Gartner Research has published its list of “the top 10 consumer mobile applications in 2012.” The list ranks in order of most to least significant the following:
- No. 1: Money Transfer
- No. 2: Location-Based Services
- No. 3: Mobile Search
- No. 4: Mobile Browsing
- No. 5: Mobile Health Monitoring
- No. 6: Mobile Payment
- No. 7: Near Field Communication Services
- No. 8: Mobile Advertising
- No. 9: Mobile Instant Messaging
- No. 10: Mobile Music
Regarding No. 7 – Mobile Payments, Gartner believes that Near Field Communications (NFC) will “see large-scale deployments starting from late 2010, when NFC phones are likely to ship in volume, with Asia leading deployments followed by Europe and North America.” This seems unrealistic given the current focus carriers have here in the United States (e.g., wars over operating systems, the ability to stream live video). I remember Gartner forecasting that we’d be knee-deep in NFC-enabled phones and usage by 2010 back in 2006. Clearly, they missed the mark then and my guess is we are headed for another letdown now.
Still, it is very cool to see NFC getting some press. The technology is the only instantaneous contactless transmission standard (Bluetooth takes forever) that does not require a data plan (i.e., access to the wireless web). Consumers with standard flip phones would be able to do so much more with a basic device – e.g., download train schedules from a ’smart’ poster, configure a digital wallet, conduct cashless peer-to-peer transactions. It’s a no brainer from a user perspective; if only the carriers would open up their walled gardens and iron out the economics …
Source: ”Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Consumer Mobile Applications for 2012.” Press Release, 18 November 2009. http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1230413, Accessed 19 November 2009.