Over the last year, the role of a mobile app has broadened significantly with businesses considering how apps can drive productivity and efficiency across the enterprise. With this increase in demand for business critical tools, so comes the challenge of integrating mobile apps with existing legacy systems in order to gain the maximum value from the opportunities mobile creates.
Mubaloo predicts that in 2013 more organisations will be looking at complete mobile solutions with the development of bespoke mobile applications that are integrated into existing back office systems and, in doing so, push the boundaries of what’s possible on mobile devices in the workplace.
Often, organisations may have already modernised their back-end systems with a website or portal and the next step is to do the same with mobile. Businesses often know they need to use mobile but they don’t know how. We predict there will be more organisations asking for help with all aspects of their mobile roadmap, this includes integration with back-end systems, enterprise apps and consultancy about their entire mobile strategy. As companies start to recognise the significant benefits apps can bring to their businesses, the need to draw out more information from their back office systems becomes ever more important.
~Sarah Weller, Marketing Manager, Mubaloo
As businesses begin to realise the potential ROI of enterprise apps, we predict that there will be a rise in demand for entire suites of apps. This is happening for a number of reasons. Firstly, apps that have been developed by one department are being held up as best in class for delivering real business value, and therefore other departments are taking note and considering what mobile could do for them.
Secondly, because of the increase in mass mobile device deployments across organisations, businesses at the start of this process are considering their entire mobile roadmap and ecosystem from the outset to gain the maximum return from these deployments. This involves considering the entire mobile strategy of an organisation and prioritising the development of various apps across the business.
Thirdly, businesses who had initially tried to develop one app to perform many tasks are realising that apps that try to do too much, end up doing no one thing well. We are therefore seeing businesses look at creating a number of simple apps that perform individual tasks really well.
Genentech is a great example of an American company looking at apps across their whole organisation. They have in place a crowd sourcing scheme whereby employees nominate their app ideas. The best ideas are then developed. They have apps ranging from expenses apps to meeting room booker apps. The internal apps are a mixture of custom-built and commercially available apps that integrate into their back-end systems.
We believe more businesses will start to develop suites of apps in order to adapt to the increasingly mobile workforce and the increase in BYOD. With this comes the need for businesses to consider MDM and MAM solutions for the deployment and management of these applications. This is another area that we predict will grow in sync with apps.
~Sarah Weller, Marketing Manager, Mubaloo
It is not a question of “if,” but “when.” Mobile banking—an analysis-based activity rather than a quick access endeavor—is currently used by 57% of U.S. consumers. By 2017, more than 1 billion mobile subscribers will use mobile banking, proving that opportunities for investors have never been more rife.
With the mobile tipping point come and gone, it is now time to think of mobile in terms of investment opportunities. At this year’s Mobile World Congress, Mobile Monday Global discussed several options at an exclusive event in the Theatre District of the Fira Gran Via. Jouko Ahvenainen, Co-founder and Chairman of Grow VC Group, delivered a presentation at the event highlighting the trials of startup funding, namely that as traditional VC funds start with $2 million in investments, fundraising has been difficult since 2008.
The good news is that declines in traditional fundraising have led to “open market places” that yield an increase in local business angel networks, capital efficiency, and incubator programs. Ahvenainen also discussed the opportunity for startups to pursue emerging market opportunities to drive the revenue and organic growth often associated with the U.S. market.
Ahvenainen encouraged the audience to conceive of investment as a language: “Read & write, participatory, conversational: markets are conversations, marketing is a conversation, business is a social science.” In doing so, he argued, networked economics creates communities of interest that denote powerful platforms from which to pursue innovation and commerce. Cultural challenges will abound, at the human level as well as governments and corporates. But Ahvenainen argued that failure to pursue peer-to-peer investment would only lead to financial and organizational exhaustion.
So how can P2P realize its full potential? Ahvenainen offered several ideas:
1) Crowd Funding Must Work Alongside Other Investment Models
-Continuity for forthcoming funding rounds, co-existing passive or active investment models and cooperation with businesses, VC’s and incubators are all components of this idea.
2) Co-Investors Can Be Diverse
-P2P partners do not often follow not automated investments; instead, they filter investment opportunities and offer enticing cases to the crowd. Syndicate, formalized co-investment models must come with pre-defined models, as well as shared responsibilities for both.
3) Co-Investment Instruments Should Become the Norm
-Built especially for P2P co-investments, the forthcoming instrument from Grow VC Group is built to work with P2P models, which will then bring leverage for investments. Investors will be able to join the instrument online, defining investment criteria including diversification. Grow VC Group’s P2P instrument is set to launch in six months.
P2P investments are not going away, yet Ahvenainen was quick to point out that this does not mean they will replace all other models. The purpose of his speech was to discuss the need for a new financial ecosystem that allows diverse investment models—including P2P—to co-collaborate. In doing so, he argues, P2P will not only transform starting funding; it will improve the whole financial sector.
Earlier this month, The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson outlined the deficits with mobile advertising. From lack of cookies and re-marketing to inefficient conversion measurement, there are several hurdles to climb before the media industry does in digital what it’s done on desktops.
“The paradox of advertising is that we spend most of our lives ignoring ads while we also spend hours browsing websites, reading articles, using apps, and “consuming” other “content” that could not exist without them,” Thompson writes. “That’s why it matters that our attention seems to be moving toward screens where ad dollars are struggling to follow.”
A seminar at this month’s Mobile World Congress sought to address this issue. Chaired by AdMob founder Russell Buckley, “Marketing: How Not to Build a Mobile Campaign” featured several speakers who discussed how they overcame these pitfalls. Helen Thompson, Mobile Product Manager at BBC Worldwide, explained that over one third of monthly pages via BBC.com are consumed via mobile, and 4,000 devices access their mobile site per week. As readers consume news this way because “it’s easy,” advertisers have tried to follow suit—by using one advertising format across each platform.
This, Thompson said in his Atlantic article, is where the industry’s misguided. Rather than adopting one format across platforms—a tactic bound to fail due to screen size and a host of other issues—BBC Worldwide has focused on targeted campaigns that address audience behaviour.
Thompson, meet LoopMe. CEO Stephen Upstone co-presented alongside Thompson, explaining how their delivery of social ad inboxes into apps and mobile sites reveals a non-intrusive ad format. An “Offer” button in-app allows consumers to click as they choose, launching an Ad Inbox that presents multiple apps and offers. Interaction, browsing and buying all occur without ever re-directing consumers from the app—giving consumers control over the advertising they see.
Having successfully integrated into BBC’s Top Gear Stunt School app, LoopMe has now reached markets from the US and Brazil to Russia and New Zealand. If no ads are present in a territory, the “Offers” button will not appear in-app, addressing the aggressive nature of many mobile ads. LoopMe’s research found that 47% of app users report clicking on mobile ads by mistake, yielding a low post click that negatively impacts consumers, publishers and advertisers alike.
By modeling one’s “Ad Inbox” based on their “Email Inbox,” consumers have control over the ads they interact with, even whether to share or vote ads up or down depending on relevance. This yields higher CTR and engagement, leading to 5% ad interaction—10 times the level achieved from ad banners.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has repeatedly cited Facebook integration as the genius behind his platform’s success. Similarly, LoopMe’s Ad Inbox, with its community feedback and social sharing capabilities—has thus far seen 50% CTR, using advertising as a “value added service for consumers,” rather than for advertisers. This is an exciting mobile space to watch. We look forward at AppBeat to reporting updates.
With close to 75,000 attendees, it might seem a stretch to say that Mobile World Congress is a catch up with old friends. Yet any mobile veteran will tell you that with the industry expanding, its annual trade show is the ideal opportunity for colleagues to catch up, often for the first time in years.
No one knows that more than Mobile Monday. Since starting in Finland in 2000, Mobile Monday has expanded to include 150 chapters across the globe and become an international hub of insight amongst anyone in the mobile space. Their presence at this year’s MWC was strongly seen and felt; from Tuesday’s Mobile Monday mixer at Rossini Restaurant to their presence in MWC’s Theatre District, chapters ranging from Tel Aviv to South Africa met under the umbrella that unites them.
With more than a decade of experience building their reputation, Mobile Monday’s next venture involves taking the local global. CEO Jari Tammisto told me their latest goal is to use various hubs to conduct research into topics ranging from African telecomm to peer-to-peer investments. Their conference in the Theatre District hosted presenters including Andreas Constantinou, Ph.D, Managing Director of VisionMobile, who offered his insight from VM’s “Developer Economics 2013” report. Some key findings:
*BlackBerry mobile mindshare is stable, but developers put iOS first.
The report, a survey of 3,460 developers across 95 countries, found BlackBerry’s mobile mindshare remains at 16% to anticipate BB10 sales—but 48% of developers use iOS as their leading platform.
*The third app ecosystem is a search in progress.
Despite developer preference for iOS, it saw a 5% point drop in Mindshare—compounded by Asian developers clearly preferring Android. The report also found that developer mindshare varies by region; Android leads in Asia and Europe, whereas North America shows platform parity. But with 47% of developers intending to adopt Windows Phone, there is serious interest in a third dominant platform.
*Consumer knowledge needs improvement
Only 24% of survey respondents design apps with user discussions in mind, showing the need for a two-way feedback channel like HelpShift between users and developers. That figure fails to change with development experience or proficiency, suggesting that the cardinal rule of marketing—to know your consumer—doesn’t happen often enough.
The full report on “The foundations of the app economy” offers additional insight, as do several forthcoming reports which maximise the Mobile Monday name. Following yesterday’s conference,Tammisto said Mobile Monday co-founder Peter Vesterbacka found his success by asking members from global chapters what they wanted from his app.
That app—Rovio Mobile’s Angry Birds—is one of mobile’s greatest successes, proving the power of how Mobile Monday’s local communities can have global impact. It is clear that their presence at this year’s MWC is the start of many more things to come.
Mobile World Congress is the one week of the year that defines and shapes the following 12 months in mobile. According to the GSMA’s Global Mobile Operator Revenue Trends, the mobile industry was worth $1.6 trillion in 2012. That is a truly staggering figure, and a great number to kick-start any major Congress.
The most notable change was the new venue, which did not go unnoticed on the 72,000 plus people that attended. We all set about our business with the usual hustle and vigour of any MWC at the old Fira – but also with a massive skywalk, networking gardens, and space in abundance; space that was well used by the likes of Ericsson, Qualcomm, HTC, Samsung, and Ooredoo to name just a few of the incredible stands on show.
Ooredoo is the rebranded Qtel, which was the first big announcement to adorn the Congress during The Week of Mobile. And to show Ooredoo’s statement of intent, it has enlisted the world’s greatest footballer Lionel Messi as its global ambassador.
Not surprisingly, there were a lot of very big announcements. In MWCs gone by, the event would be dominated by a couple of major announcements and an overriding theme that would capture the imagination of the attendees for the week. Instead, this year the show was dominated by the sheer number of announcements rather than a few key ones.
The apparent lack of industry-shaping news is not reflective of developments of MWC, more a symptom of the mobile industry itself. Mobile has become a ubiquitous global platform upon which everything sits and all announcements incorporated. Mobile has become an integrated platform upon which other industries and sectors are converging. Pure mobile related announcements such as Ericsson announcing an LTE contract sit handsomely alongside news from Visa and Sony.
No longer is the big news at MWC generated just from the big mobile players. Mobile is an enabler for all brands and businesses, and that is why the actuality was that there were more “big” announcements at MWC than ever before, from a vastly expanded portfolio of major players.
So what were the announcements of note? To recap, handset manufacturers released more devices and tablets, turning parts of the Congress into CES. Mobile operators sat in front of a packed auditorium, while payments and NFC, LTE and new business models were high on the agenda.
Facebook confirmed that they are now a mobile company and will no doubt have Sony Mobile knocking on their door for advice after the Japanese giant once again promised 2013 would be a “breakthrough year” for the company in the mobile arena. If Sony Mobile start to target the over 65s they could be onto a winning formula. According to Doro, half of the over-65s want a smartphone.
As ever, MWC confirmed that it is, “The Week of Mobile.” Pleasingly, not one person said “The Year of Mobile”, or at least within hearing distance of my big ears. Let’s hope that trend continues.
Here’s to next year’s ‘The Week of Mobile’ – only 51 weeks of this Mobile Year remaining.
~Nick Lane, Head of Telecoms, Media and Measurement, Liberty Communications
With close to 75,000 attendees, it might seem a stretch to say that Mobile World Congress is a catch up with old friends. Yet any mobile veteran will tell you that with the industry expanding, its annual trade show is the ideal opportunity for colleagues to catch up, often for the first time in years.
No one knows that more than Mobile Monday. Since beginning in Finland in 2000, Mobile Monday has expanded to include 150 chapters across the globe and become an international hub of insight amongst developers, managers and anyone else in the mobile space. Their presence at this year’s MWC was strongly seen and felt; from Tuesday’s Mobile Monday mixer at Rossini Restaurant to yesterday’s event in MWC’s Theatre District, chapters ranging from Tel Aviv to South Africa met under the umbrella that unites them.
With more than a decade of experience building their reputation, Mobile Monday’s next venture involves taking the local global. CEO Jari Tammisto told me their latest goal is to use various hubs to conduct research into topics ranging from African telecomm to peer-to-peer investments. Their conference in the Theatre District hosted presenters including Andreas Constantinou, Ph.D, Managing Director of VisionMobile, who offered his insight from VM’s “Developer Economics 2013” report. Some key findings:
*BlackBerry mobile mindshare is stable, but developers put iOS first.
The report, a survey of 3,460 developers across 95 countries, found BlackBerry’s mobile mindshare remains at 16% to anticipate BB10 sales—but 48% of developers use iOS as their leading platform.
*The third app ecosystem is a search in progress.
Despite developer preference for iOS, it saw a 5% point drop in Mindshare—compounded by Asian developers clearly preferring Android. The report also found that developer mindshare varies by region; Android leads in Asia and Europe, whereas North America shows platform parity. But with 47% of developers intending to adopt Windows Phone, there is serious interest in a third dominant platform.
*Consumer Knowledge Needs Improvement
Only 24% of survey respondents design apps with user discussions in mind, showing the need for a two-way feedback channel like HelpShift between users and developers. That figure fails to change with development experience or proficiency, suggesting that the cardinal rule of marketing—to know your consumer—doesn’t happen often enough.
The full report on “The foundations of the app economy” offers additional insight, as do several forthcoming reports which maximise the Mobile Monday name. Following yesterday’s conference,Tammisto said Mobile Monday co-founder Peter Vesterbacka found his success by asking members from global chapters what they wanted from his app.
That app—Rovio Mobile’s Angry Birds—is one of mobile’s greatest successes, proving the power of how Mobile Monday’s local communities can have global impact. It is clear that their presence at this year’s MWC is the start of many more things to come.
After a fully booked flight to Barcelona, AppBeat is now here, along with the rest of the mobile world. As a trusted media partner of Heroes of the Mobile Fringe, we’ll be bringing updates often. And thanks to our work with Liberty Communications, be on the lookout for daily MWC updates from Liberty’s Head of Telecoms & Media, Nick Lane.
Here, Nick’s colleague, Head of Enterprise Alexis Dalrymple, shares some ideas for what trends will prevail this week (hint: the “Crackberry” craze may soon be back).
The thing about predictions is, you either need to make them so obvious you won’t be wrong or so generic so you won’t look foolish; otherwise, the only thing you can predict with any certainty is that you will get something wrong.
That said, we all enjoy a bit of educated speculation. To test this theory, I polled my friends and colleagues for their predictions for this year’s Mobile World Congress. The trends highlighted this year are pretty much the same as those that were highlighted in previous years.
So ignoring them and the current crop of predictions and themes in the media (which mainly revolve around handsets), I decided to look at some of the topics and trends that businesses actually care about.
Mobile payments: Just as we are reading about plastic cards being the death of cash, so too are we beginning to see mobiles have credible applications in this space. I think this year’s MWC will see a good deal of news from the big players (the likes of Mastercard & Visa), as well as the mobile operators around this topic
Internet of things: Many people said that M2M was one of the key trends in 2012. I agree, though it was a fairly quiet one. We are set for more of this in 2013 as the industry looks to define itself and becomes more relevant to the wider vertical markets. So beyond the fridge ordering my groceries, telehealth and smart-metering will be two key areas to watch
Services: BYOD has certainly had an impact on businesses – this we all know. There is however a second wave that is crashing in to organisations via services and applications. We’ll hear more from young pretenders like Box and DropBox but also expect to hear more from the old-guard, like Oracle, Nokia, BlackBerry and Microsoft
Security: The mobile world is no longer immune from hacks and attacks. With governments and their agencies warning about cyber security and likening it to the ‘Wild West’, we will hear a lot about mobile malware, hacks, and the importance of encryption
Other topics that will inevitably creep in are big data, cloud (though I would put that under services), second screen and LTE.
One company I will be keeping an eye on is that erstwhile titan of the business device RIM BlackBerry. MWC is its first major outing since its new devices were launched earlier this month, so it is bound to have something to say in Barcelona.
I’ll leave you with a thought from Steve Wozniack, who was probably right when he opined that, ‘the smartphone and tablet will become the remote control and wallet for individuals the world over.’
New entrants into the payment market, such as Square and iZettle, are giving retailers a whole new way to accept payment transactions via mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones, and these developments are just as applicable to the large multinational retailers as they are to the local UK tradesmen. But what will mobile bring to the world of offline purchase transactions?
PayPal and point-of-sale (POS) company NCR have just announced that they’re joining forces, and this will see PayPal’s payments offering integrated into NCR’s mobile apps and services for restaurants and other retailers. At first, PayPal will merely be a checkout option within NCR’s Mobile Pay app, which lets restaurant-goers place orders, call their waiter, and even checkout from their phones. But eventually, PayPal will offer that mobile dining experience within its own mobile apps whenever you check-in to a participating NCR customer restaurant.
For small traders who can’t afford the infrastructure needed to take credit card payments, iZettle offers the ideal solution and has just arrived in the UK. At craft fairs for example, consumers can simply hand over their card to the stallholder, it is swiped through the device, and then they sign for their purchase. But despite the convenience, will consumers get over their security concerns and be happy to hand for their card to be swiped through an unfamiliar device?
With Square and iZettle battling it out for a bigger piece of the mobile payments pie, experts are predicting an explosion in the number of transactions made through smartphones and other mobile devices. For all the hype, consumer pick up has been less enthusiastic than anticipated. However, it’s likely that adoption will only increase as the payments market gets busier, and the payment processes that are still pretty alien to most consumers will become more routine.
~Steve Rothwell
Steve Rothwell serves as CEO of Eagle Eye Solutions, the leading vendor of mobile retail gift voucher and coupon solutions in the world. A joint inventor of Eagle Eye’s processing technology, Steve previously served as CEO of Eagle Eye Technologies, and is renowned as a leading global expert in the area of mobile commerce.
In the last couple of years, we’ve seen the number of ‘mobile wallets’ increasing, with brands and services providers offering solutions such as Apple Passbook, Google Wallet and PayPal Instore, the latter of which is now available in over 18,000 US outlets.
Consumers are beginning to understand how convenient it is to use a mobile wallet. This can be proven by the success of the Starbucks card, which now has 7 million customers using its app-an app that now accounts for 20% of all card transactions. But the Starbucks card is pre-paid, and many customers still have security concerns about linking all their credit and debit cards to a mobile. This will change in time, especially if the resurgence in biometric validation takes hold, but right now there is still that barrier.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – it will be loyalty that will drive widespread consumer adoption of the mobile wallet, not payments.
And here are the 3 main reasons why;
What is crucial is that retailers prepare themselves to accept these customers not only by building their loyalty card to store in a mobile wallet, but to adapt their POS in order to validate the consumer using the mobile device and hence redeem the offers.
With customers responding positively to the immediacy and convenience a mobile brings, and our knowledge of the market place, we see this type of retailer offer growing rapidly in 2013.
~Steve Rothwell
Steve Rothwell serves as CEO of Eagle Eye Solutions, the leading vendor of mobile retail gift voucher and coupon solutions in the world. A joint inventor of Eagle Eye’s processing technology, Steve previously served as CEO of Eagle Eye Technologies, and is renowned as a leading global expert in the area of mobile commerce.
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