Google’s 12 Predictions for Mobile in 2012

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Feb 28, 12

Google has just completed their new “Our Mobile Planet: Global Smartphone Users” research (conducted with Ipsos) in order to gain a deeper insight into how consumers use smartphones. Google’s blog post can be found here and the full “Our Mobile Planet” report can be downloaded here.

Some key findings of the research include the dramatic rise in the number of people using smartphones across the world: Spain has seen  smartphone ownership go from from 11% to 44% with the US seeing similar increases as 38% of the total population now own a smartphone, compared to 7% previously.

User behaviour was also looked at and it was discovered that 84% of smartphone users in the UK search for local information on their mobile devices and the majority (78%) take some kind of action, such as calling or visiting the store, afterwards. This is promising news for retailers who have a good mobile and local search presence.

Jason Spero, Head of Global Mobile at Google, summarises the research by saying:

“This consumer love affair with their mobile devices is transforming how consumers connect and live their lives. It is also transforming industries, creating new opportunities and changing how businesses engage with their customers. I believe we will see significant advances in mobile this year and the companies who fall in love with mobile will be best positioned to capitalize on them.”

He ends by outlining his 12 predictions for mobile in 2012:

1. More than 1 billion people will use mobile devices as their primary internet access point.
2. There will be 10 days where >50% of trending search terms will be on mobile
3. Mobile’s role in driving people into stores will be proven and it will blow us away
4. “Mobile driven spend” will emerge as a big category
5. Smartphones will prove exceptional at driving a new consumer behavior
6. Tablets will take their place as the 4th screen
7. New industry standards will make mobile display easy to run
8. 5 new, mobile first companies will reach the Angry Birds level of success
9. The ROI on mobile and tablet advertising will increase as a result of the unmatched relevance of proximity
10. The intersection of mobile and social will spark a dramatic new form of engaging consumers
11. 80% of the largest 2,000 websites globally will have an HTML5 site
12. One million small businesses globally will build a mobile website

Some of these look very likely to happen – Mobile is already driving people into stores, and tablets are growing in popularity every day. Whether we’ll see such a substantial uptake in companies building HTML5 and mobile wesbites is more difficult to guess.

What do you think of Google’s predictions? Are they realistic? Let us know in the comments.