35 Current Trends in ICT

By Robert Syputa, Partner & Strategic Analyst, Maravedis

In recent years the long anticipated convergence between mobile voice and IP data communications has unfurled at an accelerated pace, dramatically impacting individual industries as they are reshaped along many common fronts.  

This briefing outlines major trends and influences on of the converging Internet and mobile space. These are general observations, not evaluated for scale or timing of relevance for individual class of supplier, service provider, implementer or user.

1. The pace of change has accelerated, which itself becomes a factor considered in seeking market advantage of protection:

a. Mobile broadband device saturation has increased rapidly in developed markets.

b. The level of value priced WebPhones (smartphones) has dropped near targets of around US$150. Targets for sub-$125 Android devices within 18 months now looks feasible.

c. WebPhones and tablet sales now exceed the dollar volume of PC sales, making them the highest unit growth Internet access devices.  

2. Mobile data usage will shortly overtake personal desktop Internet access, thus shifting and intensifying OS battles for applications dominance and focus within IT.

a. Mobile devices are having and accelerating impact on shaping the cloud 4G/computing development.

3. Multiple attach rates of devices are driving market excitement and momentum as single OS and synched browser environments create a more uniform experience across screens (mobile, tablet, PC, TV).

4. Web device OS have taken precedent over much of the brand recognition of individual device suppliers and operators’ services. 

5. Applications, and the OS environment common to them, increasingly drive subscriber loyalty and sway much premium content and service purchasing.

6. Applications’ influence on content and social portal interface is fragmenting and gaining share on native interfaces, web browsers, and premium content.

7. Security of mobile applications is a growing concern for all major OS, particularly Apple iPhone and Android.

8. App Stores have become the most significant new content distribution sales channel. Apple’s success with iTunes music and video is now enabling content sharing across platforms (TV, PC, tablets, and mobile).

9. Personalization is being enabled via apps (consumer life dashboard).

10. Brick and mortar and Internet retailers, financial institutions, brokerages, real estate brokers, etc., are rushing to deliver mobile apps and seeing tremendous traction (i.e. eBay, Amazon).

11. The social game audience has segmented a major portion of the primetime viewing audience away from TV/cable. 

12. Localization of the Internet is being enabled by mobile apps and content. While LBS (location based services) and mobile payments have made a modest impact, the socialization of the user experience (search, commerce, gaming, applications, advertising) is creating a new challenge to the creation of common portals, apps, content, and service development and marketing.

13. MIDs are now a reality: the simple definitions of form-factors needed for success are being broken by more useful combinations of screen resolutions and sizes combined with increasingly common or synched user experiences. A shift is occurring in which the ‘right’ size and functionality varies depending on the target market and the combinations of other screens available or already owned. 

14. Apple continues to lead the user interface and device finesse wars but is now being challenged in diversity and features. Motorola’s Xoom provides an example of the trend that has begun to emerge as enabling components and software environments gain greater traction.

15. Multiple core processors capable of multi-tasking have reached a threshold to provide snappy performance at market-enabling price levels. 

16. Battery technology has improved but remains short of needs for small devices, particularly for video applications and device capabilities to advance.

17.  Tighter integration of mobile devices with cloud 4G/ICT developers is needed.

18. Innovations in ease of use will remain at the forefront of the ‘how to cook book’ for device market share gains. This includes both tighter Internet and enterprise applications integration.

19. Social networking ecosystem integration has grown in importance and can be utilized for consumer data mining and influence. 

20. Collaboration applications tied to social networking and popular email and messaging platforms are proliferating. This is part of a surge in mobile/anywhere enabled productivity tools. New forms of tools and aggregations may soon emerge into mainstream popularity. 

21. The rise of the flatter world supply ecosystem (i.e. Mediatek in Asia is now delivering 400+ M phones a year plus a suite of white labeled services) means the field of competition for 3G/LTE multiple mode SoCs is broadly based. 

22. OS shares of Apple and Google have quickly grown and appear to be consolidating apps development. The quest of the remaining OS for mainstream contention remains in doubt, despite consolidation of Nokia’s and Microsoft’s efforts and entrenchment of RIM in enterprise markets. 

23.  A battle is brewing for online identity management that can be pivotal to consumer loyalty. Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn face contention with leading OS platform suppliers. 

24. Emergence of HTML 5 enabled web apps enables a new paradigm of cross-platform applications. This has more implications for Apple’s relatively tightly controlled user experience.

25. Increasing leverage of location awareness and the rising importance of mobile money, coupons and social-networking commerce apps.

26. Growing importance of mobile applications and social networking to government organization and participation. This has already become a catalyst for changes in the Middle East and is likely to influence both developed and developing country politics.  

27. There is a trend to increasing monetization of the Internet as it becomes mobile (facebook, Twitter, YouTube).

28. The rise of the Connected TV experience. “Crowd sourced” as well as user consumption of media is now shifting the balance of news and entertainment.

29. The long awaited rise of the home entertainment and communications hum will increase as a consumer focus.  This will be driven both at the consumer price ranges as well high end product category.

30. Mobile advertising will become differentiated from conventional online by locality.

31. There is a plethora of entrants with ad platforms from amongst IT and telecom vendors, as ownership of ad networks becomes a battle ground for control of revenue streams.

32. A new frontier in merchandizing is group purchasing power and harnessing of social activity.

33. eBooks will embrace richer formats and interactivity on mobile media devices. The shared cost of functionality of devices will further increase.

34. Operation of networks is increasingly differing to their role as seeders of device markets. 

35. Infrastructure sharing will become a means to more efficient capital utilization as apps driven device and service markets gain in strategic importance.

36. National developments bifurcate OS development environments. Particularly, China’s efforts to establish leadership of the core Android open OS has potential to create both competition and incompatibility. 

These influences and trends are starting points to keep in mind when gauging how to anticipate changes in this dynamic industry. How each player can affect their own set of circumstances to harness change requires analysis of multiple factors n set within a forecast. 

source: http://www.4gtrends.com/articles/29487/35-current-trends-in-ict/