The year 2011 changed into marked with extra improvements and tendencies within the cellular area than ever before. With healthful growth quotes recorded in 2011 and positive predictions for the following couple of years, 2012 seems like the year of even greater interesting mobile traits.
A big range of things contributed to the global boom of the cell packages (apps) in 2011. Among them is the development of network technology, reduced cellular records usage prices, increased utilization of smartphones, restructuring of the sales-sharing patterns, and an appreciably extended full or partial subsidy of apps through mobile advertising and marketing options.
According to the Mobile Stats and Facts 2011, of the arena’s 4 billion cell phones in use, around 1.1 billion have been smartphones. In Q1 2011, the global cell smartphone marketplace ballooned with a 19.Eight% growth price year-over-12 months due to a massive rise in phone shipments. As anticipated by IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, carriers shipped 371.Eight million devices in Q1 2011 as compared to 310.Five million gadgets in Q1 2010. In North America, the cellular telephone market was saved front and middle using Apple’s iPhone and HTC Thunderbolt. In Western Europe, it becomes ruled particularly by new devices from HTC, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson.
On the global scale, Nokia took the leading role in terms of shipment volumes and market proportion (although the latter dropped from 34.7% to 29.2 % 12 months-over-12 months), observed by Samsung. Apple maintained its spot #four on IDC’s list of Top 5 android mobile phone Vendors.
The breaking news of 2011 changed into the launch of the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft in an try and regained ground lost to the iPhone and Android-primarily based gadgets. The new strategy way Symbian and MeeGo, Nokia’s current telephone operating systems, will be gradually sidelined. Symbian is currently converted into a “franchise platform,” at the same time as “MeeGo will location increased emphasis on longer-time period marketplace exploration of next-era devices,” in keeping with the organization statement. However, Nokia nonetheless expects to sell about one hundred fifty million extra Symbian gadgets inside the future.
Regarding the general cellular utilization styles of 2011, sixty-one% of human beings mentioned the usage of their mobile devices to play video games, 50% – to do a web search, 49% – to access social media, 36% – to examine the information and 33% – for fashionable entertainment purposes.
In 2011, over one 0.33 of Facebook’s six hundred million consumer base used Facebook cell apps, 50% of Twitter’s one hundred sixty-five million user base used Twitter Mobile, and over 2 hundred million YouTube views occurred on mobile gadgets each day. Overall, 30% of all cellphone owners accessed their social media bills thru cell browsers in 2011.
In 2011, many massive manufacturers started blending cell technology with their commercial enterprise dreams, a good way to grow their presence in at the least one of the top app shops. This has spread new horizons for already booming android mobile phone apps markets and growing new venues for further marketplace development. On the other hand, most of these manufacturers did no longer goal to monetize their apps and used them as an upload-as much as their logo equity. Last yr, the Apple App Store remained the overall chief and the “shop of preference” for both brands and users. On the alternative hand, Android Market has received an extensive floor with 50% of the global brands preferring to submit their apps to it at some point in 2011. The newly brought Amazon App Store has gained 14% of the emblem cell apps’ courses in the handiest three months of being round.
The global cell app marketplace changed into expected at $6.Eight billion in 2011, consistent with Markets & Markets, a US-primarily based research company. It is expected to develop gradually to reach $25 billion over the following four years, with the Apple App Store accounting for 20.Five% of the entire revenues.
According to supply, an IHS-owned marketplace research company, the collective sales from Apple, Google, Nokia, and Blackberry app stores grew around seventy-eight% in 2011 from 2009 and are predicted to reach $8.Three billion in 2014.
In 2011, Apple held the main cellular apps marketplace proportion in terms of the sales generated.
However, in terms of cell app downloads, Android outpaced Apple, consistent with ABI research statistics.
Eight Trends That Ruled The Global Mobile Market In 2011
1. Near Field Communications (NFC) Technology
In 2011 Sprint Nextel joined forces with a diffusion of handset makers and technology organizations to force NFC payment structures. Google used VeriFone Systems and ViVOtech software to take a look at a provider in 5 US cities. The Google NFC-enabled services allowed clients within particularly equipped telephones strolling on Google’s Android OS to pay for goods and redeem coupons with their handsets at NFC-ready coins registers.
2. iPhone 4S
Many expected Apple to introduce its subsequent-era iPhone 5 inside the 2011 “Let’s Talk iPhone” occasion. Instead, Apple unveiled its iPhone 4S, the “smartest” smartphone ever. Equipped with an 8-megapixel digital camera, cloud abilities, and Sprint network access, it comes with a powerful voice popularity software program and different modern capabilities. Apple mentioned having bought over four million of its iPhone 4S gadgets just three days after the reputable release.
