Five trends in mobile devices from Gartner

Five Trends in Mobile Devices

Gartner has identified five key trends it says will affect the mobile device market through 2009:

1. Established Vendors Consolidate and New Players Join the Fray: New device vendors, such as Apple and Garmin, want to differentiate themselves, while big-name vendors, such as Motorola, face pressure as market shares decline and design innovation becomes increasingly challenging.
2. Device Vendors Build Out Ecosystems: Pressure from operators to lower the price of devices will drive some established players to seek out new sources of revenue from content and services sold to end users. This trend is epitomised by Nokia with Ovi, Sony Ericsson with PlayNow and Apple with its iTunes store. This new market will bring changes in relationships between vendors, operators and content providers.
3. Device Makers Remove Complexity for Users: Increasing device functionality and a need for differentiation will drive demand to simplify the user interface (UI) and service experience. As a consequence, mobile device vendors will need to build up their UI competencies while retaining familiarity and considering how users can move horizontally across their devices’ applications, rather than just vertically within them.
4. Mobile Devices Become Lifestyle Statements: Style will play more of a role across the range of devices, driven not only by fashion trends but also by consumers’ desires to reinforce lifestyle choices. Vendors need to have established platforms on which small changes to casings and colors can be made without affecting costs. They will also need to consider partnering with non-mobile companies and brands – such as consumer electronics, fashion or sports companies – to increase the lifestyle appeal and consumer reach of their products.
5. High-End Device Platforms Become “Field-Refreshable:” As cellular technologies become part of increasingly expensive consumer devices, vendors must manage ongoing support, upgrades and enhancement of drives. Because many users will hold onto high-end devices longer, these platforms will need more life cycle management in the form of upgrades and enhancements. Some vendors are implementing these “field refreshes” that can be made to support new digital rights management (DRM) requirements, download bug fixes, or download new applications, wallpapers or skins to keep devices up-to-date.