We know, we know. You’ve been hearing it for years now. Every time a new year rolls around, mobs of us in the tech space report that this year will be “The Year of Mobile.”
In our opinion, we’ve been right each year!
Mobile has grown continuously by leaps and bounds. Even quarter-to-quarter, huge increases in mobile activity, app downloads, time spent using mobile solutions, volume of revenue earned through mobile, and many more benchmarks show that each year is indeed The Year of Mobile. Innovations show us new ways to use mobile solutions, mobile devices become more and more useful and precious to us, and day-by-day, mobile becomes a bigger and bigger part of our life.
Okay, so you know where we stand.
But what’s on tap for 2014? Well, if you ask Kim Whitler over at Forbes, you’ll learn that mobile may reach a tipping point this year. A few numbers to review that were cited in the article:
• 20% of online sales now come from mobile users (up 55% year-over-year on Cyber Monday).
• Leading marketing firms will be spending 10-25% of their budgets on mobile this year.
These reasons, among many others, are probably why (according to the article) Jay Henderson, Strategy Program Director at IBM is recommending a “mobile first” approach. (In our words, a mobile first approach means that you don’t simply translate existing things into mobile versions – instead, you spend the time to build fresh mobile products to take full advantage of the fastest-growing platform around.)
Anyhow, when even a blue chip juggernaut like IBM has taken the plunge, you know a technology has reached a significant milestone.
Our Predictions for 2014
Mobile will be abandoned and people will return to writing letters and looking things up in encyclopaedias. The paper just feels nicer, you know?
… not.
We’re going to go out on a limb and say that mobile will definitely continue to grow significantly in 2014. More businesses will go mobile, more users will increase the amount of time they spend on mobile devices (and the variety of things they do with them), and the world will continue to detach from non-mobile devices.
In addition, we might also start to see a solidification of the advantages that mobile-friendly small businesses enjoy. They’ve got more “mobile time” under their belts, and will leverage this to stay one step ahead of non-mobile competitors. It’s still a hugely favourable time to go mobile, don’t get us wrong, but the number of competitors that have done so will continue to grow.
That is, today, a small business that goes mobile can still get a boost from the fact that not all competitors will have done so yet. By the end of the year, this boost will probably not be as large.
Okay, we’ll see you all in 2015. Get excited, we’re thinking it could definitely be “The Year of Mobile!”