Global Mobile Trends and Enablers: Current State and Future Outlook

The yr 2011 was marked by more innovations and traits in the cellular space than ever. With healthy boom costs recorded in 2011 and constructive predictions for the following couple of years, 2012 looks like the 12 months or even more thrilling mobile developments.

Many factors contributed to the worldwide adoption of cellular programs (apps) in 2011. Among them are the advancement of community technologies, a discount on mobile records usage costs, accelerated smartphone utilization, restructuring of the revenue-sharing styles, and a drastically improved complete or partial subsidy of apps via cellular advertising and marketing options.

According to Mobile Stats and Facts 2011, of the world’s four billion cell telephones, around 1.1 billion have been smartphones. In Q1 2011, the global mobile phone market ballooned with a 19.Eight% boom rate yr-over-12 months due to a considerable rise in phone shipments. IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker estimated that carriers shipped 371.8 million gadgets in Q1 2011 compared to 310.5 million devices in Q1 2010. In North America, the mobile telephone marketplace changed into saved front and center with the aid of Apple’s iPhone and HTC Thunderbolt. Simultaneously, as in Western Europe, it was ruled particularly through new gadgets from HTC, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson.

 Apple held the predominant mobile apps global market percentage in phrases of the revenue generated.

On a worldwide scale, Nokia took the leading role in shipment volumes and world market share (although the latter dropped from 34.7% to 29.2 % year-over-12 months), observed through Samsung. Apple maintained its spot #4 on IDC’s Top five Mobile Vendors list.

The breaking information of 2011 turned into the launch of the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft to regain floor misplaced iPhone and Android-based devices. The new strategy was Symbian and MeeGo, Nokia’s existing telephone operating systems, may be progressively sidelined. Symbian is currently transformed right into a “franchise platform.” Simultaneously, “MeeGo will vicinity expanded emphasis on longer-time period world market exploration of subsequent-era gadgets,” in keeping with the employer declaration. However, Nokia expects to promote about 150 million Symbian devices inside Destiny.

Regarding the general mobile utilization patterns of 2011, sixty-one% of human beings said they use their mobile gadgets to play games, 50% – to do internet seek, 49% – to access social media, 36% – to study information, and 33% – to popular entertainment.

In 2011, over 1/3 of Facebook’s 600 million user base used Facebook cell apps, 50% of Twitter’s one hundred sixty-five million person base used Twitter Mobile, and over 200 million YouTube perspectives befell on cell devices daily. Overall, 30% of all smartphone owners accessed their social media money owed through mobile browsers in 2011.

In 2011, many large manufacturers started blending cell technology with their enterprise desires to boost their presence in at least one of the pinnacle app stores. This has spread new horizons for already booming cellular app markets and developing new venues for marketplace development. On the other hand, most of those manufacturers did not aim to monetize their apps and used them as an upload-up to their brand equity. Last yr, the Apple App Store remained the general chief and the “save of desire” for brands and users. Conversely, the Android world market has won a good-sized floor, with 50% of the global manufacturers preferring to put up their apps in it in 2011. The newly brought Amazon App Store has won 14% of the logo cellular apps’ publications in the most effective three months of being around.

The world mobile app marketplace changed to an estimated $6.8 billion in 2011, according to Markets & Markets, a US-based research company. It is anticipated to grow regularly to attain $25 billion over the subsequent four years, with the Apple App Store accounting for 20.5% of the overall sales.

According to iSuppli, an IHS-owned market research firm, the collective sales from Apple, Google, Nokia, and Blackberry app stores grew around seventy-eight% in 2011 from 2009 and are anticipated to attain $eight.Three billion in 2014.

However, according to ABI studies’ records, Android outpaced Apple in terms of cell app downloads.

Eight Trends That Ruled The Global Mobile Market 

1. Near Field Communications (NFC) Technology

In 2011 Sprint Nextel joined forces with a diffusion of handset makers and generation organizations to enforce NFC payment structures. Google used VeriFone Systems and ViVOtech software to run the test provider in 5 US towns. The Google NFC-enabled offerings allowed clients with particularly ready telephones running on Google’s Android OS to pay for goods and redeem coupons with their handsets at NFC-prepared coin registers.

