Full RSS Feed
Receive
the Free CMSWire Newsletter2011 was when the smartphone reached its peak, leaving the tablet as the go-to device for makers to aim at. But, the rules in tech are changing, meaning a lot of players went home empty-handed while apps became the focus for users settled into their smartphone OS of choice.
Springing No Surprises
The year started with Google's Android 3.0 operating system (aka Honeycomb with its tablet-centric features) being previewed, closely followed an peek at the new iOS (version 4.3) from Apple. Those events set the pattern for the year — we saw incremental updates here and there, although users always wanted to see bigger, better things.
One thing became increasingly clear over the year: Smartphones have pretty much matured and are now stuck in the rut of power upgrades and pretty new fascias — expecting the Voice of God to ring from the next big upgrade just isn't going to happen anymore. So, it was to the tablet market that the big players went running.
Focus On Tablets
The Honeycomb update should have put Android tablet builders on an even footing with the iPad, but somehow that never happened and anyone who tried the full-frontal approach of an assault on Apple's massive market share rapidly came unstuck.
February's Mobile World Congress was the launch point for most of the gadgets we've seen this year (and should be a cracking event in 2012). The first "proper" Galaxy Tab was on show and seemed to be set for great things. Then, along came the iPad 2 launched in March, with its thinner, lighter, more powerful frame, and its subsequent sales made its rivals efforts seem rather trivial in comparison.
Two leading examples were BlackBerry and HP, which spent vast sums creating and marketing two premium-priced products in the PlayBook and TouchPad, only for them to fail dismally within months of launch. Later in the year, Amazon would show them the proper way to tackle Apple's dominance.
Enterprise is Go
Over the year, 2010's many promises of enterprise for mobile started to come to fruition. This was led largely by the idea of social and unified collaboration as workers became more contactable and then able to interact with messages, discussions and then documents on the go. With office and cloud apps appearing from every corner, business has really taken the mobile form to heart and it is up to developers to remain in tune with user needs in this rapidly evolving landscape.
That will mean taking a great deal of notice how users relationships evolve with their devices and creating apps and services that meet the sweet spot between business needs and user abilities — not just converting your existing apps and expecting business as usual.
Mark of the Mobile
Beyond the sexier design, slightly bigger screen, fewer buttons and more powerful chips, smartphones in 2011 seemed to be on a gap year. There have been dozens of high-end, and thousands of mid-range, Android devices, but whatever the latest Bionic-Droid-Thunderbolt-Sensation offered, nothing really demanded attention until the Nexus turned up at the end of the year, and since it's not even on sale yet, I think we can call that a 2012 phone by proxy.
Continue reading this article:
Email It
