Top 10 Mobile Predictions for 2008

New Year, new challenges, hopefully…re-newal.

To truly do justice as a prognosticator you need to commit for the long term, being able to put up when now becomes then. In only 365 short days, someone is likely to call you on your projections. I recall when I was writing business cases back in 1997 for then PacBell Wireless, I had to plan out 10 years–a ludicrous exercise in such an early stage industry. My SMS case was eventually tabled since the parent owned a paging company! Within 18 months the paging company was sold. Within two more years, the US finally had SMS interoperability, and within another two years, SMS was a billion $ industry in the US. That’s the difficulty of projecting, your thinking is too framed by current conditions. Now, being a middle aged renegade, I’ve discovered that I’ve gained a modicum of analytical skills and can at least see breaking trends as opposed to long term certainties. Hence, here are my Mobile Predictions for 2008.

1) The rise of the social networks will continue unabated, which will have a ripple effect on the mobile messaging business. So much so, that these messaging entry points will begin to have a greater influence on the structure of the messaging business going forward. As more volumes transit via the increase in social network nodes, the operator control over the messaging business will begin to weaken, but not break.

2) MMS, albeit considered a stepchild, will slowly break to its long tail effect. Already, MMS is increasing due to increased picture transfers and broader innovative mobile messsaging applicaitons that are coming online. Orange FT expects that this year alone it will account for 5% of messaging revenues.

2) Helio will collapse. Sprint will falter for most of 2008.

3) Samsung and LG will gain increasing market share in the handset category. Above the horizon they continue to show innovation and vision in their handsets. Below the horizon, Samsung has launched an innovation outpost in Silicon Valley, and have a dedicated corporate venture fund seeking investments in start ups to capture cutting edge opportunities that are developing.

4) Apple will sell over 8 million iPhone units in N. America by the end of 2008. Apple will continue to affect how US carriers launch handsets, but less so internationally.

5) Apple will launch the iPhone with China Mobile in China by June 2008 in anticipation of the Beijing Olympics. By the EO 2008, they will sell over 500,000 units in China alone.

6) China’s direct influence on the mobile business will continue to increase significantly. The convergence of their coming out party at the Olympics combined with Chinese initiatives in 3G, 4G and Mobile TV will scale to influence the direction of the industry. Consider this: China’s mobile users sent over 429 BILLION messages in 2007, the equivalent of 967 per user which places them #1 for Country Message Density. Never overlook such scale and size in a potential market influencer.

7) The world will have over 3.75 billion mobile users by the end of 2008.
a) Handset “Greening” will begin to emerge as an issue. With only 1% of mobile handsets recylcled each year globally, hundreds of millions of handsets are heading to land fills. Probably 65% to 85% could be re-used. This will start to get traction in the consumer culture around the world. The question is how to addresss it.

Google’s Android will miss the mark and not be available on a handset until 2009 at the earliest.

9) Moble video in the US will continue to grow and expand, meeting current levels in Europe by the EOY.

10) Mobile Transactions will get traction, driven primarily by influences out of the European and Asian markets while the US market will continue to lag in development.