Bill McDonald: Mobile explosion taking us to frontiers of expectation

The race is on to define what the mobile world will look like in ten years. Soon we'll be able to use mobile phones as mobile wallets, pointing and clicking to withdraw cash or to buy a drink from a vending machine, rather than fumble for coins.

Mobile money management is likely to be the personal banking option of the near future. The banking and utility industries will be completely transformed by mobile technology.

So will driving your car. Insurance companies are already looking to how they can benefit from the embedded technology in vehicles. One idea is to track the behaviour of drivers to set premiums. The more careful you are, the less you will pay.

But the prospect of multiple devices working together to deliver a system of new and innovative solutions is the ultimate prize.

An example of this would be a home health monitoring service that is able to integrate data from multiple sensors to provide a holistic report on individual health.

The explosion in mobile phone technology over the past ten years has been astonishing. Back in 2000, there were 750 million wireless subscribers, about the same as the combined populations of the US, Japan, Russia and Brazil. Today the figure has reached 4.6 billion.

On top of the mobile broadband platform will come an explosion of mobile applications. Just look at what's happened already. One social networking site claims 400 million active followers, of whom one in four use a mobile device, and the average user spends an hour on the site every day.

Mobile video will also be a highly disruptive trend. The number of Americans, for example, watching videos on their phones rose by 50 per cent between 2008 and 2009. Expect those numbers to soar as handset manufacturers answer the call for phones with better video functionality.

But the largest impact is not likely to happen specifically in the consumer electronics environment. Companies are looking at mobile in a new way.

They are asking how to use mobile technology to enhance the services they provide. While innovation has traditionally moved from enterprise to the consumer, this concept is now being flipped on its head.

Developing improved consumer-centric innovations will also enable enterprising companies to target profitable customers more effectively. By using the copious data they possess about their customers, they can create services based on personalised content and advertising that is more relevant. Consumer data is the new king.

Research carried out by Accenture has identified a number of hurdles that need to be overcome if we are to reap the full benefits of mobile technology in the future.

Included in these challenges are low operational costs and the issue of security. Fraud and privacy breaches are common news today and can cause tremendous damage to the brand of a financial institution. Mobile money management, in particular, requires a broad range of technical security capabilities.

Another challenge is interoperability. As more and more products come to market, what is now an annoyance is likely to become a major irritation. Consumers will want to hold someone accountable for assuring that devices are compatible and can work together.

Out of these momentous market developments, a relative handful of players will emerge in a stronger position than their competitors. They will be the ones that break from the gate faster and sprint to a point that enables them to dominate the marketplace for years to come.

Technological innovation, services, products and solutions are advancing so fast that it's increasingly difficult to keep up even for the companies at the centre of the industry.

To ensure future growth, companies must consider implementing a strategy that will place them at the head of the innovation pack while their competitors are just beginning to adopt the growth mentality.

Those who understand and overcome these challenges will become the technology leaders of tomorrow.

l Bill McDonald is managing director for Accenture Scotland