Mobile

Trends

2014

1. Mobile is kingMobile is often used as just another word for Smartphone. And from that regard, Mobile is already huge, consider this:

the number of Smartphones in use on earth is just about to pass in 2014 the PC installed base (over 1.5 billion each)!

But Mobile in general is even bigger if you include tablets (another 250 million), “wearables”, Internet of things (like

connected cars and other objects)… Business Intelligence actually predicts the “Internet of Everything” will reach a

staggering 18 billion devices by 2018!

Our Take…

We have passed the point where a mobile strategy is a “must” for every small, medium or large-size enterprise. The

question now becomes whether or not you should have a “mobile-first” strategy….

Where are your customers today? Reading traditional newspapers? Magazines? Listening to the radio? Or rather

consuming audio, video and interactive contents on their smartphones or tablets? (hint: we have part of the answer

with this InMobi infographics…)

With over 50% of the population now using Smartphones in virtually every

developed country, we need to take advantage of its unique characteristics

(personal, always-on, located…) to deliver real value-added services to customers.

2. Mobile at the speed of lightWith mobile, everything is going faster than ever. Data with 4G LTE networks, information with social networks and

news apps, communication with instant sharing/messaging apps and automated push notifications, mobile

advertising with RTB…

Customers have developed the expectation that they can get access to any information anywhere, anytime and

without any delay. “Real Time” has now become the new frontier of Mobile !

Our Take…

Mobile today is where customers are and where things happen. But this puts a big strain on brands which were

already busy upgrading their marketing from a basic broadcasting machine to a bidirectional conversation engine.

We now need to prepare for both customer interactions and mobile experiences to be managed and updated in

real-time. A client “showrooming” in a store may be lost in a matter of minutes. Or a mobile user may not wait

another week or two and defect before we publish updates to our apps.

At a time when reactiveness is turning into a key competitive advantage, the

ability to provide real-time updates and engage into real-time communication

with mobile customers is becoming critical.

3. Apps winning vs. Mobile WebWhether with consumers or with enterprises, apps are on a roll. And the race is on between Apple and Google.

Google announced 50 billions downloads back in July 2013 and Apple now counts well over 60 billion downloads with

a record 3 billion downloads in the single month of December 2013!

Ovum even says that they will drive the next phase in the evolution of enterprise mobility

“Smartphone users spend 87% of their time using mobile apps.

iPad users spend 76% of their time using mobile apps”

- Nielsen

Our Take…

It’s clear that consumers and enterprise users prefer apps. They are faster, more customizable and easier to use. And

as Forrester states in their In Top Technology Trends for 2014 and Beyond, “a great digital experience is no longer a

nice-to-have”. However apps are also more costly to develop, maintain and optimize than websites.

Just like Facebook is doing internally with their own apps, look for the latest solutions that enable live changes and

optimization to native already-deployed apps to lower update and maintenance costs and improve app experience by

responding quickly to customer feedback.

Optimize your ROI with native A/B testing on your conversion pages without

resorting to new development or having to re-submit your app to the stores.

“Mobile Experiences can and should be customized

based on relevant customer information and behavior”

4. Context mattersMany enterprises have now under their belts several years of experience in building mobile apps. However mobile

ROI remains elusive as the vast majority of apps are struggling with retention, engagement and conversion.

Why? Because above all not all users are have the same needs and interests, and most don’t find their mobile

experience relevant enough…

Our Take…

Yankee Group calls it the future of highly relevant experiences. 93% of marketers are looking at using data and

adapting user experiences in order to increase retention and engagement.

Go beyond the “one-size-fits-all” approach for your apps. With mobile apps and the current CRM, tracking and

analytics technologies, we have more customer data on mobile than we ever had on the web. It is now time to use it

to deliver the optimal user experience!

For instance for a retailer, its mobile app should operate differently if the

customer is currently in store, next to the store or shopping from home.

5. The Smartphone, the real winner in Mobile?For a moment you thought you got it! We were just entering a mobile world dominated by smartphones... Right?

Well, think again! Tablets are effectively the ones taking over.

From the high end of smartphones (turning into “phablets”, which in reality are mini-tablets) to the notebooks being

cannibalized by “hybrid tablets” and the core segment of 10” tablets, mobile is effectively turning into… a Tablet world!

Our Take…

According to IDC, Tablet sales just passed desktop as well as laptop sales in the last quarter of 2013 and will pass the

total sales of PCs by 2015! But with tablets, we’re not only talking about market size but also purchasing power As a

matter of fact the average tablet purchase is 54% higher than on smartphone and 21% higher than on PC! (Adobe).

A successful mobile presence can’t sustainably ignore tablets. But from a user profile and a user scenario perspective,

they are hardly like smartphones or even PCs, so they deserve a strategy of their own.

Understanding how users view and use tablets will help delivering a successful

tablet-centric mobile user experience while leveraging some of the assets

already developed for smartphones

6. Mobile as a “Key Innovation Factor”Digital and mobile technologies have so much changed the way companies can connect and converse with their

customers that they are no longer considered as support tools but rather as corporate innovation drivers and

competitive differentiators.

As a result, decisions over IT systems, especially customer facing platforms (and specifically in the mobile space) are

more and more frequently driven by business decision makers (notably CMOs…).

