What Will 2011 Mean for Mobile Marketing

Well, another new year is almost upon us.  Before I talk about what I and some of my peers in the industry think 2011 will bring for Mobile Marketing, I just want to briefly summarise 2010.

For me, 2010 was the coming of age for Mobile Marketing.  I remember back in my BT days, as early as 2002, when we were developing strategies for mobile marketing based on advice from the soothsayers that are industry analysts who claimed mobile data and the services it enabled were the next big thing.  It's taken the mobile marketing industry significantly longer to establish itself (short battery life, small unusable screens and GPRS reliability and cost being the main barriers), being limited mainly to SMS marketing and even then this was dominated by would be SPAMmers.  However, I think Apple deserves a big pat on the back for taking the plunge and convincing the critical mass that touch-screens and apps were the thing to be doing on your mobile - "what?! You want to talk to someone with it!!!"...  Not happy with this, Apple brought out the iPad which, for me, really merges the gap between using mobile apps at home and on the move.  Since I got mine, the laptop hasn't been fired up.  The iMac does the word processing and power and (giant) screen hungry tasks, the iPad does the casual browsing stuff.  Who wants to wait for Windows to do its stuff before they can find out whether it's going to snow some more?  And what a waste of space the keyboard is when you can have a touch-sensitive screen...  Well done Apple for having the balls to launch the technology.  Looking forward to Google, Samsung and the others making touchpads and smartphones affordable for the masses (and pushing Apple to continue enhancing the iPad and iPhone to keep the competition at bay).  Finally, barcode marketing via mobile phones has finally started to emerge as a viable alternative to paper vouchers and coupons.  Strangely it's not the technology that's advanced really, but the user acceptance that mobile vouchering is safe and convenient.  Only downside for me was the false start that was Contactless transactions, using NFC technology.  Barclaycard did its best trying to get us excited about the possibility, but the arguments about ownership amongst the banks, networks, device manufacturers and card issuers has stalled this advancement.  Maybe we'll see a change in 2011 triggered by the intentions of Google who have included NFC technology in their latest Smartphone.


So, 2010 brought about the mobile revolution we've all been waiting for and I really believe 2011 will be a phenomenal year for anyone in the industry, particularly those of us passionate about mobile marketing.


I'm going to keep you in suspense a little longer and will reveal my thoughts on this closer to the New Year, but as a quick overview and introduction, here's what I think will be the biggies:

1. Smartphones will become relatively cheap making them the phone of choice and they'll be offered "free" as part of network contract bundles
2. The networks will continue to panic about GPRS and 3G network capacity with the situation being made worse by the continued growth in use of mobile apps on Smartphones and pads.  Wifi will come to the rescue and companies like BT Openzone will be kicking themselves for being market leaders (remember, the followers are normally the ones that make the money)...
3. Mobile marketing will become the norm with barcode vouchers leading the way.  There'll be some issues with spamming, similar to what we've now got with email marketing.
4. Every brand, every business will have a mobile app.
5. The snailmail (letters) logistics industry will start to see real impact on their bottom lines from mobile messaging substitution.  However, they'll make up the shortfall from all those Smartphones and iPad deliveries they'll need to make!
6. Mobile payments will start to appear with the banks getting closely involved.
7. Location based services will be prolific and every mobile app will be location driven, delivering the right content in the right way depending on where you are and what you're likely to be doing at the time. 
8. England will lose out on the rights to host the next World Tea Drinking Championships with the Maldives winning the rights to host the competition...  Some things never change afterall.