3documentsJust today Apple unveiled its new iMac and introduced the iPad mini, a completely new iPad design that is 23 per cent thinner and 53 per cent lighter than the third generation iPad. With these new announcements, Apple most probably is heralding another stepping stone for the growth of digital marketing.

Without doubts Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with its iPad. We will feel the impact of mobile devices and related services like those of CloudOn definitely in our marketing industry and see how the future of digital marketing will evolve in the future.

CloudOn, a Silicon Valley based start-up, for instance, makes it easier than ever to create, review, edit and share documents you need on the devices you love. The popular app is available now worldwide on Apple’s iTunes App Store as well as on the Google Play market and CloudOn just launched version 2.5 with major updates that make it easy to ditch your laptop and get everything done on a tablet.

Cloudon1What’s new in CloudOn 2.5:

Version 2.5 delivers innovative new features that save time and improve individual and group productivity, including:

  • CloudOn FileSpace (available for iOS, coming soon to Android) - that keeps users up-to-date with a real-time activity stream that supplies necessary context around any document, including comments, edits and notifications;
  • Annotations (available for iOS, coming soon to Android) - so that users can add graphical notes to any item in Word, Excel or PowerPoint with a single tap. These annotations are saved in the document and will be displayed when the document is shared with others regardless of whether or not it is opened in the CloudOn workspace;
  • Universal Language Support (available for iOS and Android) – as in support of its global launch, CloudOn 2.5 now includes enhanced keyboard support for all languages and alphabets in Microsoft Office documents;
  • Improved, touch-friendly ribbon (available for iOS and Android) - so that Office applications are optimized for touch-based tablet use, making the user experience a breeze across all editing functions such as selecting fonts, aligning text, spell check and track changes.

"With this launch, CloudOn brings exciting new features and worldwide access to our service," says Milind Gadekar, co-founder and CEO of CloudOn. "We have a vibrant and vocal user community that want their mobile devices to do more work, and that is exactly what we are committed to do. Our goal has always been to bring a new era of mobile productivity to our users."

Well, looking at the predictions of eMarketer, the future for CloudOn looks promising. The company estimates that by the end of this year the number of US tablet users to reach nearly 70 million, up from 34 million in 2011 and that tablet ad campaigns are outperforming mobile norms on key brand metrics.

Further, according to eMarketer’s new report „Tablet Advertising: Volume and Engagement Levels Jump Up“, over half of internet users will log onto the web via their tablet by 2015, and paid search ads targeting tablets will deliver better results than desktop search.

Indeed, tablet ads are proving to be more engaging than typical mobile campaigns and, at times, more effective than ads on a PC.

To no surprise, if we look at Philip Schiller’s description of the new iPad mini. Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, says: “It’s every inch of an iPad. With its gorgeous 7.9-inch display, iPad mini features the same number of pixels as the original iPad and iPad 2, so you can run more than 275,000 apps designed specifically for iPad. It’s as thin as a pencil and as light as a pad of paper, yet packs a fast A5 chip, FaceTime HD and 5 megapixel iSight cameras and ultrafast wireless―all while delivering up to 10 hours of battery life.”

Nevertheless, so far many marketers still remain hesitant to go all the way, despite the fact that tablets offer significant new opportunities to the digital marketing industry. And services like the one of CloudOn, a partner of Microsoft and Adobe, that have legitimately licensed the technology used to deliver the Microsoft Office and Adobe components of its service, may are the decisive factors, but relying on the belief that the number of tablet users to go up and the cost of tablet ad development and buys to go down.

By Daniela La Marca