We will mobilise revenue-generating processes
Brett Belding, director of mobile strategy, MobileIron
For the past 15 years, enterprises and consumers have been leveraging mobile devices primarily to communicate and collaborate. Today’s mobile devices are pocket-able supercomputers, and when they’re combined with broadband networks and public cloud services, they become extremely powerful business tools.
Next year will be the first year that companies mobilise revenue-generating processes. Retail and Banking led this charge, moving large processes, like shopping and check deposits, to smartphones and tablets. This move will continue to expand into other industries as the smartphone and tablet replace the PC as a person’s primary compute device.
It will also be the year the wearable becomes a mainstream consumer and enterprise device. “Data Snacking” is the ability for a person to consume small, frequent amounts of data on a smart watch. This phenomenon will continue to grow as watchmakers cater to smaller wrists and high fashion demands. These devices will start to be used as part of multi-factor authentication schemes as well.
We will see startups taking on established brands in enterprise software
Brian Katz, head of mobile UX and innovation, Sanofi
I envision two trends dominating mobile in 2015. The first is a radical change in what we consider passwords and security. With the introduction of TouchID from Apple and the acceptance of standards from the likes of the FIDO Alliance, which seek to move apps away from the reliance on passwords. We will see great leaps in 2015 towards easier mobile apps access while maintaining security. This will also go a long ways towards eliminating forgotten and weak passwords. While passwords will never fully go away, they will be replaced and augmented by better solutions.
Second, from a B2B perspective, we will see a lot more startups taking on established brands in enterprise software in 2015. There isn’t necessarily a lot of money left for app developers for consumers unless you are one in a million, but every enterprise is looking to mobilize their processes. Enterprises also have the budget to pay for a premium features in app business model. This will lead to many startups and development houses building better app mousetraps for the business world.
The enterprise mobility megatrend will drive some of the largest corporate expenditures
Rob Tiffany, global technology lead: IoT & enterprise mobility, Microsoft
As hard as it is to believe, millions of Win32 desktop apps and Web 1.0 Intranet sites are still powering businesses around the world. Written using a variety of programming languages over the last two decades, many of them connect directly to enterprise databases. Moving into 2015, the enterprise mobility megatrend will drive some of the largest corporate expenditures seen in years as organisations bring these vertical, line-of-business solutions to mobile platforms.
The new Apple/IBM partnership is reflective of the drive to fulfill the needs of enterprises currently unmet by app stores filled with millions of consumer apps. Direct connections to databases will be replaced by scalable Web APIs. Large, monolithic desktop apps will be replaced by multiple, task-focused, contextually-aware mobile apps. Intranet sites will be replaced by responsive, HTML5 web and hybrid apps. Lastly, complex desktop paradigms of the past will give way to a simplified, beautiful UX.
We will see more context-aware apps
Benjamin Robbins, co-founder, Palador
There are two big trends for 2015 that will enable massive efficiency gains in the mobile experience. The first is context-aware apps. This has huge implication for both consumers and enterprise users. From a consumer perspective, this means that apps and services will be tailored to meet our needs in the moment - think concierge that provides spot-on recommendations based on your past behaviors. For the enterprise this means better coordination within teams and with your clients by surfacing information that makes sense in the moment. The days of searching for a document from previous meetings are coming to a close.
The second big mobile trend that will begin to take off in 2015 is the move away from native app experiences and the move towards interactions into the notification and lock screens. This will save users heaps of time over needing to open an individual app to reply, approve, like, or check-in. Users will still go to the native app for more in-depth experiences, but quick actionable items will move into a combined notification stream. You will begin to work in the combined stream, not in an app.
Battery performance will finally catch up with daily demands
Holger Mueller, VP & principal analyst, Constellation Research
It will be a good year for the users of smartphones, as network continue to mature with LTE and LTE-A while competition amongst carriers will make mobile service more affordable than ever. One of the brightest spots is that we expect battery performance to (finally) catch up with daily demands, as display resolution and screen sizes will slow down, giving users a working device for most of their day of usage.
On the user interface side, we will see more advanced and easier to use interfaces, more powerful support of swipe from bezel operations and more support and usage of voice recognition in most applications. Location-based services will continue to thrive, likely with more social and m-commerce discovery. And it will become easier for enterprises to build mobile applications, as a number of code free, end user friendly mobile app creation platforms will hit the mainstream.
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