Mobile application technology and trends 2012

It is once again that time of the year to make some predictions, even when we know that we could make only wild guesses considering the lightening pace at which technology is growing, evolving and transforming. From the rapid rise of tablet devices to day to day innovations in cloud computing, 2011 has been a transformative year for mobile technology. Mobile technology is not only changing how people live their lives, but also redefining business models, employee productivity and cutomer relationship.

Considering the rate at which technology is evolving and transforming, predicting what will happen in next twelve months, is a shot in the dark. A year is virtually a couple of centuries in the digital era. Yet it is worthwhile to look at the trends and guess what will change and how it will affect various industries and lives of consumers. Here are a few trends we see evolving.

Mobile Usage trends: We will see democratisation of smartphones and tablets which will eventually replace feature phones and desktops, driving the growth of mobile applications which will have significant impact on all industries.

• Penetration of smart mobiles will cross 50% in most developed markets
  • More people will have smart phones than feature phones
  • Tablet penetration will increase and most people will possess both a tablet and mobile
• Amount of time spent on mobile devices will cross time spent on desktop internet
  • People will spend more time on mobile compared to desktop internet
  • More applications will move to mobile  or will get created from mobile
  • Advertising  dollar spend will gradually shift to mobile in accordance with these trends 

• Social networking usage will shift to mobile from web
  More users will access their social networking sites through mobile

• Object recognition / Augmented reality
  • More apps with enhanced OR capabilities will be in the market as camera and other phone sensors capabilities increase

Consumer Mobility Trends: Innovative applications and technologies will change how we live our daily lives and it will redefine businesses across industries. We will see significant changes especially in Retail, Health, Finance and Publishing sectors.

• Mobile payments including NFC
  • Increased ease of use
  • Mobile payments for services
  • Transfers between accounts
  • One touch pay

• Mobile Search
  •  Voice search  like Siri will make mobile search easier and will significantly alter mobile marketing space
  • Context relevant search like showing up results around a place or time where you are going to be at that time will become popular
  • Pro-active suggestions for activities will drive consumer behaviours
  • Mobile will deliver action oriented results like calling , buying a ticket, ordering etc

Enterprise Mobile Trends: Innovative applications and technologies will change how we live our daily lives and it will redefine businesses across industries. There would be focus on enterprise mobile applications in order to leverage full benefits, organisations will need business and technical experience to effectively converge, connect and control all the elements that exist in traditional and mobile environments. If it was Mobile Commerce that was making buzz last year, we will now see a lot more actions in Retail, Health, Finance and Publishing sectors.

• Bring your own device
  •  Enterprises will have to grapple with bring your own devices as employees will carry their personal phones to work
  • Security will be a major challenge for enterprises 

•  Mobile analytics & Big data
  • Mobile usage is creating huge volume of data which gives valuable insights to enterprises and marketers
  • Enterprises and mobile application firms will focus on Big data systems like Hadoop to capture and analyse this data. We will see companies making significant investment in this area

• Impact on various industries
  • Mobile health will become prevalent. We will see more physicians use apps to monitor user health. Remote patient care will become a reality and increasing number of people will have access to quality health care. Telemedicine will become popular
  • There will be significant impact on publishing industry. We will see tablets replacing books and traditional publishers will have to rethink their business model to make the best out of this trend.
  • Retail is another industry that will buzz with exciting developments. Various mobile technologies such as LBS, mobile wallet, mobile loyalty apps will integrate to redefine user experience and relevance.
     

Mobile Application Technology Trends

Mobile Application war will heat up further. We will see a big shift towards HTML5 by most players in their attempt to attract developers.

• 3 horse race of IOS, Android and Windows mobile will dominate this market
  • Android is leader in mobile while IOS leads tablet penetration. We expect this trend to continue in 2012.
  • However Windows mobile penetration will increase faster than other two owing to its current low user base

• HTML5
  • More and more firms will shift to using HTML5 for developing their mobile applications
  • HTML5 is still new, hence for some time we believe , HTML5 wrapped with native code will gain traction in the immediate future

By : Sirish Kosaraju

510.402.1052            
Director & Co-Founder
RapidValue Solutions

sirishk@rapidvaluesolutions.com
www.rapidvaluesolutions.com