For reasons that I'm not sure I agree with a friend asked me about the trends in which developers are moving in mobile environments; she refers to trends more than specific applications.
I, how could it be otherwise, told her the most honest answer I could give was "no idea". But anticipating this response was not what she was waiting for I did a bit of a brainstorming exercise and tried to answer the question. These are the four trends that I have identified (in no particular order):
- Education. Attending to how fast some educational institutions are introducing mobile devices in the classroom, specially tablets
- Games. Because games will be developed taking advantage of all information available at the mobile phone (position, orientation, what the camera is watching, etc)
- Payments. Attending to how fast the big players (Google, Paypal, Visa, Amex, etc) are moving in this sector and because of the introduction of NFC on the mobile phones (Nexus S has it, new Blackberry OS 7 supports it, it is rumored that iPhone 5 will have it)
- peer2peer. Peer to peer services are booming on the internet and mobile devices have not yet made its full potential for these models
I am fully aware this is a guru "wannabe" exercise that is not really my suit but I dared to publish it in order to collect opinions and/or other trends that I might have skipped. Comments are welcome.
Take care
Javier Arias González