Five Mobile Trends to Watch in 2008
Expect the unexpected...
By Natasha Lomas
How is 2008 shaping up in the mobile and wireless world and which mobile and wireless technologies are you going to be hearing more about in the next 12 months? silicon.com picks the five key areas to watch…
1. The big squeeze, operators cosying up and a push on data
Gartner research director, Sylvain Fabre, told silicon.com: "There's a serious pressure on margins for the operators and it keeps getting worse. Then there's other stuff like Vivian Reding limiting roaming charges… so the life of a mobile operator certainly is not going to be as rosy and cosy as it has been for many, many years."
2. Device convergence - the rise of the multimedia handset
Doubt not: the iPhone started it. "Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs last January as he unveiled the iPhone. The Mac maker made 2007 its mission to prove that three "revolutionary products" can come in one slick, touchscreen casing.
A year on from its launch announcement and the iPhone has itself been 'reinvented' by various mobile manufacturers. But as well as spawning plenty of would-be imitators, the device has galvanised interest in the mobile web - by making it an enjoyable, not just viable, experience.
3. Mobile 2.0 - user-generated content, social networking, location-based services…
And if the devices are getting smarter, what you do with them is going to be more interesting too. The iPhone aside, Juniper's Holden points to "that tipping point where we have a fairly significant adoption of 3G handsets" that will help drive richer, multimedia services.
He said: "Within 2008 I think you'll see a much greater adoption of video-based services within Western Europe and the US than we've previously witnessed. I think in certain countries that will be true of mobile broadcast TV services. I think in others it will be true of streamed services. And in most I think that'll be true of user-generated video content… What we'll see increasingly is that content uploaded into a mobile space so that other users can browse it."
4. Femtocells - a cost-cutting, data services driver - or not?
They may not mushroom forth in every home this year but expect femtocells - aka small cellular base stations installed in homes or offices, which hook up to a broadband connection to improve network coverage indoors - to pop up in various places this year as operators kick the tyres in trials of the tech and attempt to resolve some of the questions hanging over them. Not least the big one: what's the business case?
5. Disruption - not just the Google factor…
Expect the unexpected. Yahoo! is the latest contender to announce a fresh focus on the mobile world. And with the likes of Google already up and running with an offering in the space - its Android open mobile software platform - and also sniffing around US spectrum, the status quo is looking increasingly shifty.
"The operators have been watching Google very nervously because clearly they appreciate the enormous power this brand has," said Juniper's Holden.
Read more on this trends in detail - Silicon.com
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