Judeumeh's Blog

Mobile Apps are leading the way on innovative use of digital and mobile technology, and last Thursday’s BCS event provided a glimpse of emerging trends, opportunities and threats they present to both business and consumers.

The speaker, Katie Lips is a mobile strategist, digital entrepreneur and regular speaker on this topic, and she gave a good overview of the world of mobile apps and key emerging trends across several areas including:

1.  Publishing – this consists mainly of innovative use of edited and layered content to create compelling apps that demonstrate the powerful multi-format capabilities of mobile digital devices, especially tablets.

2.  Games – interestingly, games have emerged as the top grossing apps on mobile devices

3.  App Discovery – with top App stores boasting over 100k apps each, there is an obvious need for easy ways to discover new apps, (and of course there’s an app for that too). Interestingly, it seems no one has yet managed the old Amazon style recommendation technique e.g. “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought…”

4.  Tech tricks – the ability to create a wow effect on the back of mobile / digital technology is always a winner, and the Garageband keyboard demo on the IPad was a case in point

5.  Micro social networks – this is exemplified by runaway apps such as Instragram, which lean towards the “fewer is better” approach to social networking, with closer, more intimate groups built around the user

6.  Apple first – Finally, this is more a fact than trend because Apple’s ecosystem was and still is the primary proving ground for many app developers and innovators, before moving on / out into other platforms.

Katie Lips - Talking "Emerging Trends in Mobile Apps"

Overall, the key message I took away from this excellent event organised by the London Central Branch, was that mobile apps ecosystem, content and business models offer an interestingly unspoiled landscape of immense possibilities, where bold innovation and experimentation is the order of the day, and the brave can reap amazing rewards. However, it is also pitted with remarkable risk, uncertainties and outright dangers especially with respect to digital content and copyright which is still struggling to get a handle on PCs and CD burners, without the head ache of mobile, social, digital content mashups – the pain is just around the corner on that one.