Trends 2016: Mobility personified

By Govind Bansal

Arrival of Fourth Generation

2016 is going to be a very significant year for the mobile industry as India is rapidly rolling out high speed 4G networks on a much larger scale for the first time. It will definitely go to impact data consumption trends in the industry. So, the first trend will be the launch of fourth generation mobile services. It will provide a faster and more stable data network because earlier people were comfortable with using less multimedia as a source of entertainment, but now Indians expect to do more on their smartphones. The adoption of 4G will help them to satiate their needs for faster mobile internet connection. We expect that the number of 4G subscribes will reach 20 million by the end of 2016.  Moreover, the strong competition among mobile service providers will help people get quality data networks for the least possible price.

Entertain and educate by watching videos

Videos are a big trend in the Indian market because as already mentioned, 4G technology has just started coming up in India and strengthening its foothold in the country, it will become easy for people to download videos and movies on their smartphones on the spur of the moment. Mobile phones have surpassed both the television and the desktop/laptop in terms of time spent on these devices. Millennials prefer smartphones over TV or desktop to watch videos and gather information. A lot of curators of internet namely Storypick, and BuzzFeed choose the best information out of the existing information on the net and then create entirely new perspectives and ideas by efficiently using videos and images. Mobile handset companies need to make mobile phones that can enhance the experience of watching a video and at the same time provides good connectivity in terms of network so the user’s experience would be seamless and unproblematic.

Better Ad experiences

In 2016, the trend of the development of mobile app services will accelerate at least four times faster than the internal IT organization capacity to deliver them. There is still a large number of websites that do not perform better on mobile devices. Mobile apps have superior ad experiences and have richer ad formats than the mobile web. Moreover, mobile web inventory is also at risk of ad blocking. Therefore, to evade mobile ad-blocking, publishers will be forced to make more relevant content for their in-app inventory.

Mobile payments

Mobile payments will go to another level of simplification. With the popularity of mobile wallets such as Paytm, mobile payments will become mainstream. In 2016, we will see consumers will be more inclined to use their mobiles to purchase affordable, daily products. And we will also witness an emergence of new players, including banks, commerce, retail providers to get united on a common platform to make more active mobile users. These are great for offline purchases as well.

Personalized Content

Traditionally, everything was very general, for instance, whether you are a kid or an adult, or someone who loves cricket or reading a newspaper; you’ll get the same information on the first page. But now with the help of technology, you can decide what you want to read on the front page. You are the one who can choose the content you want to see. Now everything is very personalized. There are a lot of companies working on personalized content so that relevant information can be shared. This process not only maintains privacy, but it also enhances the user's experience.

Variable Technology

Health and nutrition monitoring is expanding and it is going to be one of the biggest factors that will be going to push the sales of variable technology. Besides health and nutrition, variable technology will help in introducing a better way in the consumption of multimedia or cognitive reality.

Specialization

A person who googles to buy a handset is directed to websites such as the Flipkart or Amazon but specialization will help people to go directly to the website by installing that application.

(The author, Govind Bansal, is co- founder, Aqua Mobiles)