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Glide's Levi Shapiro on the Future of Wearables and Asia's Big Messaging Apps

Glide's Levi Shapiro on the Future of Wearables and Asia's Big Messaging Apps

By Gopal Sathe | Updated: 24 June 2014 11:11 IST

At the India Gadget Expo in Hyderabad, we had a chance to catch up with Levi Shapiro, Vice President-Business Development at Glide, a video messaging application for iOS and Android.Shapiro is also a partner at the Japan-Israel Mobile Media and IT fund, an early stage venture capital fund for Japanese corporate investors looking to invest in Israeli technology startups, and in this capacity, he is well versed with the latest developments in software and technology in Israel, which he describes as the "second biggest startup market in the world right now."

One of the first things that Shapiro brings up is the Gartner hype cycle for emerging technologies.

Gartner, the information technology research and advisory firm, talks about a hype cycle for all new technology developments, starting from a trigger and leading to a peak of inflated opinions, followed by a quick drop, and a steady improvement in the actual use of technology, which may or may not eventually live up to the lofty, world changing goals.

Shapiro, who has worked with Intel and Toyota in the past, speaks quickly, and to the point. Mobile technology, he says, is now climbing up again, and hasn't really plateaued out yet. This is why, he feels, that wearable computing - which is at the top of the peak of inflated opinions in Gartner's 2013 hype cycle report - is the future of mobile.

"For me, when a product has reached 50 percent of its potential, it's time for the next big thing," says Shapiro. "Mobile is now the last big thing, and as an investor, I always want to look at the next big thing."

That's why Glide - a video messaging application for iOS and Android, has been designed to be used on wearables, and has been demonstrated on the Samsung Galaxy Gear. However, while Shapiro agrees that devices like Google Glass could well be the future, it's one that's still pretty far away. Instead, he sees smartwatches as the next area developers should be looking at.

"Visors and glasses are the most hyped form factor, but they're also the biggest disasters. They're just not natural," he says.

Shapiro himself uses a Pebble, and says it has become invaluable for mail and messages. "Research says that people take their phone out of their pocket 150 times a day," says Shapiro. "Taking it out [that many times] is not so practical."

And this is something that Shapiro says will become even more of an issue as messaging apps grow in popularity. "Messaging is growing, Snapchat, Viber, Line, WhatsApp, Nimbuzz, these are all the big new apps. They're all coming out of Asia, and that's where you're going to see a lot of innovation going forward."

For Glide, that innovation lies in simplifying the user interface, while also focusing on speed and quality. Shapiro claims that Glide can send the fastest video messages, with a simple interface that would be easy to use even on the small screen of a smartwatch.

"It's important to do one thing, and do it well. That's why I think Xiaomi is such a great brand," says Shapiro.

"They know that people wanted a great media experience, and their phones deliver on that count. They didn't want to be a Swiss Army knife, but rather, the focused on the one thing they knew people wanted."

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