With 150,000 attendees and 3,000 vendors getting ready for the start of 2013 International CES, pundits near and far are popping up everywhere to shout out what they deem will be paradigm-bending ‘13 mobile marketing and technology trends.
And there are quite a few of these that could impact both consumers and businesses.
But first, the numbers.
The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), an Arlington, VA-based trade association that owns/produces CES, recently reported that shipment revenues for smart phones will be about $37 billion next year, with almost 126 million units shipped to dealers, a 16 percent increase from this year. And tablet computers will continue to be immensely popular – unit sales will exceed 105 million (+ 54 percent from ‘12), translating to almost $36 billion in shipment revenue.
To further accentuate just how quickly the mobile connected universe is expanding, check out these numbers from a November ’12 Pew Internet and American Life project:
• 56 percent of all U.S. mobile phone owners access the Internet.
• 85 percent of all U.S. adults own a mobile phone.
• 53 percent of mobile phone owners have smart phones.
• 88 percent check email on their phones each day.
Forbes reported earlier this month that two areas we’ll see... Read more
'Desktop Apps' Category 
App-athy
According to ABI Research, smartphone owners around the world will download about 36 billion mobile apps in 2012. That’s an average of almost 37 native app installs per user! Even with this tremendous usage, ABI estimates that app download numbers will decrease over the coming years.
Why the decrease? The staggering numbers listed above may be to blame. Smartphone users are overwhelmed by the variety of mobile apps available. What app is best? Should I download the free app or spring for the paid app? I should probably download an app to complete x, y and z, right?
While the iTunes App Store isn’t likely to disappear any time soon, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to sift through the 500,000 apps in the App Store, let alone other app sites. If a business “category” is already heavily populated, you might not even find an app that would be best suited for your needs.
After all of this back-and-forth, you have probably downloaded more apps than you can use which are now taking up precious memory on your phone.
The app clutter becomes overwhelming resulting in what I like to call “app-athy.”
How should you avoid this app overload? Here are a few questions to consider:
Why am... Read more
