It is not unusual for Hollywood stars to invest in side projects. However, while most celebrities create their own clothing lines, fragrances and recipe books, actor Ashton Kutcher prefers to focus on technology investments. This is really similar to Kutcher’s character on his current TV show Two and a Half Men. There, the actor plays a billionaire technology entrepreneur. However, most people took his on-screen investments more seriously than his real-life ones. But it turns out that Kutcher really has a huge interest and knowledge on today’s technology sector.
This week the famous actor was a key guest at CTIA 2013 which took place in Las Vegas. For the event, Kutcher gave an interview which focused mainly on mobile technology.
In the interview, the actor made a prediction that cellular services will eventually be completely replaced by new technologies, particularly VoIP. According to Ashton, VoIP services like Skype are much cheaper. Kutcher shared that he has discovered this truth for himself while traveling around the world. The actor has found that traditional cellular phone calls tend to make consumers “worried about the amount of data they’re consuming”. As a result, they are “worried about making phone calls” as it will cost them more money.
The Two and a Half Men actor believes that at some point users will realize the actual situation and say to themselves: “I’m not getting an experience that I should get, I want to get and deserve to get.” Ashton Kutcher states that this will be a turning point for the technology industry and especially for carriers.
“I think it would be crazy for major carriers to not go and try to buy those companies and overspend knowing that the market’s going to move there,” he added.
Kutcher also discussed social media platform like Facebook and Twitter. The actor shared that social media website will have a hard time moving to the mobile market. The main reason for that, according to Kutcher, is that fact that there are many other services that already provide that at a better quality to consumers.
“In some ways, it’s going to be hard to be brilliant at mobile for Facebook because it’s a little bit of a closed-wall platform once you’re on Facebook as a mobile application,” he said. The actor also added that the social media platform needs to offer external services like Instagram, for example.
Kutcher also noted that Twitter has lost its luster for him because of its limitations: “The way I use Twitter has become more limited. It felt like the democratization of media. Now it just feels like the media again.”
Nevertheless, Ashton Kutcher believes that the micro-blogging platform can get back in the game if it starts to support intelligent mobile objects. Kutcher explained that these can include sending tweets to users to notify them that their coffee is ready.
Also, the actor informed that he is currently focusing on mobile technology investments: “You can’t be a consumer-facing technology right now and not be mobile.” Despite that, the TV star added that the emphasis on mobile should not always come first. Kutcher thinks that app discovery is not developed enough. Therefore, he advises companies to try and figure out how mobile services can be used also on the Internet and on desktop devices. “HTML5 is still a really important layer in pushing lightweight virtual content through mobile,” he added.
Ashton Kutcher co-owns A-Grade Investments which is a venture capital company. Also, he has made various investments in many tech companies like Path, Foursquare and Spotify. In addition, the actor is a cofounder of media firm Katalist. All that shows that he definitely has some experience in the field.
