Global Mobile Trends and Enablers: Current State and Future Outlook 1

Global Mobile Trends and Enablers: Current State and Future Outlook

The yr 2011 was marked by greater improvements and developments inside the cellular area than ever earlier. With healthy growth rates recorded in 2011 and positive predictions for the next few years, 2012 looks like the year of even greater exciting cell trends.

A big range of things contributed to the global growth of cellular applications (apps) adoption in 2011. Among them is the development of network technologies, reduced cell information utilization costs, multiplied usage of smartphones, restructuring of the sales-sharing styles, and an extensively multiplied full or partial subsidy of apps through mobile advertising and marketing options.

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According to the Mobile Stats and Facts 2011, of the sector’s four billion cell phones in use, around 1.1 billion had been smartphones. In Q1 2011, the global mobile phone marketplace ballooned with a 19.Eight% boom charge year-over-12 months because of a giant upward push of smartphone shipments. As expected, with the aid of IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, providers shipped 371.8 million devices in Q1 2011 compared to 310.Five million gadgets in Q1 2010. In North America, the mobile telephone market was turned into a storefront and center by Apple’s iPhone and HTC Thunderbolt. In Western Europe, it was dominated by new devices from HTC, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson.

On a worldwide scale, Nokia took the main function in shipment volumes and marketplace proportion (even though the latter dropped from 34.7% to 29.2 % 12 months-over-12 months), observed by using Samsung. Apple maintained its spot #4 on IDC’s list of Top 5 Mobile Vendors.

The breaking information of 2011 was the release of the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft to regain floor lost to the iPhone and Android-primarily based gadgets. The new method, Symbian and MeeGo, Nokia’s existing telephone working systems, will be regularly sidelined. Symbian is currently transformed right into a “franchise platform,” whilst “MeeGo will area expanded emphasis on longer-time period market exploration of next-era gadgets,” consistent with the organization assertion. However, Nokia still expects to sell about one hundred fifty million more Symbian devices within the destiny.

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Regarding the overall cellular usage styles of 2011, sixty-one% of human beings suggested the usage of their cellular gadgets to play games, 50% – to do a web search, 49% – to get admission to social media, 36% – to examine news and 33% – for trendy entertainment purposes.

In 2011, over one 1/3 of Facebook’s six hundred million person base used Facebook cell apps, 50% of Twitter’s 165 million person base used Twitter Mobile, and over 2 hundred million YouTube perspectives befell on cell devices each day. Overall, 30% of all telephone owners accessed their social media bills thru mobile browsers in 2011.

In 2011, many huge manufacturers started out mixing mobile technologies with their business goals to increase their presence in at the least one of the pinnacle app stores. This has unfolded new horizons for already booming cellular apps markets and developing new venues for further market development. On the other hand, most manufacturers did no longer intend to monetize their apps and used them as an upload as much as their logo. Last 12 months, the Apple App Store remained the overall chief and the “shop of preference” for both brands and users. On the other hand, Android Market has won significant ground with 50% of the worldwide brands who prefer to publish their apps on it throughout 2011. The newly delivered Amazon App Store has won 14% of the brand mobile apps’ courses in the simplest 3 months of being round.

The international mobile app marketplace was expected at $6.8 billion in 2011, according to Markets & Markets, a US-based studies firm. It is predicted to grow progressively to reach $25 billion over the following 4 years, with the Apple App Store accounting for 20.Five% of the entire sales.

According to iSuppli, an IHS-owned market research firm, the collective sales from Apple, Google, Nokia, and Blackberry app stores grew around 78% in 2011 from 2009 and are anticipated to reach $eight.Three billion in 2014. In 2011, Apple held the primary cellular apps market percentage in phrases of the sales generated. However, in phrases of mobile app downloads, Android outpaced Apple, keeping with the facts from ABI studies.

Eight Trends That Ruled The Global Mobile Market In 2011

1. Near Field Communications (NFC) Technology

In 2011 Sprint Nextel joined forces with a variety of handset makers and generation companies to effect NFC price structures. Google used VeriFone Systems and ViVOtech software to run the test carrier in 5 US cities. The Google NFC-enabled offerings allowed consumers with particularly equipped phones to walk on Google’s Android OS to pay for goods and redeem coupons with their handsets at NFC-equipped cash registers.

2. iPhone 4S

Many expected Apple to introduce its next-era iPhone five in the 2011 “Let’s Talk iPhone” event. Instead, Apple unveiled its iPhone 4S, the “smartest” smartphone ever. Equipped with an eight-megapixel digital camera, iCloud abilities, and Sprint community get admission to, it comes with effective voice popularity software and different innovative features. Apple suggested having sold over 4 million of its iPhone 4S devices just 3 days after the legit launch.

