6. Pano (Debacle Software)
7. PanoLab and PanoLab Pro (Originate Labs)
8. PanoMinute (Denis Martin)
9. Panorama (Airshed)
10. Panorama Free (Free the Apps!)
11. Panorama Mosaicker (Intpel)
12. Panoramatic 360 (Andrea Esposito)
13. Porsche 360º (Porsche)
14. YouSpin360º (3sixty Ltd.)
15. UScape.it (EveryScape)
16. Video to Panorama (Haiqun Deng)

Software Developers

1. Apple iOS 5 (Apple)
2. AutoPano Pro (Kolor)
3. Hugin (Open Source)
4. ImmerVision (ImmerVision)
5. Photosynth (Microsoft Corp.)
6. PTgui (New House Internet Services B.V.)

Hardware Manufacturers

1. 0-360 Panoramic Optic lens accessory (0-360.com)
2. Apple iPhone 5 (Apple)
3. Canon “PhotoStitch” (Canon)
4. Casio TRYX (Casio)
5. FujiFilm FinePix Cameras “Motion Panorama 360º” (FujiFilm)
6. GE “Pancapture” (GE Consumer Electronics)
7. Giroptic 360 Degree Camera (Giroptic) – 360-degree panoramic video camera
8. GoPano Micro (EyeSee360) – 360-degree iPhone 4 video accessory
9. Kodak “Panoramic Stitch” (Kodak)
10. Nikon COOLPIX “Easy Panorama” (Nikon)
11. Nodal Ninja (Nodal Ninja)
12. Olympus “Combine” (Olympus)
13. Pano Pro MkII one-shot 360º lens (Pano Pro USA)
14. Pixeet iPhone 360º lens accessory (Pixeet)
15. Panasonic-Lumix “Panorama Assist” (Panasonic)
16. Pentax “Digital Panorama” (Pentax)
17. Samsung “Advanced Panorama with Object Tracking” (Samsung)
18. Sony iSweep–Enabled Cameras (Sony) — consumer cameras (Watch Sony TX7 Cyber-shot Camera ‘Taylor Swift’ Commercial Video) (View Sony Cyber-Shot Digital Camera with iSweep in Amazon Store)
19. Vivitar (Sakar International, Inc.)
20. WebCube – 360 Webcam (ImmerVision)

Panoramic Photography Resources

1. IVRPA – International Virtual Reality (VR) Photography Association
2. Panoguide – a community of 6,000+ virtual tour photographers
3. 360º Photography Weekly – a free weekly online newspaper published by Tour Wrist Virtual Tour Photographer Dan Smigrod using this list of article contributors
4. Panoramic Photography Shooting Apps ­­– a Twitter list of 360º photography apps (curated by @smigrod)
5. Panoramic Photography – a Twitter list of 360º photographers, hardware and software providers and other related vendors (curated by @smigrod )
6. All Tour Wrist articles by Dan Smigrod [See PostScript with Related Tour Wrist stories]

Short URL For This Article

• http://j.mp/GREAT-TourWrist-Marketing

PostScript

• WIRED Gadget Lab – Enable Secret panorama Feature in iOS5 (11/8/11)
• Techie Buzz – Hidden Panorama Mode Discovered in iOS 5 (11/8/11)
• iDownloadBlug – Hidden Panorama Mode Uncovered in the iOS Camera (11/7/11)

Click here to view the embedded video.