It was never a pioneer in the tech-evolutionary aspect of it. But it has developed a framework to turn consumers into customers and into fans. Apple has created fandoms across product categories, turning men and women to take a day out of work, and spend bi-monthly wages, in a severe winter morning, just to be among the first people to touch the next big thing. Most times, the main accomplishment is to tweet. “Friends, I have the latest iPhone in my hand”, and the friends will respond, “You are the real dude: way to go”. The guy had camped since 4 am under a challenging weather, losing the day’s wage, but determined to experience the immersive unboxing of the iPhone. He is a fan.

From music (iPod for Walkman) to smartphone (iPhone for Blackberry) to smartwatch (Apple Watch for Pebble), Apple has a playbook: wait for others to try, learn from their mistakes, and then arrive and change the ordinance in the market. Apple rarely goes first. That playbook has worked, profitably. In the world of Apple, the first mover advantage does not exist! Because Apple does not usually aspire to be the first.

Ladies and gentlemen, Apple is coming for virtual reality/ augmented reality. It is acquiring NextVR. Now, expect the next big thing in virtual and augmented reality. With Covid-19 pandemic ushering the world of everything virtual, VR/AR would be the expected destinations. If you are in this domain, the moment has come. Yes, the mass diffusion of this technology category will begin in the coming quarters because Apple will make this tech simple and cool.

Apple Inc.  is said to have bought virtual reality startup NextVR, for an undisclosed sum, Bloomberg reported.
NextVR provides content ranging from sports, music, and entertainment for virtual reality headsets. This also includes watching live events on VR headsets from PlayStation, HTC, Facebook Inc.’s Oculus, Google, Microsoft Corp, and others. The startup has deals with sports leagues including the National Basketball Association and entertainment networks such as Fox Sports, according to Bloomberg.The news of the acquisition comes after website 9to5Mac first reported the deal in April putting its value at $100 million.Apple has been on a buying spree this year with the purchases of Voysis, an Irish startup that focuses on voice technology, and Dark Sky, a popular weather app.Shares in Apple have rallied 37% in the past two months and were trading at $307.71 as of the close on Friday.

The Great Recession brought the sharing economy, birthing companies like Uber and Airbnb. Covid-19 will seed entities that will improve how people work remotely across industrial sectors. AV/VR is the most positioned technology, anchoring on the computational engine of cloud computing and the unbounded distribution systems of mobile internet. I see AV/AR to emerge in the consumer technology world because the solution to the post Covid-19 world will go through the fusion of meatspace and cyberspace.

Understand the classification of these technologies

The Franklin Institute explains it clearly.

Augmented reality (AR) adds digital elements to a live view often by using the camera on a smartphone. Examples of augmented reality experiences include Snapchat lenses and the game Pokemon Go.

Virtual reality (VR) implies a complete immersion experience that shuts out the physical world. Using VR devices such as HTC Vive, Oculus Rift or Google Cardboard, users can be transported into a number of real-world and imagined environments such as the middle of a squawking penguin colony or even the back of a dragon.

In a Mixed Reality (MR) experience, which combines elements of both AR and VR, real-world and digital objects interact. Mixed reality technology is just now starting to take off with Microsoft’s HoloLens one of the most notable early mixed reality apparatuses.

Extended Reality (XR) is an umbrella term that covers all of the various technologies that enhance our senses, whether they’re providing additional information about the actual world or creating totally unreal, simulated worlds for us to experience. It includes Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) technologies.

One of those accidental confessions that help us to understand! Interestingly, not many can claim they planned perfectly what they are doing today [I did not, still trying to understand why one is living outside Nigeria!). Politics to many Nigerian politicians is an industrial sector, never a call to service.  Amaechi studied English Studies and Literature in UNIPORT and might have struggled with unemployment.  So when the opportunity came via politics, he took his chances.  We hope his incentives have changed by now.

“I didn’t join politics because I wanted to be a leader or because I wanted to solve Nigeria’s problems. I joined because of unemployment. I also believe there is a part that grace played in it,” Rotimi Amaechi, Minister of Transport, Nigeria

Mr Amaechi, a graduate of English Studies and Literature from the University of Port Harcourt, had his first major political break in 1999 when he was elected as a member and then speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly under the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He was re-elected to the position in 2003.

In 2007, he contested and won the party’s governorship ticket even though Celestine Omehia was declared the party’s flagbearer. The PDP won the election and Mr Omehia was sworn in as governor.

Mr Amaechi challenged Mr Omehia’s candidacy before a court and was eventually declared the rightful candidate of the PDP and winner of the April 2007 governorship election in Rivers State. He served twice as the state governor under the party before his defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2013

I left this comment on a feed on LinkedIn; I am sharing here. Yes, people do write that job titles do not matter. I will say please it does matter, and if you can get a better one, invest in it – and get it. Those days in Diamond Bank, I admired my entry level job title – Banking Executive. When they promoted me and gave me the Banking Officer title, it was very unfortunate for one to move from “Executive” to “Officer”.

In an engineering firm I worked in the U.S. post-PhD, there was no written policy on job title. You make up whatever you want for your business card. You do not blame the workers because you can be hired as Analog Design Engineer II, if you stay there for 30 years, you can end up, officially, with Analog Design Engineer XIII. Good luck explaining what the I, II, etc mean to friends. To fix that problem, leave the official title for paygrade, and pick anything you want for the outside, and feel happy.

LinkedIn does not have an option for Village Boy. Many of us would have gone for it. Simply, titles do matter especially in Africa. Many companies will make time for someone with a title Chief Marketing Officer when compared with a Sales Officer. As one of our faculty members discussed in Tekedia Min-MBA, sales management and marketing work on perception. And the messenger matters.  Yes, invest in that title and make sure they give you a good one in office. Titles are like ladders to higher titles and they directly or indirectly showcase responsibilities. 

It is a big illusion to think people do not pay attention to titles: who wants to meet the deputy managing director when the managing director is also available?

Good People, I am very happy to share that Dr. Chisom Ezeocha, a Project Delivery Manager with Shell will lead a season on Leading and Managing Teams for Tekedia Mini-MBA which begins June 22. Like Chidi Nwosu, who trades oil (lol) for Nigeria in NNPC (he will handle a session on “Global Energy Mix and Energy Economics “), and Nnamdi Onyebuchi, CEO of ICT leader, Weco Systems Group (he will lead a session on “Execution – Business Objectives and Technologies”), Dr. Ezeocha brings excellence which all of us shared as classmates in FUTO.

Chisom has managed global technical teams in Africa and around the world. He served as the Head of Offshore Field Engineering for 6 years in Brunei Shell Petroleum. He will be sharing with us how to lead and manage global  teams. I invite you to join him and other business leaders from MIT, Flutterwave, Deloitte, Schlumberger, Nigerian Breweries, BUA Group, Sherwin Williams, American Tower, Afrinvest, Coca Cola, GIG Logistics, etc.

Tekedia Mini-MBA is a community service from the non-profit African Institution of Technology..

https://www.tekedia.com/mini-mba-2/