The top 10 mobile trends for 2016

Everyone knows mobile will have a huge influence on commerce and customer engagement this year.

But what specific mobile trends will have the most impact in 2016. Enterprise mobile and Big Data solutions and services vendor Digital Management Inc. (DMI) has released a list of the top 10 mobile trends for the coming year. They are:

1. Putting customer experience first. Customers expect one consistent cross-channel experience. Thus retailers will have to embed mobile customer experience in every part of the organization including sales, customer service, development, product management, marketing, administration and finance.

2. Reiventing the business. Enterprise mobility needs will move past developing mobile-optimized device management, sites and apps to holistically optimizing the entire business for mobile.

3. Security and privacy hit the boardroom. There will be growing boardroom-level demand for improved physical security, mobile device management, app management, enhanced authentication, security testing and protection as well as ongoing monitoring combining analytics with other monitoring tools.

4. Real solutions by the Internet of Things. The Internet of Things (IoT) will move beyond opportunistic solutions looking for a problem to solve to sensors collecting data to assist logistics, production, product development, efficiency and user experience.

5. Omnichannel and mobile payments break through. With the mobile share of e-commerce traffic and payments rapidly increasing, retailers need to redesign their omnichannel experience, including payments. The whole e-commerce experience must be redesigned “bottom up” for mobile.

6. Accelerating innovation through partnerships. To keep pace with the rapid development of mobile, companies need to use internal APIs and third-party partnerships to create new mobile services without major investments of time and money.

7. Programming languages and development tools. For 2016, DMI believes that a mix of Java, Microsoft C#/.Net and Java script will continue to dominate development generally, with Swift taking over iOS entirely. Web apps and app wrapping using PhoneGap/Cordova will make up the bulk of enterprise application development with Xamarin as the fastest growing cross-platform tool leaving the others behind. Native app development will continue to be the first choice for consumer apps.

8. Mobile ad formats changing. To be successful, mobile advertisers will have to adapt to ad-blocking and also recognize the need for mobile video advertising.

9. Putting data into action. Algorithms and “smart devices” will play a much larger role in real-time customer service, using machine learning to better predict and react to consumer needs.

10. Ensuring you don’t ‘overcloud.’ Cloud-based mobile service development offers many advantages. However, moving too many mobile services to the cloud can degrade performance and reliability. Storage of data into many places can also raise security and privacy issues.

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