2. iPhone 4S

Many predicted Apple to introduce its subsequent generation iPhone Five, during the 2011 “Let’s Talk iPhone” event. Instead, Apple unveiled its iPhone 4S, the “smartest” telephone ever. Equipped with an 8-megapixel camera, iCloud abilities, and Sprint network get entry, it comes with powerful voice popularity software and different modern features. Apple reported having offered over 4 million of its iPhone 4S devices just three days after the legitimate launch.

3. QR Codes

2011 become the 12 months of a big use of -dimensional brief reaction (QR) codes in virtual and print advertising campaigns. When a code image is captured via a cell device or a tablet, the user gets on the spot and gets the right to enter an abundance of logos/product facts. With QR codes, agencies have a much better hazard to less difficult and faster attain their target audience and stakeholders.

4. Increased cell gaming

Games were the most famouss among cellphone users in 2011. According to the modern Report by using Nielsen, closing yr many phone proprietors were prepared to truly pay for mobile video games – greater than they could for some other app class

5. The Cloud

In 2011, Apple added its tremendously-predicted cloud provider, which allows storing tunes, pics, apps, and extras and pushing them robotically to all the user’s gadgets thru a Wi-Fi era. Google released a comparable music Cloud provider permitting users to upload their song libraries and move them from cell gadgets and PCs.

With these and different Cloud offerings available, more cellular apps are predicted to transport to the Cloud shortly. They might be accessed and executed immediately from the Cloud via a cell internet browser interface. To facilitate this modification, several technologies are already used. For instance, HTML5 allows caching at the handset and keeps away from fluctuations in network carrier delivery.

Additionally, in 2011, some cellular answers incorporated cell browsers to permit direct access to apps from the writer’s internet site and eliminate journeying app shops. It is a method that app developers and publishers can now interact with without delay and without / sharing profits with any third-party app stores.

6. 4G Technologies

In 2011, every cell provider announced its plans to update their networks to several faster cell statistics technology, including HSDPA, HSPA+, and 3GPP LTE. The vendors’ investment in better speeds and higher bandwidth will assist the industry in holding up with the exploding demand for cell Internet in 2012. Many cell devices already shipped in 2012 are 4G-enabled, even though they sincerely hook up with 3G and EDGE networks.

7. Augmented truth

Augmented truth (AR) refers to adding a computer-assisted contextual layer of information over the real international, developing a more desirable or augmented fact. Although distinctive varieties of AR, inclusive of head-hooked-up displays, have been around for over 30 years, in 2010 and 2011, AR developed from being a groovy system at the periphery of visualization and photos technology to a relevant participant within the era panorama because of the increased bandwidth and adoption of smartphones.

AR proliferates hastily into numerous domain names, from education to tourism / traveling to video manufacturing. Many AR apps and Layar use GPS positioning and geo-tagging to annotate present spaces with an overlay of information and three-D images and characters.

8. Mobile advertising

According to Stephanie Baghdassarian, Research Director at Gartner, “cellular advertising and marketing are now diagnosed as an opportunity for brands, advertisers, and publishers to interact with purchasers in a targeted and contextual manner, improving returns.” mobile advertising budgets were set to boom surprisingly across the diverse categories and areas. The worldwide mobile ads marketplace generated around $three.Three billion in 2011, more than double the $1.6 billion generated

Mobile Market Expectations 

– Increased investments in NFC technology across handset makers and providers

– Improved in-app billing protection

– More area-primarily based cellular commerce solutions allowing users to check in to a shop to alert a store of their presence or to feature gadgets to a shopping cart genuinely by using taking their photograph or their barcodes image within the physical store

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

– iPads and drugs continuing to replace PCs as an enterprise tool of choice

– Apple iPad three and lengthy-awaited iPhone Five with stronger functionalities accommodating the excessive-velocity LTE community and NFC era

– Enhanced social sharing due to the smartphones boom

– Extended mobile seeks to permit clients to engage with consequences, which include placing an order directly from the cellular cellphone, booking a price tag, or making a resort reservation

– Gamification is the final manner of engaging a new technology of users focused on changing their ordinary studies into recreation-like pastimes

– More item reputation (OR) apps permitting users to track their surroundings for precise objects of hobby

– More unified verbal exchange (UC) clients for cell instantaneous messaging supplied by using over-the-top carrier vendors such as Skype