Mobile Predictions for 2015

We have seen quite a few advancements in 2014 in almost every area that involves mobile technology. As is usually the case, developments in one industry potentially have benefits that can be useful for other industries. Concepts can also lead to improvements where you would least expect to see them.

The idea of employees bringing their own devices (BYOD) to work is not a new concept; people have been doing it for years. In previous lifetimes, I was a network manager so I was fully aware of how to connect my personal devices to the company network. What has changed this past year is that many corporations, including government offices have created policies to outlining how employees can use their devices for enterprise tasks.

The concern for IT departments has been focused on how to support mobile workers when BYOD devices are used in the workplace. This has some interesting improvements in enterprise mobility management (EMM). This set of people, processes and technology is focused on managing the increasing array of mobile devices, wireless networks, and related services to enable broad use of mobile computing in a business context.

EMM is an all-encompassing approach to securing and enabling business workers' use of smartphones and tablets. Security is something that will always be of paramount importance in IT departments. This past year has been wrought with major security breaches from some of the top worldwide corporations. I predict that we can expect to see major developments in mobile security. After all, the amount of information that we carry on our mobile devices is unprecedented.

Lynn Lucas, who is the CMO of Good Technology, believes that "In 2015, we’ll see further consolidation among the enterprise mobility management (EMM) players; there are still many point solution vendors that only solve individual problems. As enterprise mobility becomes the fabric of IT, customers will look to those partners who can address the full end-to-end mobility lifecycle.” EMM is definitely an area that will see a lot more focus next year.

In a roundabout way, another industry that BYOD affects is your service provider. In conjunction with EMM, employees will access more corporate data on their smartphones and tablets, in turn this means that they will go through their personal data plan much sooner than normal. Lucas feels that this will lead to split billing services. Lucas said "According to Gartner, approximately half of today’s BYOD programs provide a partial reimbursement, but full reimbursement for all costs is much more rare. This will change. Additionally, split-billing capabilities will enable customers to tie data usage costs directly to the apps using that data, reducing regulatory risks associated with traditional mobile billing models."

Some analysts feel that a majority of the global workforce is underserved by technology on the job, with 2.5 billion non-desk workers in areas like construction, manufacturing and healthcare who need apps specifically tailored to meet their needs. We have seen utility companies already understand this with several useful mobile apps being developed this year.

We can also expect to see significant strategy changes in how to deploy mobile in a shopping arena. Marketers are already taking advantage of your mobile device’s location broadcasts, as more information is analyzed, we can expect to see more advertising come to mobile devices.

Low-Energy Bluetooth and other proximity tools are technologies that have had marketers salivating for some time. The use for these types of devices ranges anywhere from a promotional ping when a customer walks by a given product, to heat maps showing how customers move through a store.

You will most likely begin to see third parties map indoor spaces, following suit, I think that more retailers will set up a series of beacons on their shelves. Marketers operating in these areas will have the unique opportunity of interacting with a growing percentage of users that are comfortable purchasing items with their smartphones, in fact, most actually prefer it.

Apple has made some major changes to its latest iOS. One of the new features is Apple Pay. This allows for mobile payments, another area that I think we can expect to see major growth. Oddly, this is something that we have seen grow faster in emerging markets. The technology has already gained much more significant traction across much of the world with India being at the forefront with a variety of mobile payment services. It is not far off the mark to believe that in 2015 we can expect to see both an increase in mobile payment apps, and the hardware designed to accept these payments.

We have seen many reports over the past 12 months indicating that regardless of age, it seems that almost everyone will have a smartphone next year. Forrester Research believes that this generation of always connected consumers and workers will abandon your business if it does not understand where they are and what they want. A statement read, “Consumers are undergoing a mobile mind shift: the expectation that they can get what they want in their immediate context and moments of need.”

Just a few short years ago the goal was to make anything that you carried with you, such as a smartphone, smaller. When Samsung unveiled its Galaxy Note smartphone in 2011 with a 5.3 inch screen, the field began to change. All of a sudden, bigger was better, this is reflected in the fact that this year Apple introduced the iPhone 6 Plus with a 5.5 inch display.

One report that I saw this year stated that between September 2013 and 2014, North American smartphone-based Web traffic driven by users of devices five inches or larger, grew from 6.9 to 17.9 percent. That represents an increase of more than 150 percent. Does this mean that in 2015 we can expect to see more apps and games specifically designed for these larger displays?

Recently, we have seen companies develop smaller, lighter and longer lasting batteries. When this technology reaches the market, it will not only have lighter mobile devices that require fewer recharges, but we will also see a huge growth in the world of wearable devices. In most cases, they will be closely linked to these mobile devices, which will spur the development of more mobile apps, which in turn means that these apps may become more targeted.

I mentioned about nine areas in the mobile market that I predict we will see growth and changes in 2015. This is only the tip of the iceberg; some of the technology being worked on today could be on the market as early as next year. If this is the case, then I believe that not only will we see changes in how apps are designed, how they work, but also how we will all use our mobile devices.