So, as we start a new working year, we come to the end of our predictions for 2006.
If you haven’t been following our predictions over the holiday season, I think it’s worth flicking through them so see what we think 2006 has in store for the mobile world. Even if it’s just so you have a giggle at us when we get some wrong!
We’d also love to have your comments, as always, and any predictions you may have.
Before rounding up the final ones, here’s a bonus prediction; MobHappy will announce a new writer to our team here, very shortly - so watch out for it.
Prediction 19. Microsoft continues to demonstrate that it just doesn’t get the mobile space, while Google and Yahoo! continue to steal mobile headlines.
Late last year, there was a silly rumour that Microsoft was going to buy the Opera browser. It proved unfounded, of course - or at least it’s been denied by both parties. But it would have proved a great buy for Microsoft at almost any price, as they’d have got their hands on the Opera Mobile browser. This is a great product and would give them a bridgehead into the mobile world.
Microsoft desperately needs a mobile epiphany if they’re to survive the next great tech revolution, as mobile becomes our primary digital device, doing to the desktop what the desktop did to the mainframe.
Microsoft don’t seem to understand this and to me, it’s the greatest puzzle in technology today. How can a bunch of such bright, competitive and motivated people continue to paddle their canoe in the wrong direction up the wrong river?
Prediction 20: LBS Continues to Disappoint
Oh dear. Poor old LBS. We had such hopes for you, but success continues to be so elusive, outside navigation.
Where operators deploy the technology, we continue to see unimaginative products, like find-my-nearest services launch. Despite the fact that they’ve never worked and users don’t need them.
And that’s where the operators do deign to deploy the tech. Many have already written it off altogether as a bad idea, despite the fact that the problem is with their executions, not the service per se.
As I’ve written many times before, the people who will crack LBS will not be working for operators and big companies. It’ll be those that are entrepreneurial and prepared to think different and are able to put themselves into the shoes of mobile users that’ll show the way. But if they aren’t given the technology to play with, they can’t move the market forward.
But it’s not all bad news. Directive 911 should see many operators launching LBS services in 2006 in the US, so we may, hopefully, see some grassroots-led initiatives finally begin to emerge.
I predict that we’ll see at least one stunning LBS service launch in 2006 that will make us say “but it’s so obvious, why didn’t we think of that before?” and point the way to the future. I’d suggest that it will be around the theme of linking the real and digital worlds together in some way.
Big opportunity: Find a business model for geocaching. It’s already a huge grassroots movement and 2006 will see it get bigger than ever. While today’s geocahers mainly use specialist handheld GPS devices, we’ll see a movement to mobile phones and that’s when the thing will go mass market.
Watch it happen.
So, 2006 will be a big year for mobile. We hope that you’ll continue to enjoy watching it unfold here at MobHappy and that you have a successful and healthy 2006.
[...] 2006 Predictions 19 and 20 [...]
[...] MobHappy has posted some interesting predictions for the mobile space in 2006. Prediction 20 states that location based services (LBS) will continue to disappoint. While I don’t necessarily disagree with that prediction, they make one assertion that I found thought provoking–that “find-my-nearest services” don’t work and “users don’t need them.” [...]
I don’t know how you can say that Microsoft don’t get mobile. Perhaps this is true in the Consumer market space, but it is very unclear at the moment. But in the Business space Microsoft is doing great things with mobile Exchange (now including ‘push’), huge range of device form factors from large range of OEM partners, extending .Net development out to mobile devices as just another target device in Visual Studio, etc. No one else even come close to having such a complete picture. The Pocket Explorer browser is ok, and if you want something better then there are 3rd party options.
Makes a pretty compelling case to me.
Tim - thanks for your comment.
I was actually writing primarily about the consumer space, but I think it also extends to the enterprise sector actually. Sure, they introduce the odd service on an ad hoc basis - why wait so long for the Exchange thing, by the way? It was bleeding obvious that they should have done that at least 3 years ago.
But my point is that there seems to be very little evidence of a mobile strategy or that their world has changed fundamentally. The market is in the process of moving from desktop to mobile and to a thin client model. MS don’t seem to have noticed.
Hence, their big news last year at analysts briefings was that they’d whupped Palm - which is just irrelevant actually, as the PDA market is dying on its feet.
So I expect them to continue to make little isolated forays into mobile, certainly. These will usually be adapting desk top products into a mobile experience. No one seems to be thinking about mobile as a fundamentally new channel with a need for new products and user experiences. There’s no real big picture or game plan that I can see.
Russell
Hi Russell,
I guess I don’t agree with the “mobile is a fundamentally new channel”. To me mobile networks are simply wireless access to the internet, but in most places where you are and very convenient. The mobile data performance is now very good but the connection ubiquity is not yet ‘always on’ so as to allow thin client.
And a mobile device is more personal than a PC so having it personalised and containing a large amount of your existing data still makes sense to me.
I think this year will see MS making significant inroads into the business market as 3G capable WM 5.0 devices emerge in an ever increasing range of form factors. Their challenge is what to do in the consumer space.