Revisiting last years predictions

It is that part of the year where many analysts in the mobile technologically community make their predictions for 2015 and how it will impact the day-to-day life of consumers. Rather than just discuss the trends that will emerge this year, we thought it might make interesting reading to review a couple of predictions that were made for 2014 and to assess how accurate they were. With that being the case, let’s find out whether the consensus for 2014 was true or false.

• E-commerce and M-commerce set to increase over the year

Back at the start of 2014, many industry experts confidently predicted that e-commerce and m-commerce would make a big splash during the year. It appears that this was the case as giants such as Amazon and eBay continued to grow, offering more ways for customers to shop and purchase online. With e-commerce still significantly ahead of m-commerce in terms of pounds spent, 2015 looks like much more of the same in terms of how we shop online using our PCs/laptops and mobile devices.

One interesting point to mention is the increase of e-commerce in emerging markets, fueling more expansion in this area. The recent growth of Alibaba, the largest technology listing in US history (exceeding Facebook) is testament to the growth in this industry.

• Social media records will be broken during the World Cup

With the football world cup held in Brazil last year, many analysts predicted that social media would be the place to comment, discuss and interact during the summer. This proved to be the case as social media activity hit an all time high during the world cup. For example, there were over 35 million tweets and more than 350 million world cup related conversations on Facebook.

This highlights the growing trend globally that social media can help businesses, individuals or events reach a global audience thanks to the likes of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

• Mobile apps will dominate versus mobile web usage

As we have seen over the last few years, mobile usage has increased year upon year. Many leading figures within the community predicted that as users, we would continue to favour apps as opposed to mobile websites. For example, in 2014 the time spent using apps increased to 86 per cent while at the same time mobile web use dropped to approximately 14 per cent. This trend is largely due to mobile apps providing a richer customer experience and more engagement as opposed to a mobile web page.

• Wearable technology will become mainstream

Back at the start of 2014, many respected communities online predicted a big advancement in wearable technology and in particular Google Glass and smart watches. However, the reality was neither product made a global impression. While Google Glass is an impressive piece of technology, consumers are still uncomfortable with having a recording device in the middle of their face. With Apple set to launch their smart watch in the coming months, it could be a make or break year for wearable technology.

As we have seen, many of the predictions for 2014 were indeed proved correct. It will be interesting to assess how technology evolves over the current year and how this will affect both businesses and individuals. To find out how Eazi-Apps can help your business join the mobile revolution please contact us today.