Our Take…

Starbucks or Amazon in the US, Burberry or Marks & Spencer in the UK, Voyages-SNCF or McDonald’s in France and

many others have shown that it is possible to shake up an entire industry by providing a differentiated and winning

mobile experience. And these organizations are relentlessly driven by creating an exceptional user experience more

than anything else…

Mobile will deliver the next generation of competitive advantages and will significantly disrupt market leaders in

virtually every industry. The question is should you choose to settle for “me-too” mobile strategy, running the risk of

being “disrupted” or should you aim at being the one standing out?

Differentiate your businesses by providing differentiated, optimized and

personalized mobile solutions to your customers…

7. Brick and mortar players will communicate with shoppers in real-time

Retailers will begin to target shoppers in real-time, with relevant and personalized, location-based offers, according to

eMarketer report, “Key Digital Trends for 2014.” Push Notifications will complement effectively email and SMS and

consolidate their lead as the best mobile engagement solution by leveraging specific behavioral, usage and CRM data.

Our Take…

In its report “Push Mobile Engagement To The Next Level”, Forrester sees Push Notifications extending messaging

“well beyond smartphones into from TVs to cars, via game consoles, wearables, and other portable devices”.

Push Notifications will set apart two kinds of marketers. On one hand those who are using Push as a blind broadcast

channel and risking being opted out by annoyed recipients. On the other hand are the ones smart about enabling

users to control their messaging preferences and efficient in integrating their push strategy to their cross-channel and

CRM platforms to deliver targeted, relevant and customized information.

By combining the engagement capabilities of push notifications and the

opportunities of contextual marketing, brands will harness great new powers.

But with great powers come great responsibilities, such as respecting the

privilege of addressing customers on their most intimate device….

8. Mobile and Commerce According to IDC, by 2017, 87% of connected devices sales will be tablets and smartphones, so there is no doubt that

Mobile is going to play a dominant role in e-Commerce (m-Commerce).

At the same time Gartner predicts that by 2018 less than 1% of consumer mobile apps will be considered a financial

success by their developers and Onavo reports that only about 1,000 applications in the US have more than 50,000

monthly active users…

Our Take…

Just having a mobile presence doesn’t guarantee a run-away success… There are lots and lots of contenders and only

a few will emerge as real winners in terms of monetization of their mobile presence.

Fortunately, there are many ways to effectively monetize a mobile app. Amazon or e-Bay have show that digital pure-

players can drive conversions on mobile. Financial Times and New York Times have now more digital customers (and

most of them on mobile) than they ever had paper readers, Starbucks and McDonald’s demonstrate that brick-and-

mortar can generate over 10% of their overall in-store revenue via mobile and Sephora or apps like Shopkick that

mobile can actually drive customers TO stores (and not always away from them!)

Mobile certainly requires skills and agility to test out all the ways to make

monetization a reality... But when you find your “perfect recipe”, mobile does

provide today the scale and reach for an outstanding ROI…

9. Your Smartphone as a universal Remote ControlDespite the hype, 2014 might not be THE year of “wearables” (just yet). According to Juniper Research, they represent

a ‘nice to have’ and not yet a ‘must have’ for consumers but they are certainly making a big splash on many markets.

In any case, it is clear that the smartphone is increasingly reaching out from the digital world into the “real world” by

adding intelligence into virtually every object surrounding us. It is becoming the remote control for our life.

Our Take…

In a world where everything can be viewed through the “eyes” of our smartphones, it raises the question on how

mobile may totally reinvent products, companies and industries. When Nike produces Nike Running or Nike Fuel Band

apps, is it still in the sportswear business or does it moves into the healthcare or entertainment business? (the latter is

what Nike hints at)

On the other end, when a mobile-native newcomer like Uber tackles the problem of “moving people” or when

Sensoria re-thinks about what you should expect from fitness garment, they are bringing a completely new paradigm

to market that will take unsuspecting incumbents by surprise…

Think ahead about how mobile might help redefine your product and service

offerings and start innovating now before a new breed of competitors jump into

your space...

10. The race between identity and privacyRecent international developments keep demonstrating how much privacy can be at risk in an increasingly digitalized

society. This obviously raises many legitimate concerns from users. At the same time there has never been so much

social sharing and users have never been signed-in or identified via so many services!

Our Take…

Privacy is now front and center on many governments and user groups agendas. But beyond the necessary

regulations and the industries initiatives to self-regulate, common (business) sense can help reach the delicate balance

between sometimes schizophrenic customer desires.

Customers are at the same time reluctant to share contact details and information but hate irrelevant emails, being

disturbed at inappropriate times, or not being treated individually. In a mobile-centric world, successful brands won’t

be the ones bombarding their users but rather the ones which will carefully design hyper-personalized messages and

experiences and hand out to customers significant control over how brands engage with them.

Connecting the dots between enterprise CRM data, Mobile Analytics and

customer preferences to build the best customized mobile experience and

communication for each user is what success looks like

Brought to you by

• Launch date: April 2nd 2014

• Apply for info and beta on:

www.azetone.com

• And check out our progress at:

Mobile Personalization, A/B Testing and Real-Time App Updates

Sources & Credits

Azetone: www.azetone.com

Business Intelligence: http://www.businessinsider.com

Emarketer: www.emarketer.com

Forrester: www.forrester.com

Gartner: www.gartner.com

Golden Gekko: www.goldengekko.com

IDC: www.idc.com

Nielsen: www.nielsen.com

Ovum: www.ovum.com

Yankee Group: www.yankeegroup.com

For more information: http://www.slideshare.net/Phildu1