Predictions for mobile in 2009

Every year Russel and Carlo at Mobhappy publish their predictions for the year ahead in mobile and go over their predictions for the previous year to see if they were right or not!  Russel has kicked off this year's chrystal ball gazing here http://mobhappy.com/blog1/2008/12/02/what-will-happen-in-2009/ and is asking for people to submit their own.

So here's the 2009 mobile predictions from mjelly:

Prediction #1 - in western markets we will start to see the first media "scares" about children using mobile social networks like mocospace, itmsy.com etc as we have already seen in South Africa with Mxit.

Prediction #2 - A number of VC funded mobile startups will fail to get second round funding and will either close down or have to radically re-engineer their cost and revenue models

Prediction #3 - Admob will hit 10bn ads served per month ;-)

Prediction #4 - Mobile commerce will start to take off opening up a new stream of affiliate-based revenues for mobile internet services

Prediction #5 - Flat rate data will start to move onto prepaid phone tariffs, following Virgin Mobile's 30p all you can eat offer in the UK, opening up the mobile internet to new segments (e.g. Youth)

Prediction #6 - A number of operators and handsets manufacturers (e.g. T-Mobile, Nokia) will launch app stores, whilst these will fail to generate the same excitement as the iphone app store, developers will benefit massively as the software market opens up to new devices

Prediction #7 - Some of the successful mobile internet services in Asia such as mobile comics and books will start to take off in the West

Prediction #8 - As interest in "web 2.0" declines, "mobile 2.0" will be the new trendy theme in Silicon Valley

Prediction #9 - Despite the economic downturn there will be a couple of sizeable acquisitions of mobile internet startups by media companies and operators

Prediction #10 - Broadcast Mobile TV will still fail to take-off

What do you think will happen in 2009?

Comments

[Sarah Keefe]

A great list of predictions James. Bango has done its own, just 5 from us, which you can find at http://news.bango.com.

Tightening marketing budgets demand more controlled spending and better value. Mobile starts to look a lot more appealing, offering attractive costs of acquisition and more precise targeting than offline or PC delivery.

Cheers,
Sarah Keefe, Bango

[Salvador Gonzalez]

I too believe, and it is showing. That social networks can be the turning point in the popularization of mobile Web (WAP)

Regards!

[james (mjelly)]

Thx for the comments guys

Sarah - interesting list thanks for sharing

ASG - you may well be right there