The movie Star Trek Into Darkness is set to come out in May. But trekkies can look forward to yet another coming attraction this spring. That’s the ability to receive personalized content related to the movie on their smartphones based on their whereabouts and their interactions with things around them.
That’s the word from Peter Marx, vice president of business development at Qualcomm Labs.
Qualcomm’s Gimbal technology will help enable user smartphones to become aware of their user’s context so they can deliver these special experiences, he says. Gimbal, which became available in June 2012, is software that goes inside applications and a management system that runs within the cloud.
It works with smartphones running the Android and iOS operating systems.
Gimbal can allow for a wide variety of experiences, but one possibility would be to offer a person some content related to the movie if the phone “hears” that the person is in a movie theater. Marx offers a second example of a person pointing his or her smartphone camera at the movie poster to, for example, launch the movie trailer on the device.
“If you use the phone to unlock things, it can be pretty cool,” he said.
Delivering these kinds of personalized and unique experiences for users can help companies develop special relationships with people and keep those individuals coming back for more, adds Marx. Some are referring to this smartphone concept as “the digital sixth sense.”
And as Mr. Spock might say, it could enable the companies that leverage it to live long and prosper.
While Gimbal is quite new, Marx says it was part of large field test last year in Japan with a major advertising agency there and some of its clients.
