Mobile technology has some pretty high expectations this year. There have been several new interactive applications in the works; allowing users to “scan” codes, enhance their surroundings and pay for goods with their mobile phone. Businesses are also seeing a lot of new applications that will allow them to reach a wider demographic of potential customers.
Over 77 percent of the world’s population is now mobile service subscribers. Mobile device sales rose in 2010 by 18.5 percent, with Nokia being number one in Smart phones and mobile phones sales growth. The top mobile manufacturers (by market penetration) in the United States, is Samsung at 24.8 percent, LG at 20.9 percent, and Motorola at 16.7 percent.
Nokia leads as the top manufacturer in Germany, UK, Spain and Italy, while Sharp and Panasonic are the top two in Japan. Over 85 percent of the new phones will be able to access the (mobile) web; and over 25 percent of people (in the U.S.) who access the web is mobile only users.
Mobile marketing and advertising are the way to go. Predictions for 2011 shows that over 16 billion dollars will be spent globally, for mobile marketing; one billion of that will be in the U.S. The numbers are predicted to be over 21 billion dollars spent globally for marketing in 2012.
How will everyone be using mobile devices in the next two years? Financial services will be booming; banking, money transfers and paying by mobile phone is predicted as the number one growth area. Global Industry Analysts (GIA) forecast that m-banking will see a global consumer base of 1.1 billion by 2015.
The next highest growth areas are location based services, mobile searching and browsing, and mobile health monitoring. Mobile health monitoring is using IT and mobile telecommunications services to monitor patients remotely; so far, this has only been used in pilot projects.
Mobile devices have made an obvious impact on our world and how we communicate and do business. Most of the numbers for predictions are just that; predictions, based on past and present data.
