Happy belated New Year, dear readers! It’s January, and that means it’s time once again to make some predictions about the mobile industry for the coming year. Last year I got a diverse group of mobile industry CEOs to give their 2016 predictions, and it was well liked. So this year we’re doing it again, with leaders in areas ranging from mobile on-demand services to consumer IOT devices.
As in 2016, a few common themes and ideas developed. The re-emergence of the Mobile Web as an app discovery/distribution channel, increased adoption of AI based voice enabled apps/bots as mobile assistants, and the continued evolution of mobile video and mobile payments were areas that our commenters said would be important in 2017.
I hope you enjoy reading these thoughts and comments as much as I did gathering them.
Curtis Khan CEO & Founder of BookJane
What are your predictions for the mobile ecosystem 2017?
In general, we expect an acceleration of mobile solutions for consumer services.
Consumers will expect the availability of all services to be accessible through a mobile application. We will see more and more brick and mortar moving into the clouds where their services can be provided on-demand.
We will see more and more service professionals to look to mobile as a complimentary source of income. Some will fully transition to mobile as their primary source of income. Expect a shift of experience professionals migrating from full-time traditional employee arrangements to contractual employment through an app. Convenience and flexibility as well as higher pay will drive this shift. The displacement of brick and mortar to the clouds will allow service providers to keep a larger % of the amounts charged to the consumer increasing their take home pay.
What will be the hot topics in mobile in the coming year?
Overall, we will see an increase in features and functionality of service-oriented apps. We will see Artificial Intelligence, video chats and features that will make the consumer feel that they have an executive administrative assistant to get the services they want when they want it.
What trends will fade into the background in 2017?
We will see the demise of basic apps. Expectations will be that apps will add value to an individual’s life. Any app that is a me-too app or does improve the user experience will be deleted.
Manuel Jaime, CEO & Founder, ClipCast
What are your predictions for the mobile ecosystem 2017?
In 2017 we will see an acceleration of two key trends in mobile video: real-time content production and delivery, and demand for more immersive content. Live streaming for real-time production/delivery and VR & 360 cameras for immersive content have given us a glimpse into these trends in 2016.
However, in order for real time and immersive content to become a wide-spread reality, the technology industry will need to address certain limitations, for consumers and content producers alike. Similarly, the capture of VR/360 video is still not widespread and it is not always viable for consumers to use VR gear.
What will be the hot topics in mobile in the coming year?
Users will demand that the content they produce or consume be short, relevant, immersive and available in real time. The ability to create short, relevant highlights with the immersive content that matters most will require simplified recording, editing and sharing tools for mobile video. Solutions that offer curated multi-POV, seamless content creation, editing and distribution in real-time are the future. They provide consumers and content producers alike with the capabilities to produce long-tail content in a cost-effective, bandwidth-efficient and compelling way.
What trends will fade into the background in 2017?
Current solutions, like live-streaming, are bandwidth hogs, time-consuming and capture a significant amount of content that isn’t relevant or compelling, requiring users to sift through hours of footage to find engaging highlights. Live-streaming's appeal could be impacted in 2017 if these issues are not addressed.
Jamie Siminoff, CEO and Chief Inventor of Ring
What are your predictions for the mobile ecosystem in 2017?
I think we will see something meaningful that is similar to the Pokemon app. Not sure what it is, but while Pokemon came and went, there was something important to what they built. Someone will figure that out.
In your opinion, what will be hot topics in the mobile landscape in 2017?
ayments have always been talked about but still have not hit maturity. 2017 is going to be the year that mobile payments really hit.
What topics will fade into the background in 2017?
Delivery services, like Postmates and DoorDash, have been a big thing in the last few years. I think this industry will consolidate and become a more core utility - like power - rather than something we think about as separate services.
Allen Lau, Co-Founder and CEO of Wattpad
What are your predictions for the mobile ecosystem in 2017?
Download and usage have been concentrating on popular apps and this trend will continue. As download fatigue continues, mobile web will see a resurgence.
In your opinion, what will be hot topics in the mobile landscape in 2017?