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3. QR Codes

2011 become the 12 months of a big use of two-dimensional short reaction (QR) codes in virtual and print advertising campaigns. When a coded picture is captured with the aid of a mobile tool or a tablet, the person receives instant get right of entry to an abundance of logo’s / product’s records. With QR codes, businesses have a mile better risk to simpler and faster attain their target audience and stakeholders.

4. Increased cell gaming

Games were the most popular form of apps among phone customers in 2011. According to today’s Report via Nielsen, last year, many phone proprietors have been ready to absolutely pay for cellular games – more than they could for every other app category

5. The Cloud

In 2011, Apple delivered its relatively-expected iCloud carrier, which allows storing music, pix, apps, and more and pushing them mechanically to all of the consumer’s gadgets via a wi-fi generation. Google launched a comparable track Cloud provider permitting users to upload their tune libraries and stream them from each mobile device and PC.

With those and other Cloud services to be had, greater mobile apps are expected to transport to the Cloud within the close to future and may be accessed and performed immediately from the Cloud thru a mobile net browser interface. To facilitate this modification, numerous technology is already used. For example, HTML5 is used to enable caching at the handset and avoid fluctuations in-network service shipping.

Additionally, in 2011 some cellular solutions providers included mobile browsers to allow direct get entry to apps from the publisher’s website and remove traveling app shops. It way that both app builders and publishers can now engage without delay without the involvement of / sharing earnings with any 1/3-birthday party app shops.

6. 4G Technologies

In 2011, each mobile carrier announced its plans to update its networks among numerous faster cell facts technologies such as HSDPA, HSPA+, and 3GPP LTE. The providers’ investment in better speeds and better bandwidth will help the industry hold up to the exploding call for cell Internet in 2012. A good-sized majority of cellular devices already shipped in 2012 are 4G-enabled, even though they nevertheless, in reality, connect to 3G and EDGE networks.

7. Augmented truth

Augmented truth (AR) refers to adding a laptop-assisted contextual layer of records over the actual global, developing a reality this is stronger or augmented. Although specific kinds of AR, which include head-mounted shows, have been around for over 30 years, in 2010 and 2011, AR evolved from being a cool machine at the periphery of visualization and portraits technologies to a critical player inside the era panorama because of the elevated bandwidth and adoption of smartphones.

AR proliferates hastily into numerous domain names from training to tourism / traveling to video production and many others. Many AR apps, including Layar, use GPS positioning and geo-tagging to annotate present areas with an overlay of information and 3-d pix and characters.

8. Mobile advertising

According to Stephanie Baghdassarian, Research Director at Gartner, “mobile advertising is now identified as an opportunity for brands, advertisers and publishers to engage purchasers in a centered and contextual manner, enhancing returns.” In 2011, mobile advertising budgets were set to boom exceedingly throughout the diverse classes and areas. The global mobile advertisements market generated around $three.Three billion in 2011, extra than double the $1.6 billion generated in 2010.

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Mobile Market Expectations For 2012

In 2012 we were able to maximum possibly see:

– Increased investments in the NFC era throughout handset makers and vendors

– Improved in-app billing safety

– More place-based totally cell trade solutions allowing users to test into a store to alert a retailer in their presence or to add items to a buying cart actually by using taking their image or their barcodes photo in the physical store

– LTE 4G as a mainstream technology in North America and Western Europe

– iPads and drugs persevering with to update PCs as a business device of desire

Apple iPad three and long-awaited iPhone 5 with more advantageous functionalities accommodating the high-pace LTE network and NFC technology

– Enhanced social sharing because of the smartphones’ boom

– Extended cell search to allow clients to engage with results together with putting an order immediately from the cell phone, reserving a ticket, or creating an inn reservation

– Gamification because the final manner of attractive a brand new technology of customers centered on changing their regular reports into recreation-like hobbies

– More object reputation (OR) apps permitting customers to song their environment for unique objects of interest

– More unified verbal exchange (UC) clients for cellular instant messaging furnished by over-the-pinnacle carrier vendors consisting of Skype

– More powerful cellular e-mail solutions through a chain of technology improvements enabling low-fee cellular extensions to existing electronic mail offerings (Gartner expects cell email customers to account for 10.6% of the worldwide cellular person base through 2014)

– More groups growing a strategic approach closer to their mobile carrier delivery and differentiation (smartphones vs. tablets)

– Tablet commerce (T-trade) and e-wallet as two new buzz phrases

– Strategic partnerships among mobile providers and popular video vendors like YouTube or Vimeo to allow users to copy their online behaviors on their mobile devices