Global Mobile Trends and Enablers: Current State and Future Outlook
The 12 months of 2011 turned into marked with greater innovations and developments in the mobile space than ever earlier. With healthy boom prices recorded in 2011 and optimistic predictions for the following couple of years, 2012 looks as if the yr of even greater interesting mobile developments.
A big selection of factors contributed to the worldwide boom of cell packages (apps) adoption in 2011. Among them is the advancement of network technology, reduced cellular facts utilization costs, extended usage of smartphones, restructuring of the revenue-sharing styles, and an extensively increased full or partial subsidy of apps through cellular advertising and marketing alternatives.
According to the Mobile Stats and Facts 2011, of the world’s 4 billion cell phones in use, around 1.1 billion had been smartphones. In Q1 2011, the worldwide mobile telephone marketplace ballooned with a 19.8% increase price 12 months-over-yr because of a significant rise in smartphone shipments. As expected via IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped 371. Eight million devices in Q1 2011 compared to 310.Five million units in Q1 2010. In North America, the cellular phone market turned into kept the front and middle by way of Apple’s iPhone and HTC Thunderbolt. In Western Europe, it becomes dominated especially using new gadgets from HTC, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson.
On a worldwide scale, Nokia took the main function in cargo volumes and market percentage (although the latter dropped from 34.7% to 29.2 % 12 months-over-yr), followed by Samsung’s aid. Apple maintained its spot #4 on IDC’s list of Top 5 Mobile Vendors.
The breaking news of 2011 became the launch of the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft to regain ground lost to the iPhone and Android-based totally gadgets. The new strategy manner Symbian and MeeGo, Nokia’s current phone working systems, maybe steadily sidelined. Symbian is currently transformed right into a “franchise platform,” even as “MeeGo will place improved emphasis on longer-time period market exploration of subsequent-technology gadgets,” in line with the corporation announcement. However, Nokia nevertheless expects to promote approximately a hundred and fifty million extra Symbian devices within the future.
Regarding the overall cell utilization styles of 2011, sixty-one % of human beings mentioned using their mobile devices to play games, 50% – to do a web seek, 49% – to get entry to social media, 36% – to examine news, and 33% – for popular amusement purposes.
In 2011, over one-third of Facebook’s 600 million consumer base used Facebook cell apps, 50% of Twitter’s one hundred sixty-five million user base used Twitter Mobile and over 2 hundred million YouTube views came about on cell gadgets every day. Overall, 30% of all cellphone owners accessed their social media accounts thru cellular browsers in 2011.
In 2011, many large brands started mixing cell technology with their enterprise goals which will boom their presence in at least one of the top app shops. This has opened up new horizons for already booming cell apps markets and growing new venues for similarly market development. On the other hand, most of these manufacturers did no longer aim to monetize their apps, and the handiest used them as an add-up to their brand fairness. Last 12 months, the Apple App Store remained the overall leader and the “shop of desire” for both manufacturers and customers. On the alternative hand, Android Market has gained a large floor with 50% of the global manufacturers who prefer to post their apps in it during 2011. The newly delivered Amazon App Store has received 14% of the brand cellular apps’ publications in the most effective three months of being round.
1. Near Field Communications (NFC) Technology
In 2011 Sprint Nextel joined forces with a ramification of handset makers and generation organizations to force NFC price structures. Google used VeriFone Systems and ViVOtech software to run the test provider in five US towns. The Google NFC-enabled services allowed purchasers with mainly geared up telephones jogging on Google’s Android OS to pay for items and redeem coupons with their handsets at NFC-prepared cash registers.
2. iPhone 4S
Many anticipated Apple to introduce its next-generation iPhone five within the 2011 “Let’s Talk iPhone” event. Instead, Apple unveiled its iPhone 4S, the “smartest” phone ever. Equipped with an 8-megapixel camera, iCloud talents and Sprint community get the right of entry to the powerful voice popularity software and other modern features. Apple pronounced to have bought over 4 million of its iPhone 4S devices in just three days after the professional release.
3. QR Codes
2011 was the 12 months of large use of two-dimensional brief reaction (QR) codes in virtual and print advertising campaigns. When a code photo is captured by using a cellular device or a tablet, the person gets on the spot gets admission to an abundance of brand’s / product’s facts. With QR codes, businesses have a far better threat to less complicated and faster reach their audience and stakeholders.
4. Increased cellular gaming
Games were the maximum popular sort of apps among phone customers in 2011. According to the brand new Report using Nielsen, the closing year, many cellphone proprietors were equipped to really pay for cell video games – greater than they would for another app category
5. The Cloud
In 2011, Apple brought its incredibly-predicted iCloud carrier, which lets in storing songs, pictures, apps, and greater and pushing them routinely to all of the consumer’s gadgets via a wireless generation. Google released a similar track Cloud provider permitting users to add their music libraries and moving them from each mobile device and PC.
With those and different Cloud offerings available greater cell apps are expected to transport to the Cloud shortly. They can be accessed and performed without delay from the Cloud thru a cellular internet browser interface. To facilitate this transformation, numerous technology is already used. For example, HTML5 is used to permit caching at the handset and avoid fluctuations in-network service shipping.
Additionally, in 2011 some mobile solutions providers offered incorporated cellular browsers to permit direct get admission to apps from the publisher’s internet site and removal of traveling app shops. Each app developer and publisher can now have interaction without delay without the involvement of / sharing income with any 0.33-party app shops.
6. 4G Technologies
In 2011, each mobile provider announced its plans to replace its networks with numerous faster cell data technologies, including HSDPA, HSPA+, and 3GPP LTE. The providers’ investment in higher speeds and better bandwidth will assist the enterprise in maintaining up with the exploding demand for the cellular Internet in the course of 2012. A widespread majority of cellular devices already shipped in 2012 are 4G-enabled, even though they definitely connect with 3G and EDGE networks.
