Recently, I sat down with Pat Flynn and recorded an GBU Innovation podcast with him. This was posted […]
Category Archive: Devices
It is once again time for my annual (14th consecutive to be specific) predictions for the mobile industry. When I wrote last year’s predictions, I (and really no one) could have foreseen the momentous events that 2020 brought the world. From the global COVID-19 pandemic to the significant Black Lives Matter protests, and actions, climate-related events, to the US presidential election, its aftermath and more. All have impacted the wireless / mobile industry, but in many ways, the mobile industry has responded well to the pandemic, which has been the overriding issue for the planet in 2020.
Once again, it’s prediction time again. But this post is about how we did last year. As has been my standard, we look back at last year’s predictions to see how accurate they were. For 2019, I was 86% correct, which improved on my 2018 forecasts, which were 81.5% correct.
While the new iPhone 12 lineup will be a great boost for Apple, this is an even better boost for 5G – not only in the United States, but around the world.
It’s the first year of a new decade. It’s an election year during a volatile time. There’s a lot of pending decisions and growing technologies. It’s going to be exciting!
At the beginning of 2019, we were in an extended government shutdown, but that blip is now ancient history. Since then, so much has happened – much of it good, but some of it not so good. 5G became a commercial reality; IoT flourished, but both also managed to disappoint in some areas. In our messaging world, rich communication services (RCS) gained ground, but mobile operators lagged, despite many actions from Google. Still, gains were made in all of these key areas.
Here we go again. This is the 12th consecutive edition of my mobile industry predictions, originally published in January of 2008. While we try to cover most major aspects of the mobile industry, we do tend to emphasize messaging-related topics as well as consumer engagement. But we also focus on key industry trends such as devices, mobile payments, and blockchain. If a trend begins to fall out of favor, then it may disappear from subsequent predictions. You can get a detailed review and accounting of my 2018 predictions here.
In the mobile industry, 2018 certainly did not disappoint in terms of trending activity. The T-Mobile acquisition of Sprint (still pending as of this writing), 5G, IoT, rich communications services (RCS), and network neutrality were dominant themes throughout the year.
Mobile World Congress (MWC) is the record-breaking annual get-together of over 108,000 attendees in Barcelona, Spain, interested in mobile, 5G, connected cars, devices, augmented reality, virtual reality, cloud computing, IoT, and much, much more. As I do most years, I attended (I believe this might have been my ninth). MWC is the most important event for the mobile-focused industry. This year, the theme was “Mobile: The Next Element.” The idea of this theme was to “reflect the elemental role of mobile in the lives of billions of people around the world.” While I was quite busy with over 15 meetings and discussions in our massive (and popular) SAP stand, I was able to walk around occasionally during the 4 days to try to get a better understanding of this year’s major themes.
Ok, this is definitely a late 2016 predictions article – especially since it is the week after Mobile World Congress 2016. But, in my defense, not THAT much happens until after MWC, so maybe I’m not cheating so much. This is my ninth (yes 9th!) annual prediction blog posting.
