The Race Is On To Meet Consumer Needs As Quickly As Possible

Technology giants Google Inc GOOG GOOGL and Apple Inc. AAPL are working to make their brands indispensable to users by advancing their smartphones' capabilities and creating a system that delivers information to a user before they've even asked for it.

While a phone that can read your mind may sound like something out of a sci-fi film, the companies are expected to start rolling out some of their anticipatory features as early as this autumn.

Differing Approaches

While both companies are aiming to do the same thing, proactively provide users with information they want or need, they plan to go about it in very different ways.

Google is planning to use its massive database of user information, including everything from emails to search history, in order to provide relevant information when needed. Apple plans to use only the data gathered by a user's smartphone in order to anticipate user needs; the company says it will use very few details from things like email and web browsing.

Related Link: Apple's New Siri Feature (That Google Had First)

Privacy Concerns

While Apple's approach will be much less comprehensive than Google's, Apple has criticized Google for gathering and storing information about its customers. By contrast, Apple's smartphones learn about a user's preferences and habits, but that information is tied to the phone and isn't collected by Apple itself.

Customer Anticipation

Apple and Google aren't the first companies to try to figure out what customers want before they've asked for it. Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN similarly created a shipping system that could anticipate customer needs and send packages out to a particular warehouse before they'd been ordered in order to reduce shipping times. As data collection becomes increasingly more advanced, the tech sector is expected to continue building out the idea of anticipating customer needs in an effort to make services smarter and more efficient.