It’s become something of a MobHappy tradition to do our predictions for the New Year and I’m sure we’ll be doing the same thing towards the end of 2008. A quick look at our predictions for this year also indicates that the boys have done good again, but we’ll be reviewing them in due course too.
Meanwhile, next Monday sees the Mobile Monday National Summit, here in good old Munich. This year, I’ll also be running my predictions past the audience again, which based on last year numbers 300 or 400 people – book a ticket while you have a chance.
I thought it would be fun to include some other people’s predictions too, so leave a comment or drop me an email with your views. If I include one of them, I’ll certainly give you credit on the night and here when I write up the final selection.
So get those crystal balls out and cast your minds into the immediate future.
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My crystal ball shows mobile learning emerging in 2009 — but then maybe it is my optimism causing the vision.
I wrote this post this morning after reading your request for suggestions for predictions. I had been meaning to record the little story about the girls — which I think suggests a lot about the present state of mobile: there is an incredible amount that just needs to be “thunk up.” Even if that is partially true for mobile edu, your including a prediction for mobile learning can help kick start things:
http://www.goldenswamp.com/2008/12/03/time-to-dive-into-mobile-learning/
In the same area, this post has gotten a lot of visits, in part of course because it was included in a Carnival of the Mobilists:
http://www.goldenswamp.com/2008/11/19/with-a-mobile-in-a-pocket-no-child-will-be-left-behind/
[...] at MobHappy is starting to gather input for his prediction for 2009. The start of the end of the mobile [...]
Prediction #1 – in western markets we will start to see the first media “scares” about children using mobile social networks like mocospace, itmsy.com etc as we have already seen in South Africa with Mxit.
Prediction #2 – A number of VC funded mobile startups will fail to get second round funding and will either close down or have to radically re-engineer their cost and revenue models
Prediction #3 – Admob will hit 10bn ads served per month
Prediction #4 – Mobile commerce will start to take off opening up a new stream of affiliate-based revenues for mobile internet services
Prediction #5 – Flat rate data will start to move onto prepaid phone tariffs, following Virgin Mobile’s 30p all you can eat offer in the UK, opening up the mobile internet to new segments (e.g. Youth)
Prediction #6 – A number of operators and handsets manufacturers (e.g. T-Mobile, Nokia) will launch app stores, whilst these will fail to generate the same excitement as the iphone app store, developers will benefit massively as the software market opens up to new devices
Prediction #7 – Some of the successful mobile internet services in Asia such as mobile comics and books will start to take off in the West
Prediction #8 – As interest in “web 2.0″ declines, “mobile 2.0″ will be the new trendy theme in Silicon Valley
Prediction #9 – Despite the economic downturn there will be a couple of sizeable acquisitions of mobile internet startups by media companies and operators
Prediction #10 – Broadcast Mobile TV will still fail to take-off
http://blog.mjelly.com/2008/12/predictions-for-mobile-in-2009.html
Google will be beaten within 10 years by a company founded in 2009.