In case you were thinking that mobile was limited to email and games, market research firm IDC is predicting just the app marketplace will reach $35 billion by 2014. Given that marketing, merchandising, mobile commerce and mobile banking are all growing on the smartphone, plan on no small part of the $35 billion having something to do with moving money, i.e. mobile payments. It isn’t hyperbole to say that, as IDC puts it, “mobile applications have the power to change the way we live.”
One of the most striking impacts of the extraordinary growth and evolution of the mobile apps space over the past three years has been the “appification” of broad categories of interactions and functions in both the physical and the digital worlds. Apps can turn a smartphone into a physical trainer that keeps track of exercise levels and even your heartbeat, help cook a meal by walking you through the meal prep and then tell you when it is fully cooked, monitor your driving and offer tips to increase gas mileage, turn your phone into a flashlight, connect you with friends through social networking, find your location through mapping, offer early forms of virtual reality, automatically upload and share pictures, scan physical goods through barcode readers, wirelessly transfer files by physically bumping two devices together, and provide a whole range of business support from fleet management to payroll.
Read the IDC press release here: http://www.idc.com/about/viewpressrelease.jsp?containerId=prUS22617910§ionId=null&elementId=null&pageType=SYNOPSIS
