The future of mobile – can anyone really accurately predict it? It’s a tough one as mobile usage trends throughout the world vary considerably. However, with the exciting technological advancements of recent years, the once, seemingly unachievable and futuristic predictions of mobile experts, are now one by one, fulfilling their prophecy.
So what are the most notable mobile trends for 2010 and beyond?
Mobile Apps
It had to come first in the list right? Still a huge growth area, the flexibility and uses for mobile apps never cease to amaze. With over 100,000 applications in existence and in excess of 1bn downloads, iPhone applications are very much leading the pack in terms of sophistication and popularity. With diverse uses; from the Sleep Cycle app, which monitors your sleep patterns and wakes you when you are in a lighter sleep stage, ShapeUp, which helps you track and plan daily calorie intake, through to HootSuite, for managing your social network updates, such as Twitter, LinkedIn etc; iPhone applications really are penetrating every aspect of our professional and private lives. How long before we have an app which tracks our children’s whereabouts or allows us to scan the barcodes of empty cartons to reorder our groceries?
Augmented Reality
It’s still early days in terms of the practical application of many augmented reality applications, but the potential when mobile meets AR is pretty exciting! A few recent apps have started to show more than just a novelty appeal and are actually beginning to be useful too. Some of the best include:
TwittARound – the application takes your view of your surrounding via your iPhone camera and overlays nearby tweets over the image – not sure how useful it is right now, but very cool!
Nearest Tube – it does just what it says on the tin! It helps you find your nearest tube station and identifies your location based on what the application sees through your iPhone camera.
TAT Augmented ID – almost scary in its capabilities, TAT Augmented ID uses facial recognition technology from Flickr to identify a person’s face and then display information such as their contact information and online profiles from various social networks – possibly more novelty than useful at this stage but the potential with this type of technology is huge!
Mobile Commerce
Mobile ecommerce is an area which has received a lot of air time recently, with many discussing the merits and potential that it holds for retailers. With mobile ecommerce a largely untapped market, retailers that take note of the growing power of mobile will gain huge competitive advantage over their rivals. Waitrose / Ocado was the first grocery store to launch an iPhone application (July 09) that allows you to do your grocery shopping on the move, regardless of whether you have an internet connection, and I suspect others won’t be too far behind – this is definitely a case of ‘watch this space’.
So there you have it, a quick summary of what I see to be the most exciting areas of the future of mobile for the year ahead – I am certain we are going to see many great things appearing on our mobiles, and I for one, can’t wait to give them a go! Anything that makes my life easier, saves me time or money, or just gives a bit of entertainment is a hit in my eyes!
Jocelyn Kirby
Marketing & Business Development Manager
Twitter @JocelynKirby
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