Eight Trends to Watch in Mobile Computing

Mobile computing, communications and services have come a long way. In a span of only 20 years, wireless services have reached almost 50 percent of the world’s population. There are now more than 3 billion mobile subscribers globally, a number expected to grow to 4.5 billion by 2012. Each second around the world, four people are born … and 36 mobile phones are sold.
Yet even in the wake of this growth and popularity, phone manufacturers, service providers and others in the mobile industry face a number of stiff challenges. Competition is more intense than ever and profit margins are being squeezed. The pressure on companies to differentiate themselves through innovative services—created and delivered at breakneck speed—is rising. And the pace of change will only increase.
Based on observation, and on Accenture's experience in the mobile industry, here are the top eight mobile technology trends to watch—trends that will affect usage patterns, industry positioning and opportunities to achieve high performance in the mobile computing industry.
1. Unified-memory-as-a-service provides wireless memory on demand Wireless broadband will be a significant driver of mobile usage in the years to come. At the same time, the rich, multimedia experiences enabled by wireless broadband will strain the memory capabilities of the typical mobile phone. Most mobile devices have a capacity of only about 128 MB to 256 MB, compared with the many gigabytes of memory in the typical PC today. To respond to storage and access needs in a wireless broadband world, unified-memory-as-a-service will become important. Such a service will provide unified, remote memory capacity accessed over the wireless Internet. Users will be able to create and use remote memory from the device of their choice, delivering an experience similar to using local memory residing on their device.
2. Mobile surface computing makes the device interface more powerful Picture an electronic, touch-sensitive surface that can recognize physical objects and allow hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. With natural and intuitive hand movements, the technology enables users to interact with the objects or content, manipulate information and share it. That's surface computing, and it promises to revolutionize many industries, including wireless—especially the manner in which mobile devices are designed and used. One surface on today's mobile devices is already electronic: the screen. Other major surfaces on the device will also become electronic. The device will become, in effect, a series of electronic surfaces capable of interacting with other electronic surfaces, transforming the way mobile devices deliver multimedia experiences.
3. Widgets improve the mobile user experience Widgets are self-contained, portable chunks of software that users can install and use quickly and easily on their desktops, set-top boxes or mobile phones. In the wireless environment, widgets will become increasingly essential as they enable richer Internet experiences without the need for complex keying in of information—something difficult to accomplish on a small mobile device. Widgets will evolve into an end-to-end framework that will help users define and personalize the Internet data they need. The framework will search, locate and extract this information from various sources on the Internet. Personalizing the delivery of information and capabilities using widgets will also be important. For example, a widget functioning as a virtual personalized assistant could interact with users, taking the mobile experience to the next level of value.
4. Applications and devices constantly maintain the best connectivity for users Mobile connectivity is a complex proposition. In the current wireless world, many different technologies—from 2G to 3G to 3.5G to 4G—co-exist uneasily. Currently, Unlicensed Mobile Access is the communications standard that makes these technologies work together. It holds the signal for the device until that signal begins to deteriorate, at which time it tries to make a new connection and then break the old one. This connectivity method will change in the future, given the rise of Internet protocol-based networks. The devices will be able to handle IP connectivity over multiple access technologies. The applications themselves will decide the particular route that data should take over different technologies to deliver a compelling Internet experience to the user, and that decision will be automatic and entirely transparent.
5. Mobile content management frameworks help manage the risks of mobile content User-generated content and social networking are now seeing explosive growth, both in a PC-based environment and a mobile one. While this growth is benefiting the industry at large, there are several issues and obstacles that have surfaced—challenges related to user behaviors, practices and the law. User-generated content, or content shared through social networking, presents risks of privacy invasion, defamation, piracy, pornography or content that may be illegal or in some way morally questionable. These risks can be mitigated in part through advances in mobile content management systems, or MCM. MCM is an end-to-end framework that embeds rules and regulations about content and usage at different control points in the mobile computing system—mobile phones, base stations, gateways and so on. The rules and regulations would be enforced through technology in various situations based on context. A financial services institution or confidential research facility might have the ability, for example, to disable the camera feature of a mobile device.
6. Unified user profiles simplify interaction with the mobile Internet To access the world of rich, Internet-based services, a user needs to subscribe to each service by creating a user profile. This means a typical user must manage several profiles and map them to the appropriate service. In the future, helped in part by biometric technologies that identify users by fingerprints, iris scans or voice prints, identity management and user profiling will become simpler, which, in turn, will drive mobile usage. Profile management services will be available via the Internet. Users will be able to create a profile on a mobile device and upload it to a Web-based server. This profile will then be used across various subscriptions—enabling a user to retain personal data while shifting services easily from one device or service provider to another. Profile management services will also enable the most relevant information to be delivered in the most meaningful format, at the appropriate time and to whichever device a user so chooses.
7. Mobile security gets serious As mobile computing rises in popularity—and as the quantity, sensitivity and interconnectivity of information increases—expect the prevalence of mobile viruses and hacking to rise as well. To respond to this challenge, which is a threat both to individual users and to industry growth, security will take on a more holistic approach. Security will encompass infrastructure and corporate data, with mechanisms and services in place to detect and recover from attacks. Mobile security will also extend to end-user devices and user data, and will become a key aspect of the quality of service that users will be willing to pay for. There will be a collaborative effort by each player in the mobile value chain to make security more effective, but it will be primarily driven by the service providers. New security systems will assess threats and risks in real time and adopt appropriate security mechanisms to counter such threats. The anti-virus and vaccines industry will get into the action too.
8. The wireless industry goes green Issues of environmental sustainability are growing in importance throughout the global business community, and "green computing" is now an important trend in the information technology industry. Current mobile networks consume about 43 billion kilowatt hours of energy a year, so there is pressure on the mobile industry to "go green" as well. The design and development of power-efficient software and hardware for mobile devices will become increasingly essential. As software matures, common functionalities will get pushed into the silicon while heavy computing will get offloaded to software-as-a-service servers. Becoming more energy efficient makes good business sense, in addition to being good for people and the planet we live on.
If there is a dominant theme in the eight trends reviewed here, it is the centrality of the user experience—the rise of the powerful consumer. From transparent connectivity to more intuitive interfaces to easier profiling and identity management, making mobile computing easier, richer and more powerful is an important enabler to generating higher rates of mobile usage.
Mobile devices are becoming richer in functionality, and the relevant technologies continue to provide almost unlimited potential. Now, companies need to accelerate their ability to provide innovative, value-added mobile services. As this occurs, the day may not be too far off when a mobile device supplants the computer and the television as the electronic device most central to a person's life. That will signal the arrival of a world with almost unlimited opportunities for companies in the mobile industry to drive toward high performance.