Mobile Trends

Will RIM survive? Will Microsoft’s Windows 8 kill the explosive growth in iPhone and Android sales? Will Nokia capture market share in North America? If I knew the answers, I wouldn’t be writing blogs and I would be counting my millions in wealth by knowing who the winners are in the mobile space. But what I do know is that there are some trends happening in the market- regardless of operating system or manufacturer- that are redefining how we do business and forever changing our behavior.

For starters, we’re clearly going mobile and the trend of ‘bringing your own device’ has completely redefined the IT department responsibilities. Suddenly, they HAVE to include non-company devices and deliver information that otherwise stayed within the corporate firewalls. There is no discussion here, it’s only a matter of how they can do this and still protect company data and still secure their networks as much as possible.

Next, the ‘post PC era’, a phrase used by Steve Jobs at the launch last year of the iPad 2, is a reality. The PC is not ‘dead’ but the old way of using a computer that didn’t move is being replaced by anytime and anywhere computing done on a smartphone or tablet. And this has major repercussions in the way business users need information and how it can be delivered.

Worldwide, accessing the Internet will be more and more using mobile devices. The important change here is the form factor in visually presenting the information in much smaller spaces. Another change is all the new applications that are being developed to deliver this information. The winners here will be the companies that present content in an easy way and format.


A major disruptive shift is the move to tablet computing. Tablets didn’t really exist until 2010 and has since become a huge industry in a very short time period. Apple alone sold over 40 million iPads last year and expect to sell over 60 million in 2012. Industry analysts expect over 300 million tablet devices yearly will be sold by 2016. This is a huge market by any standard and there will be new ways of doing business in the next few years that are only being dreamed of now.


The biggest winners here are mobile workers. End users are finally going to be able to do business when, where and in what format they want! To be sure, there will still be requirements like security keys to access corporate information. You will still have to work with IT departments in getting ‘your device’ onto the IT infrastructure. But the important trend is that users are finally having a say in how and what kind of content they want to get their job done better. That’s a win-win for the betterment of all.