TechNewsWorld

Microsoft Health is a cloud-based platform that stores health and fitness data. Its app, which runs on Android, iOS and Windows Phone, is available now.

The platform combines data from different health and fitness devices in one location, and its Intelligence Engine will crunch the data therein.

"The fact that Microsoft released its Health app to competing OSes indicates it's more interested in its software and data success," Harry Wang, director of mobile and health res ...read more

"Apple appears ready to transform healthcare, a complex and fragmented industry, [and] slowest to technology Visit the VMware Tech Center adoption," Harry Wang, a research director at Parks Associates, told TechNewsWorld.

The connected health market, based on Parks' narrow focus encompassing specific health applications and services, "will be US$30 billion in five years in the United States alone," he said.

From the article "Medical Trials to Test Usefulness of Apple's H ...read more

"Lowell McAdam is definitely onto something when he mentions that millennials want their content on devices," Glenn Hower, a research analyst with Parks Associates, told TechNewsWorld. "About one-third of millennials say that online is their preferred outlet for watching video content, and Verizon appears to be listening."

Going wireless "puts Verizon in an advantageous position," he added. "FiOS has shown success and promise, but laying fiber is slow and expensive. Going wi ...read more

That's possibly because Google "was burned by its Google Health venture several years ago," Parks' Wang suggested.

Samsung is also in the race, having launched the SAMI platform and S Health app for its e-health business, but "it may not have the right mix of software and platform expertise to draw enough developer support and partner interest," Wang said.

On the other hand, Samsung "does have a strong brand and a large installed smartphone user base in the U.S., so no h ...read more

Consumer hunger for digital content appears insatiable, based on the strong growth in online video subscription services such as Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime Instant Video. Thirty-seven percent of U.S. broadband households surveyed had a Netflix subscription for OTT content, while around 10 percent had subscriptions to Hulu Plus and Amazon. The number of U.S. subscribers to Netflix's streaming service increased 59 percent, from 19.5 million in 2010 to more than 30 million ...read more

Qplay's interface and social features "should be appealing" to users, Brett Sappington, director of research for Parks Associates, told TechNewsWorld.

The key, however, is always content, he added.

"If Qplay can get access to interesting or exclusive content, then they have a chance to be a player," Sappington said.

Qplay is one of many streaming boxes expected to reach the market during the next year to compete with industry leaders Roku and Apple TV, he noted.

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Parks Associates research for years has tracked the transition of media consumption to multiple new platforms. Media consumers are not glued to one device, so an immediate concern is one of audience duplication -- spending the time and money only to target the same user multiple times.

Despite industry demand, there has been difficulty developing a standard that accounts for the overlap of traditional media and new media. A true cross-platform measurement approach quantifies ...read more

Given the principles that Nintendo has laid out, including "a hardware-centric ecosystem, non-wearable, quality of life improvement, I would guess it will be another accessory linked to its new hardware system with the ability to measure people's health and wellness indicators in a very nonintrusive manner," Harry Wang, director for health and mobile product research with Parks Associates, told TechNewsWorld.

"The goal of the accessory and related software application is to ...read more