smartphones, cellphones

Some tech companies don’t see the senior market as an opportunity. They are the Peter Pan tech firms, the ones in which no one (including the customer) ever ages (you might know them as Facebook, Apple, Google, and Twitter). Meanwhile, from Nashville, France, and Germany, others see inclusion and extra services as good business, maybe because this market is pretty much ignored by the gang of four. Here are five companies that vary a platform or a product to make it more useful for an older adult market or service. – All material is derived from the vendor websites or press releases:

Apple launch – the mountain shuddered.  Apple is a phone company – the majority of their revenue comes from the iPhone, now to be sold directly on 24-month $32 payment plans – never mind having to buy that $768 phone from those pesky carriers.  There were plenty of excited selfies taken at the big event – read this nasty review to get a fresh (that is, not fawning) perspective from a writer who owns all Apple products, ironically. So what was new from the phone company?  A smarter Siri, a camera that catches up with Samsung, a tablet similar to Microsoft Surface, and 3D touch  -- enabling an activity within device context, so from the home screen, now you can launch straight into selfie mode. But this 3D touch might have been be the most useful feature for older adults with any hand tremor – it enables a deliberate pressure versus accidental swipe – the bane of devices that lost their buttons (and pressure sensitivity) years ago. Note cell phones ‘designed’ for seniors.  Note the read-the-manual response on Apple’s Support site about use of the iPhone for seniors used to flip phones.

If you don’t like the way carriers serve older adults, just wait, it could get worse.   A few months ago we learned that carriers are pushing tablets, ha! Just as tablet sales overall are slowing. Carriers obviously read that Gartner report about slowing tablet sales -- and then 'encouraged' us to add a tablet to a plan for $10/month for up to 5GB of data. How generous. That’s not a lot of movies, maybe 2.5 hours of streaming HD per month. But what plan? How to encourage data usage with wireless data plans? No problem, those have all changed, with AT&T following T-Mobile and Verizon aping AT&T. And all of this following the precedent long set in Europe – now the full price of the phone is disclosed ($650 for an iPhone!). You could buy the phone upfront, but not to worry – there’s a monthly installment plan for the list price phone.

Ho hum – another day, another few million records are hacked. Rant on. It’s a small hack really, only 4.5 million impacted by the UCLA Medical System cyber attack. But what a relief, the impacted individuals will receive identity theft recovery and restoration services and credit monitoring at no cost. That category of service firm is buying plenty of ads all around and may be one of the boom businesses of 2015.  Because of course the 4.5 million must be added to the 22 million Federal government individuals and the 80 million Anthem Blue Cross individuals -- for starters.  And the solution?  A new services industry emerges with vendors popping up in every flavor. As for fines for those that let the data get out of the bag? As for the notorious insurance industry leader, Anthem (first quarter net income $865.2 million) has received a fine of $1.7 million – but fines for data breaches remain rare.

Google forced the creation of so-called mobile sites?  Rant on.  Last week I published a list of Medication Management technologies that could be useful to baby boomers. Great. This week I looked at those websites a bit more closely, not squinting at my phone, but instead from my desktop PC. I selected a few of them – stared at the full motion video on the desktop sites, and ran their URLs through the Google Mobile Friendly-ness test. I also put in MobiHealthNews and Weather.gov (Google says not mobile friendly). The URL for Anthem.com  was deemed mobile friendly, but when searching via Google for Anthem.com, I was directed to an Overview page (not friendly). Then I look at the tortured feedback on Google’s own recommended forum about this topic: So many sites have been failing this test -- with their owners fixing and then pleading with Google to take another look.

Technology improvements do not always…improve.  Rant on. You remember that experience in your life of turning a key and a long-ago new car just started? We expect that with technology but we virtually never get it. And we don’t complain. Much. Wireless networks in the home need a geek-or-two to get running. Smart phones require training, app downloads take time. Then slog through customization of menus, opting out of stupid defaults, and quite frightening disclosures. “Anonymous location data will occasionally be sent to Google, even when no apps are running. Agree?”  Oh sure. Because it doesn’t matter whether I agree or not.

The more innovation there is, the more some things don’t change.  Stroll through this Aging 2.0 Summit link – and you will see pages of logos of new, newer, and newest companies trying to make a technology or product that could be used to serve seniors – or perhaps help those who serve them. Or the AARP Health50 Live Pitch, or the Stanford Longevity Design Challenge or the Quintiles competition at Wake Forest in North Carolina. Yet again and again, the question bubbles up – can firms make money creating and selling technology or other innovations specifically designed for seniors?