Aptus Consultants

“2010 will be the year of the affordable smartphone,” he says. “Every box-shifting Asian handset manufacturer is working on a cheap device with multimedia capability and they’ll all be powered by Android. So we’ll also see a significant increase in quality apps on the Android market and likely see Nokia throw in the S60 towel and migrate to the Maemo operating system. Brands will realise they need an optimised presence on mobile because so many customers will own a decent handset.”

Mark Kortekaas, controller of mobile at the BBC, agrees that the market is expanding beyond the tech savvy. “I think the year ahead will see early smartphone adopters supplemented by those who are upgrading and will find smartphones are now far more affordable,” he says. “As the 18-24-month upgrade cycle kicks in, we’ll see a lot more people watching video and browsing the web on their phones, although text will obviously still be important. The BBC iPlayer is now on 21 handsets but I expect that will go up next year, particularly as more Android phones come on the market.”

This is a point Cheryl Calverley, senior global brand manager for Axe Skin (Lynx in the UK) at Unilver, believes will not be lost on marketers. She predicts that if flat-rate data packages become more common, there’ll be a massive take-up for mobile marketing among household name brands. “If smartphones can combine a flat-rate data package and ease of use, off-portal sites will achieve truly significant traffic volume,” she says. “Also there will be more engagement in apps, and increasingly functional ones unique to the insights around mobile user behaviour, such as location-based information, location-based social networking and location-based augmented reality.

“For marketers, this presents a wealth of new opportunities and the challenge will be understanding how to seed brand presence in this space,” Calverley adds. “They need to understand this space isn’t a discrete channel but a seamless part of the digital landscape, from PC to laptop to netbook to smartphone.”

She’s adamant all this relies on flat-rate data packages and the good news is that, certainly at Vodafone, her plea is being heard. The network will start marketing the iPhone in the first quarter of next year and Al Russell, head of mobile internet services, is predicting it will spur the company, and likely its competitors, to widen the offering of flat-rate data packages.

He sees two key developments happening next year: affordable handsets and affordable data. “If we’re going to do one thing next year, other than launch the iPhone, I would say it’ll be making data affordable and appealing to pay-as-you-go customers,” Russell says. “At the moment there’s a 60/40 split in favour of pay-as-you-go and I think many people are concerned that accessing data will land them with a large bill so they shy away from it. We have a 50p-a-day cap on data to prevent large bills, but that can still add up. So we’ll be working on packages that make data more affordable and appealing.”

Browser advances

While most experts are pointing, understandably, to applications becoming even more widespread in 2010, Ben Cusack, group creative director at mobile marketing agency MIG, believes brands should be looking towards the humble browser, which he confidently predicts will be fundamentally overhauled during the next year.

“There’s a lot of clever work going on into making browsers far more useful on a smartphone,” he says. “Apps are great but they’re effectively a series of walled gardens. I believe people will want to do more in their browser. For example, I don’t think people will be using apps to take pictures and post them on social media sites. They’ll take the picture with their cameraphone within the browser and it will automatically be uploaded. Great apps will still take off, but the story to watch next year is browsers allowing you to do far more.”

Overriding all these developments is the massive showdown between Google and Apple. The latter has a massive headstart, but with multiple Android devices expected to be launched next year and a Google-branded phone expected to be unveiled in the first quarter, there’s still plenty of opportunity to increase market share.

Hence mobile investor Frédéric Court, a general partner at Advent Venture Partners, predicts a huge investment in mobile technology as the two giants and their rivals chase growth. Get this path of internal growth and acquisitions correct and, Court believes, Google could overtake Apple and its other mobile rivals within the next couple of years. Either way, next year will be a very good time to have the technology any of the major players believes it needs to gain or defend market share.

“We expect Google to invest in tools and promotion to ramp up its universe of third-party applications, the area where Apple is most advanced,” he says. “It’s not just about Apple, but it’s a formidable competitor and has got Google running very fast with huge resources to catch it. The two companies will increasingly be in direct competition and will look at complementary acquisitions.”

Court believes those with highly regarded technology in the mobile and ad sectors may find 2010 the year they find a major player knocking on their door and, perhaps, making the dreamed of exit plan a reality.