Top 10 Predictions for 2010; iPhone, Smart-phones And Lots of Apps

by Dan Dearing on 21/12/09 at 7:11 pm

Dan Dearing is the Vice President of Marketing & Product Management for Trust Digital and contributing editor for iPhoneCTO.

2009 has definitely been an interesting y

ear for mobility. For some, June 19th, 2009 was marked as a watershed event for enterprise smartphone mobility with the release of the iPhone 3GS. You may recall that the latest version of the consumer-oriented iPhone gave business IT features such as data-at-rest encryption, that many felt were table stakes for its use within the enterprise. Today over half of the Fortune 100 that are using or piloting the iPhone say its use is fueled by user pull and business group push for the device because it is a mobile platform for applications. 2009 may be the year that smart-phones gave way to the app phone.

Like many before me I have my own thoughts and predictions for 2009 and agree that the rapid change experienced in last six months of 2009 will further accelerate in 2010 as companies come out of the recession and start to invest in IT infrastructure. I’ve tried to capture what the next year may bring in a mash-up of top 10 predictions for 2010.

10. Mobile applications; (Gartner’s Top 10 IT Strategies for 2010).

“By year-end 2010, 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of rich, mobile commerce, providing a rich environment for the convergence of mobility and the Web”

9. Expect converts from the Blackberry and Windows Mobile camps; (Pingdom’s 10 Google Android Predictions for 2010).

“Both RIM and Microsoft are struggling to keep pace with the rapid evolution of modern smart-phones. The Blackberry Storm 2 was indeed a better phone than its predecessor, but it’s not something that would make people jump carriers, let alone switch phones.

The release of Windows Mobile 6.5 was a crushing disappointment and we won’t see a decent modern Windows Mobile OS until 7.0 comes out in 2010.”

8. Change in IT budgeting for Smart-phones?; (Nucleus Research’s projections for 2010).

“Mobility strategies and budgets will be reviewed in 2010 with netbooks, Blackberries and iPhone apps driving new billing and upgrade models.”

7. Mobile mania!; (InfoWorld 10 Tech Predictions for 2010).

“But because “for most mere mortals, you can manage an iPhone reasonably securely,” to quote Mort Rosenthal, chairman and CEO of Enterprise Mobile, Apple will increasingly intrude on the enterprise, whether network administrators like that or not. “I think the biggest story for the foreseeable future is how enterprises will manage an increasingly diverse market, with a lot of platforms that meets a threshold of security,” says Rosenthal, whose company specializes in mobile-based messaging implementation and business applications use in the enterprise.

“From a user perspective, this is all good, but from an IT perspective this is challenging,” he says, predicting — and we agree — that 2010 will bring many of those challenges to a head for IT managers.”

6. Smartphones are the hackers’ next playground; (Websense Security Labs’ Security Predictions for 2010).

“With a growing user base, business adoption, and increasing use for conducting financial transactions with these devices, we expect hackers to begin more dedicated targeting of smartphones in 2010.”

5. Mobile devices are on a path to eclipse PC; (IDC’s Top 10 Predictions for 2010).

“IDC predicts that, for the first time, there will be over 1 billion mobile devices accessing the Internet by year-end, gaining quickly on the 1.3 billion PCs accessing the Internet (the former are growing at 2.5 times the rate of the latter).”

Part 2 can be found here.