Friday, March 13, 2009

Mobile Trends Predictions

Innovation is not about the latest technology invention but about the value of the technology to the user and the society in the form of a service. (Read Peter Drucker’s classic book Innovation and Entrepreneurship). The degree of which the new technology produces a service that fulfills one of the basic human-needs from my 2X2 matrix is what defines the value of the invention. The value to the end user and the ease of use of the new technology is what differentiates innovation from invention.

On my last trip back from San Francisco I spent 4 hours writing down my thoughts about promising mobile trends to discover later that I had left my notes in the airplane.

Instead of trying to remember everything I wrote, I decided to share my predictions about mobile services that will bring value to consumers.

1) Acceptance of 2-way SMS messages with a location-based customer loyalty component: Consumers will get discount coupes via SMS when they are shopping at a particular retailer. (check Clairmail)

2) Deployment of mobile payment interoperability for mass-transit transportation across different geographic locations: People will use a mobile phone to pay for the subway in NY and the Bart in San Francisco.

3) Deployment of speech recognition features with natural language processing on the mobile phone: Finally, I will be able to talk to my phone in a combination of English, Spanish and Russian and my phone will understand what I am saying.

4) Acceptance of micro payments via mobile phones and combined billing capabilities: Consumer’s purchases will be included in the phone bill. I bet the telecoms are going to like this one.

5) Increasing convergence between PC and mobile browsers: iPhone-like browsers will become the standard.

6) Acceptance of the Chief Mobile Office role in financial services: the mass adoption of mobile payments and the growing importance of the mobile channel as a source of revenue generation will require that this channel get dedicated attention rather than continue to be viewed as part of internet / ecommerce channel.

7) Mobilizing the POS: retailers will accept mobile payments at the POS.

Making Predictions is a risky business and most of the time we get them wrong !

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Ilieva, what do you see the role of mobile operators such as T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, etc. being as part of the mobile payments movement? Currently they are positioned to be tightly integrated, however I can see opportunities for companies to become the processors/managers of such capabilities leaving the mobile operators out of the revenue stream.