iPhone AppStore, Android Market, Nokia Ovi, and thousands of AppStores from third parties are being opened worldwide. That is the no-limit entertainment, that is going to go mass-market in the following 2 years. Mobile applications and services on mobile web are slowly becoming a dominant feature of these platforms, and soon will become a standard of every mobile phone sold. This means that any phone sold in the next quarters will be a browsing and mobile service phone. Subsequently, there is a higher and higher chance that every time a new phone is sold, that a new mobile services user was just born. With the iPhone, it’s definitely like that, and if there is something that we can’t take from Apple it is that they have supported this heavily.
Mobile internet and mobile services have risen in the last year, probably the most since the 10 year history of GSM mobile phones. We are talking about an uptake that has led to mobile web outnumbering the number of people on the normal internet in many countries in Europe (i.e. Nordic Countries) and Asia . This is massive. Mobile phones are used more and more in every day life, but not for calling and messaging, but for rich services, that generate more and more interesting content.
Imagine a world fully connected with mobile applications that make it easy to check your Facebook, that fully cross-connect your contacts in your phone to the ones on your PC. Imagine your calendar has all social features, which means you can immediately share it with your friends, and they can come to your event. Or if you are just hanging around outside somewhere, you just simply search a nearby restaurant, which your best friend recommended to go to a week ago, and they just have the best Sushi in town.
Those are the types of things people will be doing with their phone daily, and many of them are already playing with it. The truth is though, that these technologies are still not adopted by a sizeable population of users, and there is still some extensive work to do on the UI and GUI side of the mobile phones, and both the applications and thus work for their vendors.
I think, we are living in the most amazing times of mobile phones truly coming into our lives. Mobile phones bundled with data tarrifs for 12 months for free, mobile data capping arriving, and mobile services to come as a mass dominator of communication. Look at companies like Skype, eBuddy, Google, Yahoo, Facebook – all entering the mobile space with one key goal – attract as many people as they can to their mobile services – and they are slowly succeeding. Google Maps are the only usable mobile maps in many territories, and Nokia’s Navteq will have issues making a compelling offering for normal people usage in their daily mobile lives. All of those applications are downloadable for free, and many even don’t include advertising. Those who do and are ad-funded, are usually ad-funded through companies such as Admob, who are doing a great job on the monetisation part.
So what is your opinion? What mobile services will kick ass in 2009 and onwards? What mobile service are you looking for? We’ve asked our opinion leaders that question this week, and let’s see what they reply.
This is an exciting time for mobile, and an exciting time for users – who will have better access to information, anywhere they are.
Comments (0)
Post a Comment