Despite the troubles in the economy, the
mobile industry is as dynamic as it has ever been. The changing
landscape creates significant opportunities for entrepreneurs and
should deliver exciting products and services to the consumer.
Here are our predictions for what’s to come in mobile in 2009:
1. The iPhone’s impact is not directly due to iPhone usage.
With all the buzz around the iPhone and its great stats, people
might question this. However, I think 2009 will show that it’s not
iPhone usage that will have the greatest impact on mobile but the wave
of iPhone/appstore-like offerings being created by Apple’s competitors.
Apple showed the device manfuacturers that sell the vast majority of
the world’s phones how to rethink the phone from the ground up to make
sense for data and apps and that will be the iPhone’s biggest impact on
the industry in 2009.
A number of other large players like Google/HTC, RIM, Samsung, LG
and Nokia are each coming to market with multiple offerings that have
large high-res touch screens and in several important cases app stores
that facilitate mobile content discovery and payments. The number of
iPhone-like products by the end of 2009 should outnumber the iPhone.
Despite the down economy and people watching their pocketbooks, expect
the growth of these more expensive smart phones to be a real bright
spot for the mobile industry. Choice and competition is a great thing
for consumers.
2. 3G networks break.
Well, what else would you expect with all those iPhones and
iPhone-like phones out there? These networks were designed for voice
not for data and the stress placed on these networks with this new
generation of phones will be significant. Areas that will continue to
see innovation will include the access part of the network which will
make use of intelligent smaller cells and which will leverage wifi
where possible. The backhaul portion of the network will also be ripe
for innovation. In a year where telecom spending is likely to go down,
we would expect spending on key stress points like backhaul to continue
to grow.
3. Mobile app/wap business models are put through the crucible.
There have been a number of mobile app/wap startups funded over the
last few years and 2009 will be the crucible test for their business
models. I can’t predict which business model will win but I can predict
that the winners will be the companies that have the capability to
rapidly evolve and test different business models in order to move down
the learning curve as quickly as possible. Unlike in the web world,
mobile startups will have to think creatively about their business
models given the complex ecosystem of carriers and phone vendors and
will also have to understand from day one how their business model maps
to geographies outside of the US.
All this change will create a lot of opportunity for the right mobile startups.
(For more from Jeremy, see his blog)
(Note image source: asia.cnet)
