In preparation for the upcoming ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit, we're outlining the 10 leading trends of the Mobile Web in a 3-part series of posts. In this the final instalment, we look at three markets for mobile which promise to be hugely valuable: commerce, cloud computing and health. As a reminder, in Part 1 we covered design and development issues and in Part 2 we looked at trending mobile apps such as geo-location and AR.
We'll explore these and other trends with you at the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit, a 1-day event we're running on Friday 7 May, in Mountain View, California. That's the day after Web 2.0 Expo (2-6 May), so we hope you'll extend your trip to the West Coast to help us define the future of mobile! To be certain of getting a ticket, we invite you to register now.
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Commerce
As more and more consumers use smart phones, how can businesses utilize this channel? That's one question we will analyze at the RWW Mobile Summit. Consider these statistics: nearly one quarter of the mobile web, according to a recent report from mobile search engine Taptu, is made up of shopping and services.
Taptu surveyed about 326,000 sites that are optimized for touch-screen browsing and found that the largest concentration of these sites falls into Taptu's "shopping and services" category. In total, Taptu found 83,000 mobile-enabled commerce sites, ranging from mobile shopping assistants to banks and mobile real estate sites.
According to Taptu, mobile shopping and services sites make up close to 25% of all mobile-friendly sites in the company's index, followed by sites in the "photo and design" category (17.7%). Social sites rank third with 9.2%.
In a recent report, Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker Meeker claimed that mobile will revolutionize e-commerce. She cited location-based services, push notifications, transparent pricing, and instant mobile delivery as four potential areas where this will occur.
Mobile advertising is also a growing segment. In November, Google acquired AdMob, a mobile display ad serving platform, for $750 million. In January Apple acquired Quattro, a relatively unknown mobile advertising network, for an estimated $275 million. Later in January, Opera bought AdMarvel. In April, Apple announced an advertising platform called iAd.
Cloud Computing
According to a recent study from Juniper Research, the market for cloud-based mobile applications will grow 88% from 2009 to 2014. The market was just over $400 million this past year, says Juniper, but by 2014 it will reach $9.5 billion. Driving this growth will be the adoption of the new web standard HTML5, increased mobile broadband coverage and the need for always-on collaborative services for the enterprise.
Explained ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez in February, "there are already a few well-known mobile cloud apps out there including Google's Gmail and Google Voice for iPhone. When launched via iPhone homescreen shortcuts, these apps perform just like any other app on the iPhone, but all of their processing power comes from the cloud."
Health
Mobile health applications will play a large and important role in shaping the future of the health care system, wrote Mike Kirkwood at the mHealth initiative conference in February. He wrote that mobile and wireless health applications "directly impact the individual's health and have the promise of ensuring that when a patient leaves a doctor visit, they don't become "lost" in the system. It allows consumers to be engaged with health and wellness in their daily lives and connect back to their health care provider."
It's not just from within the health system where mobile services will change health care, it's also in the applications that consumers are downloading to their smart phones. In February I surveyed the latest health and fitness apps on the iPhone platform. For example, an iPhone app called Diamedic allows diabetics to record their blood sugar levels and insulin doses.
Top 10 Mobile Trends of 2010:
- Part 1: Design & Development
- Part 2: Apps, Apps, Apps
We'd love to discuss these and other mobile topics with you at our ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010. See our announcement post for more details.
If you're a company in the Mobile Internet market, you may be interested in becoming a sponsor for this event. Please contact our COO Sean Ammirati for more information about sponsor packages. And a big thank-you to our current event sponsors: CallFire, WorldMate, Alcatel-Lucent and Ipevo.
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