Mobile Fix – Welcome to the decade of mobile
In the first Mobile Fix of 2011, Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive!, points to predictions for the year ahead – and makes a few of his own…
Amazon Android App store
Amazon have launched their Android app store to developers – and with everyone recognising that Android is going to have a huge year, the application of Amazon retail skills to their currently confused app ecology has to be positive.
It’s worth considering just how Amazon have evolved from a definitive e commerce business to a really significant player in a wide cross section of the web business – from facilitating thousands of start-ups and others with their web services to a significant player in hardware with the Kindle.
The Kindle was a major seller over Christmas and Amazon are innovating in their ebooks business with book lending now possible between users.
And reports suggest they are about to buy UK start-up LoveFilm to help them compete with people like Netflix.
CES
The big story from this weeks Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas is tablets.
No real surprise given the bullish forecasts, but the Motorola Zoom does look interesting – suggesting their pop at the iPad before Christmas wasn’t too hyped. Asus announced their tablet range too but the elephant absent from the room is the much-anticipated iPad 2.
Groupon
John Battelle has some interesting thoughts on the potential of Groupon – seeing it as the natural next step for small businesses; first they used Yellow Pages to drive store traffic and they then moved to Google and used search. The financial model evolved too – Yellow Pages had a fixed yearly cost while Google charges for each click. But the problem has always been measuring the real value from these tools – although good e commerce players know how much search contributes to their business.
Groupon now drives traffic through specific offers – enabling SMEs to focus their discounting – and is very measurable. But the piece that drives the value of Groupon is that they take a cut of each sale, dramatically increasing the revenue potential.
And as John points out, Groupon is essentially a mobile business – taking the wider definition where local, social and real time drive mobile.
Quick reads
Mobile money facilitator Square has raised a lot of money at a high valuation – we think this is going to be really important area. Imagine how many people would love to be able to take credit card payments wherever they are – from every plumber and tradesman to everyone with a market stall.
Wordlens is not news to most in the business but when you show it to civilians the reaction you get reinforces the potential of mobile to deliver magic – and clearly reminds us of Arthur C Clarkes law of prediction;
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Our predictions
We’re not big on making predictions. As our deck on Mobile Past Present and Future says, you have to look to the past and the present to get an idea of what’s next. And one of our favourite quotes is an Alan Kay one;
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
But we do see some key issues that will shape the coming year;
Reach versus Richness
The possibilities of rich magical experiences on native OS such as Apple need to be balanced by the need for significant reach. Consequently mobile websites will be recognised as THE core component of a mobile strategy.
Thick versus Thin
Once you have a mobile website, Thin apps become a real possibility and we see that people will balance a Thick app that exploits the possibilities of the native operating system with Thin apps that launch to the mobile website.
Cloud versus Cached
The ability to store information within apps, so they can be used without the network, will become more common. And the ability to draw data and content from the cloud will enhance the utility of all things mobile.
Mobile Web v Mobile Phone
The focus on apps and mobile web has reduced the attention on SMS and Voice but we see that blending all these possibilities is where mobile magic will come from. Mobile CRM using SMS will become a key part of smart businesses strategy – with learning from Twitter (especially url shorterners) informing the thinking. And call centres will become valuable assets again.
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