The big three: Google, Microsoft, and Apple in 2013

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Posted 07 January 2013 16:45pm by Heather Taylor with 1 comment

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Throughout the year, the news is punctuated with the latest changes in the big three: Google, Microsoft and Apple. 

But what can we expect from them in the year coming up? New products? New software? New directions? And how will these changes potentially affect the marketplace?

Reaching out to digitals marketers in the US and UK, we asked them what they thought of Apple, Google and Microsoft and they came back with a few of their own predictions for 2013. Are they the same as yours?  

Google

Gustav von Sydow, CEO and co-founder, Burt

Google's display advertising stack will likely continue to gain marketshare, but it will also be obvious that ad serving and automated ad marketplaces is not the answer sought by publisher nor advertisers.

Toby Daniels, CEO, Crowdcentric

Google+ integration across the full suite of Google products and Google search will be a huge priority for 2013.  The new Communities feature is going to be very interesting to watch as this gives even more controls to businesses looking to leverage the platform.  This could be where Google finds its social networking legs.

Shiraz Datta, Lead - Marketing CRM and Business Intelligence at Nokia

Google would be keen to evolve into the space of integrated device with adding the element of TV and further evolving in the space of tablets/PC. Equally, they may enable a tighter integrated experience for the consumers from mobile to tablet, from PC to TV, moving towards all screen modes.

Tami Forman, Senior Director of Global Corporate Communications at Return Path

The big global webmail providers (Microsoft, AOL, Google and Yahoo!) will continue to battle to be the "inbox of choice." This battle will have a net positive effect for consumers – more innovation in the email interface. The effect for marketers will be mixed – like all technological innovations there will be winners and losers. Those who innovate alongside the providers and keep the consumer experience front and center will reap the rewards. Laggards will see revenue from email erode.

Microsoft

Mark Fidelman, CEO of Evolve!

Microsoft Office will make the leap to the cloud while simultaneously integrating all of its software within the enterprise. Dynamics will easily integrate with SharePoint, Excel and the rest of the Office suite. 

Each of the individual Office products will become social – all displaying an activity stream that updates the user on the activities of everyone else. This major change will force Office users to become more social with their actions and provide the organization with a higher level of transparency.

Gustav von Sydow, CEO and co-founder, Burt

As they pull out of web media, Microsoft will expand their advertising offerings on Xbox, a very interesting advertising platform. 

Phillip Klien, CEO, SiteApps

2013 is the year of the comeback.  Microsoft's historic dispute with U.S. regulators over antitrust violations has finally come to an end. While the government will switch its antitrust scrutiny to Google and Facebook, Microsoft will use it's "Death Star" force to own the corporate market once again, but free of the government over its shoulder (for now).  

Jess Seilheimer, SVP Digital Strategy & Planning, Havas Life NYC

I think Windows 8 and the surface tablet OS are going to give the education vertical/marketplace something to think about (and fight with Apple at an enterprise level licensing war) but they have to solidify their suite of mobile software they haven't been able to scale that fast enough like Apple has (device agnostic suite of Pages, Keynote and Numbers) i.e. they still have NO solution for MS Word, PPT or Excel for iOS. It's embarrassing.

Apple

Gustav von Sydow, CEO and co-founder, Burt

Apple creates a more open eco system for creating, running and analyzing advertising activities on iPhones and iPad. But more interestingly will be to see how they expand and leverage the Apple TV platform, and how brands can take advantage of that distribution channel.

Jess Seilheimer, SVP Digital Strategy & Planning, Havas Life NYC

They are going to focus more on enhancing OS tech features this year vs. user-centered design. Their design is solid, people need features that work. Market crises like the iOS maps ordeal will drive their features to be tech led vs. design led as we've seen in the past.