3. QR Codes
2011 became the yr of massive use of two-dimensional quick reaction (QR) codes in virtual and print marketing campaigns. When a coded photograph is captured by way of an android mobile phone tool or a pill, the consumer receives immediate admission to an abundance of Emblem’s / product’s statistics. With QR codes, organizations have far more danger to less complicated and faster reach their audience and stakeholders.
4. Increased mobile gaming
Games had been the most famous type of best free apps among phone users in 2011. According to the latest Report via Nielsen, ultimate yr many cell phone owners had been prepared to really pay for cellular video games – more than they might for another app class
5. The Cloud
In 2011, Apple introduced its pretty-anticipated cloud provider, which allows storing songs, pix, apps, and greater and pushing them robotically to all of the user’s gadgets thru a wireless era. Google launched a comparable song Cloud service allowing users to upload their track libraries and move them from mobile devices and PCs.
With those and different Cloud services to be had, greater cellular apps are anticipated to move to the Cloud shortly and be accessed and executed at once from the Cloud thru a mobile net browser interface. To facilitate this alteration, several technologies are already used. For instance, HTML5 enables caching at the handset and keeps away from fluctuations in-network service delivery.
Additionally, in 2011 some cell answers offered included cell browsers to permit direct access to apps from the publisher’s internet site and elimination of touring app stores. It means that both app builders and publishers can now interact at once without the involvement of / sharing earnings with any 1/3-party app stores.
6. 4G Technologies
In 2011, every cellular service introduced its plans to replace their networks with numerous faster cell facts technologies and HSDPA, HSPA+, and 3GPP LTE. The providers’ funding in higher speeds and better bandwidth will help the enterprise maintain up with the exploding demand for cell Internet in 2012. Many cell devices already shipped in 2012 are 4G-enabled, even though they nonetheless surely connect to 3G and EDGE networks.
7. Augmented truth
Augmented reality (AR) refers back to the addition of a laptop-assisted contextual layer of statistics over the real international, creating a greater or augmented truth. Although special varieties of AR inclusive of headset up shows had been around for over 30 years, in 2010 and 2011, AR advanced from being a cool machine at the outer edge of visualization and pix technology to a principal participant inside the technology landscape due to the increased bandwidth and adoption of smartphones.
AR proliferates unexpectedly into various domains from education to tourism / traveling to video production and so forth. Many AR apps, including Layar, use GPS positioning and geotagging to annotate present areas with an overlay of facts and 3-d snapshots and characters.
8. Mobile advertising
According to Stephanie Baghdassarian, Research Director at Gartner, “cell advertising is now diagnosed as a possibility for brands, advertisers and publishers to interact clients in a focused and contextual way, improving returns.” In 2011, cellular advertising budgets had been set to increase relatively across the various categories and regions. The global cellular ads market generated around $three.Three billion in 2011, greater than double the $1.6 billion generated in 2010.
- Mobile Market Expectations For 2012
- In 2012 we were able to maximum possibly see:
- – Increased investments in the NFC era across handset makers and vendors
- – Improved in-app billing protection
– More area-based totally mobile trade solutions allowing customers to test into a store to alert a retailer in their presence or to add objects to a purchasing cart clearly by taking their picture or their bar codes photo in the physical keep
– LTE 4G as a mainstream technology in North America and Western Europe
– iPads and pills continuing to replace PCs as an enterprise tool of choice
– Apple iPad three and long-awaited iPhone five with more advantageous functionalities accommodating the high-velocity LTE network and NFC technology
– Enhanced social sharing as a result of the smartphones’ increase
– Extended mobile seek to permit customers to interact with consequences, including placing an order directly from the cell cellphone, reserving a price ticket, or making a lodge reservation
– Gamification as the final way of attracting a new generation of users targeted on converting their everyday studies into sport-like interests
– More object reputation (OR) apps permitting customers to tune their surroundings for particular gadgets of hobby
– More unified communication (UC) clients for cell instant messaging supplied by over-the-top carrier vendors, which include Skype
– More powerful mobile e-mail answers thru a sequence of technology upgrades permitting low-value cellular extensions to present email services (Gartner expects cellular email customers to account for 10.6% of the global cellular consumer base using 2014)
– More corporations growing a strategic technique towards their cell provider delivery and differentiation (smartphones vs. capsules)
– Tablet trade (T-trade) and e-wallet as new buzz words
– Strategic partnerships between cellular carriers and famous video providers like YouTube or Vimeo to permit users to copy their online behaviors on their cellular devices
