UPDATED 09:56 EDT / AUGUST 04 2011

NEWS

For the CIO: 9 Trends That Will Shape the Mobile Industry Over Next 3 Years

Who would have thought a decade ago that today’s phones could extend beyond voice calling? Mobile technology has undergone a lot of changes over the last decade and trends suggest that it will continue to evolve in unprecedented ways. Looking at those changes, figuring out the next generation of mobile devices seems limitless, only bounded by the innovators’ imaginations.

An interesting article by Hillel Fuld mentions nine mobile technologies that would shape the mobile industry in the next three years.

1. No Wires.  Mobility seems to be the theme in tomorrow’s mobile devices. Everything will be wireless, including charging your phone and updating your mobile’s OS. There already major initial steps in going wireless that have started. Some mobile carriers have been launching software updates through over the air (OTA). Dell has also come up with the Dell Stage which features phones as remote control for streaming content on other DLNA-enabled devices.

2. Faster Web. Internet on mobile phones started via WAP portal. Later on, 3G comes with more features and faster connectivity. However, web browsing experience would greatly be improved with the 4G technology. Combining mobile’s higher processing speed and 4G technology makes it possible to reaching mobile broadband speeds of 100Mbps.

3. NFC. From a just a buzz word a year ago, Near Field Communication (NFC) technology has been considered the next big thing in the mobile industry. With NFC, it enables mobile phones to communicate with each other in distance of 4cm or less. NFC’s main application is mobile payments which some says would bring a step closer to a cashless society. A study suggests that mobile payments will be a $50 million industry in the next three years. Although, this trend might also bring accompanying risks. Proactive steps should be done to nullify these risks.

4. Consolidation. The present mobile landscape is characterized by a lot of players trying to grab as much market share. Huld believed that in the next few years, phone makers and developers would consolidate to a few major platforms. “I am betting that in the smartphone arena, we will see iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, and maybe one more OS that will target the enterprise segment.”

5. Mobile Advertising. Following to the success of web advertising, advertisers sees great benefit in mobile advertising. Unlike web advertising, mobile advertising could easily reach to their customers and can be targeted according to location, interests and needs.

6. Location. Nowadays, mobile devices are now equipped with built in accelerometers and gyroscopes, which make acquiring location more accurate. Consequentially, mobile advertisers could easily reach to a targeted market and effectively send out their mobile advertising campaigns. However, this raises privacy issues, wherein location tracking still needs to be activated by the user. Lately, a South Korean office was raided by authorities for alleged illegal collection of user’s geographical locations and Apple was summoned to the Congress over location tracking concerns.  With services like Foursquare, GoWalla and Facebook Places which gives incentives to users, it won’t be long wherein businesses would get over the hump of these privacy concerns.

7. Tablets Galore. The fascination with tablets started when Apple released its first generation iPad. Other manufacturers later came out with their own versions eating up a small chunk of the market. For the next couple of years, innovation will be focused on developing tablets which would make laptops a thing of the past.

8. VoIP. A few years back, calling outside the country over the phone was expensive and poor quality. These days, Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) enables cheaper or free calling anywhere else and can now be integrated into smartphones. Microsoft had already started going into the VoIP realm by acquiring Skype earlier this year. Expectedly, the next versions of the Windows Phone 7 would bring a seamless Skype integration.

9. Social Integration. App stores these days are flooded with third-party apps that offer connectivity to web social sites. In the future, these social websites will be fully integrated into mobile devices. Leading the race would be the iOS5 which will soon come out with a full Twitter integration. Next versions of the Android would likely have Google+ integration.

Future mobile devices will be packed with these features which seemed to be science fiction a few years back. Mobile phones greatly changed from just being a mobile device that makes and receive calls to a seemingly mobile computer.

Services Angle

Look at all these trends and you can see how services fit into each one pretty neatly. This is a good check point when looking at the telcos. Do they offer services for social integration? How are they going to compete with Skype? These are the kinds of questions that come to mind when looking at these emerging trends.


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