The ‘year of mobile’ has come and gone

The world’s largest smartphone manufacturers Apple and Samsung showed signs that mobile is no longer an emerging technology or media platform in their latest results. So where do we look now for innovation?

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Apple’s overall revenues globally were largely flat with a net profit of $6.9bn – down from $8.8bn a year ago – and 22 per cent on the previous quarter in the three months to 29 June. 

This is despite “record” iPhone sales, but the sting in the tail for the company was that its average selling price of such devices sank from $613 a year ago to $580 during the latest reporting period.

Samsung missed analyst expectations despite it reporting record profits for a single quarter ($6.96bn).  

Similarly, Samsung reported that it expected its average selling price of mobile devices to slip in the upcoming trading period, as it reported its financial results.

Both are results are a sign of the smartphone market is reaching saturation, as they become a part of everyday life.

And marketers who proclaim themselves ‘innovative’ and ‘disruptive’ will already be looking elsewhere in the technological sphere for ‘the next big thing’. 

One area of focus for Silicon Valley giants is ‘wearable tech’, with Google already pushing its, albeit slightly odd looking, “Google Glass” to the market.

However, Google will refine the aesthetics of its offering by the time it becomes a mass marketing proposition. Similarly, Apple is heavily touted to be working on an ‘iWatch’.

Surely, a host of others are also working on similar internet-connected devices.

The real questions are what possibilities can this technology pose for marketers? Earlier this month we released evidence suggesting that internet-connected devices can provide more accurate data than traditional focus groups.

This is surely just a start.

Plus secondly, and arguably most importantly, will most marketers be caught unawares of this next wave of the digital revolution?

As soon as the early smartphone devices came out, it should have been apparent to many that consumers’ desktop computing habits would graduate to their mobiles – as evidenced in Facebook’s latest results. 

But the fact is many marketers just don’t have a strategy that integrates mobile.

We’re now in the second decade of the 21st Century and we see that the vast majority of brands opt to play it safe rather than envisage what’s possible, as evidenced by research earlier this week.

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