There will be more tablets in the workplace this year, but no operating system will emerge as the market standard; television will strengthen its status as the "super media"; and mobile advertising is coming.
These are some of the big trends identified by Deloitte's technology, media and telecommunications practice for this year, based on a survey of more than 30,000 mobile consumers in 15 countries.
More than half of all "computers" are not computers any more
Five decades ago, some were of the view that there was a market for only five computers in the entire world. Deloitte's current thinking is that it is feasible for an individual to own five computers.
On a typical evening, many millions of living rooms around the world are now likely to boast more computers than cushions. One of the reasons is the emergence of new devices. This year, PC sales are expected to reach 400 million units. However, Deloitte estimates the combined sales of smartphones, tablets and non-PC netbooks will exceed 400 million.
Traditional PCs will probably remain the workhorse computing platform; but this year could be the tipping point as we move away from a standardised PC world to a far more heterogeneous one. Deloitte predicts that more than 25 per cent of all tablet computers this year will be purchased by enterprises, and believes this trend will grow next year and beyond. The trend was started by consumers who bought the tablet as a personal media device and realised the benefits it also has for work, and they have now convinced their companies of these benefits. Estimates predict that 70 to 80 per cent of Fortune 500 companies will support tablets for some of their workforce. The retail and healthcare sectors are the obvious benefactors and are expected to be the driving force of tablets in enterprise.
Operating system diversity: no standard emerges on the smartphone or tablet
Deloitte predicts that by the end of this year, no operating system will have a dominant market share. Some will have in excess of 5 per cent, but no single player will become the de facto standard, as has been the case in other computing ecosystems.
So this will be a year of choice. Yet while that sounds good, it is not without its costs. This level of fragmentation causes problems and creates additional cost for application developers, media companies and IT departments.
The increasing number of portable devices (so far especially smartphones) with unlimited data usage puts significant pressure on the operators' cellular networks, and expansions of these networks are costly. Many telecommunications operators have previously established Wi-Fi hotspots in key locations, viewing them as a discrete service. It is expected that Wi-Fi networks will provide support capacity to constrained cellular networks in coping with the pending deluge of data.
Television's "super media" status strengthens
Deloitte predicts that this year television will solidify its status as the current super media, defying some conjecture of imminent obsolescence. Its strength as an advertising medium is likely to be proven again by a second year of solid growth and the fifth consecutive year of an increased share of advertising revenue.
With newspaper advertising in decline, it is expected that advertising revenue for television by next year will be more than double that for newspapers, the number two advertising medium.
Despite the sale of tens of millions of television sets that offer a form of built-in programme search capability, the vast majority of programmes will be delivered through the traditional "pushed" basis. Television as we know it will remain the strongest advertising medium.
Mobile advertising's year is soon to come
With more than 5 billion subscribers worldwide, mobile phones are often cited as an obvious medium for advertising. However, mobile advertising revenue is, at most, expected to reach a few billion dollars this year, a fraction of the US$500 billion (Dh1.83 trillion) advertising sector, and much less than the tens of billions of dollars generated by more than 2 billion internet users. Mobile phones have some obvious attractions for the advertising industry, being a personal device and having the capability to identify the location of the user.
However, an advertisement displayed on a 4-inch mobile screen is never going to have the same impact as a high-definition advertisement conceived for a 40-inch screen.
After several years of expectations of significant growth, Deloitte predicts mobile advertising will not be strong this year, but that it will grow stronger with every year that passes.
As underlying technologies improve, so will the versatility of mobile advertising develop. As an example, image-based search, whereby taking a picture of a product via a mobile phone returns a list of nearby suppliers of that product, is difficult to deliver this year but may be feasible next year.
Saba Sindaha is partner in charge for the TMT industry at Deloitte in the Middle East