10 Trends for 2010

Dan Calladine gives us his 10 key trends for next year…

1. Mobile The most interesting technological developments are likely to come in mobile services and applications. Penetration of the mobile web (3G) is rising, currently standing at 15% of all phone users globally (Ovum and Morgan Stanley), and the number of devices that are capable of offering a rich web experience is ballooning. By the end of next year, it will be relatively hard to buy a mobile phone without a sophisticated operating system, just as it
became hard to buy a non camera phone about 7 years ago.

If the average contract length is 18 months, then 2/3 of mobile users will be replacing their handsets next year, and many will be trading up to smartphones (phones with advanced features like email, web browsing, and the ability to edit documents). The market for apps will continue to grow, with the iPhone app store likely to hit 3 billion downloads before Christmas, and (maybe) 8 billion by the end of 2010. But there will be strong competition from Android (a slew of new phones expected in early 2010), Nokia (through Symbian and Maemo), and Blackberry. App developers will develop apps for all platforms.

2. Cloud computing is essentially the storage of information and resources in cyberspace rather than on an actual computer. Webmail is cloud computing – essentially you can access it from any computer or advanced phone anywhere in the world, as long as you have internet access.

The cloud also allows the simultaneous use of multiple devices – a laptop sometimes, a mobile at other times, and so on. Similarly software and music don’t need to be owned – they can just be accessed when needed. Spotify and MySpace Music are classic cloud examples – you don’t need to have the music downloaded to a device when you can access it whenever you want.

Google Wave is also an example of the cloud in action – documents and apps can live in a place to be accessed by multiple users. (Google Wave will make sense in 2010, by the way. Once it integrates with Gmail – ‘Do you want to turn this conversation into a Cloud?’ and YouTube ‘Do you want to watch this video with a friend?’ it will become much less baffling.)

3. Augmented Reality puts a virtual layer on top of a real world view. It’s can be a bit of a gimmick in desktop computing (turn on your webcam to see a mini movie), but in mobile apps it can be used to show local landmarks or utlities on top of a standard map or panoramic view, as seen through the phone’s
camera. Once these start to proliferate, maybe with voucher codes integrated, smartphones will suddenly have a whole new appeal.

4. Mobile payments In Japan, e-commerce giant Rakuten made 16% of all revenues from mobile sales in 2008, a number that has been steadily climbing from 4% in 2004. In the west, a few success stories like iPhone apps from companies like ebay and Pizza Hut show that mobile commerce is likely to be big business here too. And there’s more – the idea of using a mobile phone as a virtual wallet, or being able to ‘text’ money to friends seems likely to gain traction next year.

5. Asian influence will rise. Already China is the largest single online country, and the ability to create urls with Asian character sets will spur the web still further. The lack of common languages and keyboards will start to become less relevant with the rise of picture based search, such as Google Goggles, where you just need to take a picture of an object to find out about it.

Asian sites could well start to focus on the west, with search engine Baidu possibly Launching in the west, and messenger site QQ showing the rest of the world how to monetise through virtual goods.

6. Video 2010 sees YouTube celebrating its 5th birthday, with a global reach of nearly 40% of all internet users each month. 2010 could also be the year that it expands its offering into full length films, TV shows and sports events, either for rental or pay per view. It has worked hard over the past two years to secure professionally made content, and successfully screened back catalogue films mainly in the US, and concerts globally. It even screened the Olympics in 2008 in countries where the IOC had not sold the official rights. World Cup 2010 – will we be watching live games or even official highlights packages on
YouTube? The BBC’s iPlayer and Hulu could also grow beyond their national boundaries in 2010, but so far expansion has been slower than thought. YouTube could now be the most likely global video channel for long-form video.

7. Twitter will see huge growth, but a new type of user is emerging – one that treats it as one-to-many SMS and MMS. A year ago most of the people I knew
who were on twitter also had a blog. These days many new twitter users are refugees from other services like MySpace. Particularly in the US many twitter users seem to give their address as a MySpace page, and tread twitter as a comms network for their circle of friends. While a few months ago it was reckoned that young people don’t tweet, it seems that young people are increasingly getting into it. Twitter itself will stay as the core service, but extra functionality
to simplify it and make it more usable will come, like the list feature introduced recently. The money will start to come in too,although not through conventional ad placement or even search ads.

8. Measurement and understanding is key to communications – the ability to see how a campaign has worked, and understand why – and 2010 will see major advances in the measurement of social media effectiveness and mash ups in measurement between different media. Agencies are learning to see in the new climate, and getting more sophisticated in how they measure campaign effectiveness. Clients are also getting more open about sharing results of initiatives (where they are successful, clearly…). Expect to see examples of campaigns across all media measured in terms of revenues but also engagement, and combinations of the two.

9. Fun The digital world will be more fun. As people’s usage increases the web is seen as a mainstream entertainment channel, as demonstrated by the rise of video sites, social networks, and online gaming. More blogs will start aggregating random things, like cake decoration gone wrong, strange photos from yesteryear, or bizarre homemade items.

Similarly services like Foursquare will grow in popularity, due to their game-playing nature. Foursquare is a mobile service that asks you to report in whenever you visit a local place of interest – the person who checks in most often becomes the ‘Mayor’ – adding a fun twist to something that could have been dull. The number and complexity of stunts will also increase. In 2009, we’ve seen flashmobs, pop up shops and even events like the creation of a giant punch bowl for Courvoisier (”so big you can row in it”). Everyone likes these – there are bound to be more of them.

10. Rejectors
Finally, let’s not get carried away with our future visions. A lot of people do not yet live digitally. They don’t download music, much less download films or TV illegally. They aren’t on twitter or Foursquare, and didn’t apply for an invite to Wave. In fact in the UK, according to research commissioned by the Government’s Digital Inclusion Team, over 15% of the poulation have never used the internet. There are a lot of people who are very happy with mobile phones that will make calls and send texts, and not do much else. They don’t have a PVR, blu-ray or HDTV. These people will remain a very important
group, and mustn’t be ignored. Most of the ideas I’ve written about here are moving from the early adopters to the mainstream, but there will always be people who lag behind, and are happy to. The huge sales of Susan Boyle’s album on CD show that there are lots of people who don’t download (in the US only 6% of first week sales were through iTunes).

In essence we need to understand the future, but be aware that a lot of people are still living in the present.