Corporate Mobility Becomes Mainstream and Outlines the Shape of the Future with Mobile Business 2.0. Part 4

Gartner: The most significant trends shaping the Wireless and Mobile industry. The most significant trends in the wireless and mobile industry that will affect people during the next five years.

7. Mobile Business 2.0 The final trend to emerge will be mobile business 2.0, the next generation of mobile business. While the exact specifics and revenue predictions are not clear, we can clearly see the shape of mobile business 2.0 and, most importantly, what will guide it. Many web 2.0 principles will apply to mobile business 2.0, including business models, cultural behaviours, technologies and interaction. While web business often starts by searching, mobile consumers will not want to browse results on tiny screens. Gartner predicts a future of mobile 'ambient business', where consumers explore their environment to find relevant value propositions. The web is like an encyclopaedia, where you always start with the index. Mobile business 2.0 will be more like a theme park where you explore what's around you. Data will be selectively pushed to the user based on context, matching the users' needs, interests, mood, location and even recent behaviour. The use of 'snack' business and fleeting experiences will arise to exploit dead time, for example, 'buy from this shop in the next ten minutes and we'll give you a discount'. Mobile business 1.0 (or mobile commerce) failed because the industry tried to transplant all web principles into the phone (e.g. WAP). Truly valuable services have not been widely available and the location based services that we have seen have not been very sophisticated. There are opportunities for mobile operators to enable people to make better use of a few minutes of dead time than reading the news or playing a game. Location, combined with personal presence, creates transient communities, which offers an opportunity for better use of time or marketing. Even though the conditions for mass market mobile business 2.0 in Western Europe will not arrive before the 2009-2011 timeframe businesses should start planning now and exploit the short term mobile business 1.5 opportunities that exist. Immediate opportunities include providing 'what's on' information and offering bookings, simple machine-to-machine (M2M) applications, location based services, providing local information, and first generation mobile peer-to-peer (P2P) interaction. Gartner Wireless and Mobile Summit

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