Every year someone jumps on their soap box and proclaims “this is the year of mobile.” Months come, months go and we do inch closer to being a truly mobile world. Manufactures continue to battle it out as they develop new devices whether it be smartphones or tablets. Retailers have also made the adjustment to give consumers responsive sites, or sites that are “mobile friendly” as this is quite often the place people turn to to browser or surf before they make an online or offline purchase.
With increased consumer demand and availability of the devices, advertisers have also been able to take advantage of the mobile landscape. It has been said that mobile advertising was between $8 and $10 billion in 2013, double that of 2012, proving there has been a shift from desktops to mobile devices. Canadian wireless carriers, credit card companies, and vendors such as Square and PayPal have been each launching their over version of a mobile wallet over the last two years. On one hand this is good, but too many choices and lack of consistent standards have left consumers still wondering if they should trust in the idea of a mobile wallet. Security and privacy have also been big concerns of consumers so we are close. So overall no one vendor has a complete end to end solution that consumers are using today.
We caught this tweet from @withoutayard which is quite timely…
Have become so used to @Uber cabs I have to stop myself from hopping out of regular taxi rides without paying.
— Meghan Warby (@withoutayard) December 29, 2013
Venture capitalist Fred Wilson has an interesting blog post a few weeks ago where he shared a night out experience that was all paid for via his smartphone. Any would-be entrepreneurs out there should read between the lines and pick up a few ideas for a new business.
So are we there yet?