The combination of AI, data, and voice will turn mobile into a truly intelligent, yet invisible assistant. Mobile as a platform for media consumption and creation, especially video and other short form content, will further accelerate. Mobile payment transactions will continue to increase. HTML5 will allow developers to deliver rich, native-like experiences (such as messaging) on other platforms outside of the app ecosystem.
What topics will fade into the background in 2017?
We will hear fewer complaints from developers that their apps are not being discovered/downloaded. Instead, they will understand that this is the new reality and will focus on alternative distribution such as HTML5.
Derrick Oien, CEO and Founder of Scorestream
What are your predictions for the mobile ecosystem in 2017?
Given the increased boxing out of new applications in the mobile app stores, I believe we will see a rethinking of how discoverability is addressed by Apple and Google. The App Store ads for Apple have been an interesting start but the overall way that apps are discovered in both stores feels stale and could use a big rework. I am sure they both have plans around this and we will see more of this come to life in 2017.
I believe that the Pixel and subsequent phones in this vein in the Android ecosystem will be big hits. It feels like Apple with the latest phone has started to slip in innovation against Google and it is giving them a strong opening to work at the high end of the market in terms of hardware and cost.
Mobile video will become a key component of many consumer applications in terms of community and interaction. Live will continue to be big and continue to grow.
Mobile advertising will start to accelerate in growth at a faster clip than it has to date.
In your opinion, what will be hot topics in the mobile landscape in 2017?
Live as a feature of many applications.
Efforts like Google Assistant and Actions API access will kick off another round of intelligent voice interfaces and the next wave of Siri / Google Now / Cortana services.
Enhanced Integration of mobility into smart home services like Nest and Echo/ Google Home.
Augmented Reality and mobility.
What topics will fade into the background in 2017?
Wearables and mobility.
Mobile advertising will start to see big growth but it will be less of a novelty and less of a discussion point.
Mobile payments. Again, it is here to stay but there will be less discussion around it as it becomes a part of life.
Ok! Even though these CEOs come from different perspectives, we can see some clear points of commonality. I’d like to add my own thoughts on these trends.
In 2017, app industry competition will become even more severe. App developers will have to respond by building the products with built-in engagement loops, focusing their efforts on user engagement and retention, as opposed to growth hacking of the early app economy days. Getting an app discovered, or installed on a user’s device, is no longer enough, usage has become the new battlefield.
2016 was probably the M&A record-breaking year for mobile and ad tech industries. This year, this trend will continue, resulting in a limited number of medium-large scale players being able to compete. On the user interface front, voice activated UI will gain even more mainstream adoption, but it is not yet clear if voice/conversational UI will be best suited to mobile or to other applications (home-based, like Amazon Echo/Google Home).
I believe hot topics in 2017 will include:
Real-life user context. As the mobile industry is on its way to reach maturity, knowing generic user characteristics, such as profiles, geo location, mobile usage patterns will no longer enough. Developers and marketers will get to know their existing, and therefore potential users deeper, understanding when and under what circumstances they are likely to engage with their app. This will make targeting and mobile content much more precise, amplifying both relevance and immediate engagement.
For example, identifying a user when he/she is about to leave the office on a rainy day may be an ideal moment to suggest a taxi service or carpooling option.
App streaming concept, introduced last year, will start getting traction, with mobile content becoming available without a mandatory app installation. It means that the entire app marketing funnels and monetization models will have to be adjusted.
Re-engagement programs, or incentivizing users to come back to the app, will become the most essential mobile marketing strategy. In the past 10 years, app marketers have mastered the art of getting apps installed; identifying the highest value users, getting them to use the app again and again is the next frontier.
One trend I think will fade this year:
Bot-mania. Reading the top industry tech blogs and media outlets, it may seem that messenger bots are poised to grow, outpacing and even replacing mobile apps. I find that in many cases a much bigger trend is surprisingly overlooked here - conversational UI and its wider mobile implications. Dan Grovers sums up greatly why “bot mania” is just a symptom of the need for a much more fundamental user-app-action, an innovation we will almost inevitably be facing soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment