2011 To Be A Major Year For Mobile

9. Mobile-cloud hybrid computing

As I have said before, the future of mobile is around the combination of mobile-centric computing activities, with the user backed up by services provided through the cloud. I call this mobile-cloud hybrid computing. It’s not all cloud-based and not all mobile-based but a combination of the two.

10. Mobile screen to dominate

Users are spending more and more time on mobile devices and less and less time using other “screens”, such as looking at newspapers, magazines, traditional TV and the PC/Internet. This has huge implications for advertising.

11. Location-aware services

With more time spent using your smartphone, there will be a huge increase in the development of location-aware services.

Some examples include Foursquare, Point Inside, Aisle411, Yelp and Groupon, which clearly is going to migrate from offers to your home PC to offers to your smartphone – which, in turn, takes into account your current location.

12. Creation and consumption of more rich media

We now commonly see 5MP cameras with flash and autofocus in smartphones. They also capture video, often in high definition. This represents another huge change in content created on smartphones. These same users are exploding in the consumption of rich media, both photos and movies, on their smartphones.

More bandwidth is required and the good news is that 4G wireless such as LTE will help solve this problem – most of the time. But it’s going to take time to get all of this working correctly, which brings me to my last point.

13. Management of pervasive connectivity

All smartphones today include multiple ways in which to communicate, including both Wi-Fi and 3G. With users creating and consuming more rich media, there needs to be more intelligent management of the content that is both being downloaded to the smartphone and being uploaded as well.

We need to have more intelligence in the pervasive communications process so that large files will be only downloaded and uploaded when there’s a Wi-Fi connection.

With tiered pricing, users have to make sure that they don’t run up a large bill simply sending the video they just created to a friend. We need to see connectivity management include switchable connections between wide area and Wi-Fi, and least-cost routing of your communication links.

J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D. is Principal Analyst of Mobile & Wireless at MobileTrax LLC. As a nationally recognized industry authority, Dr. Purdy focuses on monitoring and analyzing emerging trends, technologies and market behavior in the mobile computing and wireless data communications industry in North America.