Mobile Predictions for 2018
It’s time to get our crystal balls out and look at what the next 12 months will bring. Here are a few of our thoughts on what will – and won’t – happen in 2018:
1 - Battery life will continue to be a problem. At full speed, the Bugatti Veyron supercar runs out of fuel in about 10 minutes. Mobile phones are the same way, and even the best phones use a lot of juice. There are a lot of promising battery developments on the horizon, but it doesn’t look like anything major is going to happen in 2018. Enjoy being tethered to the wall for another year.
2 - Someone is going to follow the iPhone X into the 3D world. Apple set the bar for everyone else (as they always do), which means that the next generation of high-end phones from other manufacturers are going to need 3D phones to keep pace with the market leader. These new offerings might even be better than Apple’s.
3 - Mobile wallets will finally become a thing. ApplePay has been a disappointment, to put it mildly. That’s because mobile devices have been so easy to hack - using gummy bears and Play-Doh - that keeping all of your financial data on your phone is like storing your wallet on the front seat of your car. As security gets better, expect the last major hurdle in e-commerce to vanish.
4 - IoT and mobile devices will continue to converge. The fabled Internet of Things is always a year away, and always will be. But 2018 just might be different because IoT has actually gotten good enough to be useful - and most of that is due to improved mobile connectivity.
5 - Amazon’s going to hit us with something no one saw coming. While the rest of us were playing checkers, Jeff Bezos was smacking Garry Kasparov silly in chess. Amazon doesn’t want to sell books - they want to own and control data. Don’t be surprised if we get Alexa-ed with some new platform to eliminate the barriers to shopping (and to creating data that Bezos can monetize) from anywhere.
Am I right or am I wrong? Let’s check in in December and see what I correctly predicted...and what I missed.