Video will be increasing important as bandwidth grows and video is increasingly available on mobile devices. The trend will encompass both short clips and longer feature content on YouTube, Chinese video-sharing site Youku and others, as well as interactive video communications via Skype, Facetime and other applications. And video will remain a valuable search strategy, since video content is 53 times more likely to get a page one Google ranking than text.
S-commerce and M-commerce will become significant sources of online sales, as people become both more comfortable with being offered chances to buy products and services in social media and on mobile, and as the technologies develop to make online purchases faster and easier.
A much larger percentage of mobile users will be smart – smartphones will have deeper and deeper penetration, and that will open up a larger universe for marketers to do larger scale and sophisticated mobile marketing. Now only 19% of handset owners in Asia Pacific have smartphones (compared to the North America’s 63%). Handset costs will drop and feature phones will begin to be marginalized. And Microsoft Windows Phone 8 will likely gain users even as Apple iOS and Android continue to grow.
There will be some interesting consolidation reflecting market shifts, convergence, and the changing dynamic brought by increasing use of the cloud. For example, RIM, maker of Blackberry, may potentially get bought, either by another handset maker looking to control the user base, or by a software/platform company (similarly to Google’s intention to buy Motorola). Yahoo! may well have a new shape in a year, with either a different structure, new owners or both.
The importance of Apps will decline after a frenzied couple of years of growth and development. With deeper penetration of smartphones, broadband, cloud computing, and HTML5, websites will have enhanced functionality, interactivity, power and speed. The need for specialized apps for mobile or tablet users will diminish and apps will increasingly service more as “bookmarks” for highly functional websites, or as ways for companies to generate revenue by selling premium apps.
Will my predictions prove correct or just dragon’s breath hot air? Let’s check a year later. In the meantime Kung Hei Fat Choi!