FOR EBUSINESS & CHANNEL STRATEGY PROFESSIONALS

Predictions 2016: The Mobile Revolution

Accelerates
Landscape: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
by Thomas Husson, Julie A. Ask, Jeffrey S. Hammond, Michael Facemire, Jennifer Wise, Tyler
Shields, and Christian Kane
November 9, 2015

Why Read This Brief

Key Takeaways

As the mobile mind shift speeds up even more

in 2016, consumers expectations will soar,
pressuring you to do better at tapping contextual
data to serve them better. More companies
will treat mobile as core to the whole customer
experience not just as a channel and an
ocean of vendors eager to capitalize on this
frenzy will teem with new players emerging as
existing ones join forces or die off. This brief tells
how that story will play out across 15 top trends
you need to know about to successfully evolve
your culture, organization, and processes for
mobile and leapfrog your competition.

User Expectations Will Soar Beyond Branded

Apps
Consumers and employees expectations to
be served in their mobile moments will increase
globally. Instead of app-hopping, they will find
it increasingly convenient to get what they need
within a contextual stream on a single platform or
on integrated apps. This will foster the emergence
of new platforms like Amazon, Facebook, or
WeChat challenging Apples and Googles
duopoly in mobile.
A Quarter Of Companies Will Fully Integrate
Mobile Into Their Overall Strategy
To leapfrog competition, leaders will stop using
mobile as a channel and do three things really
well: 1) Execute cross-channel integration
of mobile across the customer life cycle; 2)
prioritize the integration of mobile with backend systems; and 3) evolve their culture,
organizations, and processes.
Mobile Will Redefine The Vendor Landscape
In 2016, mobile success will be a key differentiator
for enterprise mobile and marketing tech vendors,
and digital platforms owning as many mobile
moments as possible will become critical.

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FOR EBUSINESS & CHANNEL STRATEGY PROFESSIONALS

Predictions 2016: The Mobile Revolution Accelerates

Landscape: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
by Thomas Husson, Julie A. Ask, Jeffrey S. Hammond, Michael Facemire, Jennifer Wise, Tyler Shields,
and Christian Kane
with Sharyn Leaver, Dan Bieler, Frank E. Gillett, J.P. Gownder, Fatemeh Khatibloo, Pamela Heiligenthal,
Andras Cser, Christopher Voce, Christopher Mines, and Kasia Madej
November 9, 2015

User Trends: Expectations Soar Beyond Branded Apps

The global mobile revolution while still in its infancy will accelerate next year. By the end of
2016, Forrester forecasts that 4.8 billion individuals globally will use a mobile phone.1 Smartphone
subscribers will represent 46% of the global population, largely driven by an accelerated adoption in
Africa and Asia.2 We expect the following mobile usage, behaviors, and attitudes to develop among
consumers and employees:
The mobile Internet becomes meaningless globally. Contrary to most business leaders,
consumers will stop considering the mobile Internet as a scaled-down subset of the real Internet.
Mobile devices will become their go-to technology, even in mature economies where people can
use alternative devices at home. US and European consumers will expect to be served in their
mobile moments and will start to catch up to more demanding Asian consumers.3 Developing
economies are leading the charge. Turkey and Iran will join Nigeria, India, Indonesia, South Africa,
and Poland on the list of key developing economies where mobile traffic will surpass PC traffic.
Consumers streamline their app experience. Consumers will continue to spend most of their
time in only a few apps but will increasingly turn to aggregation apps and a handful of platforms
(e.g., Facebook, Google Maps, WeChat) to get the content and services they need. Why? Because
it will be more convenient to navigate a contextual stream on a single platform rather than hop
among apps. Capabilities like Apples iOS 9 Peek and Pop and services like Google Now and
Microsoft Cortana will allow developers to address users mobile moments without writing
individual mobile apps.
Thirty percent of purchases touch mobile. In 2016, Forrester forecasts mobile and tablet
commerce will reach $142 billion in the US and 86 billion in EU-7, representing respectively 38%
and 32% of online transactions.4 And in the US, more than 30% of sales will have a mobile crosschannel component, meaning consumers will use mobile at some point throughout the purchase

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2015 Forrester Research, Inc. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester,
Technographics, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester
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FOR EBUSINESS & CHANNEL STRATEGY PROFESSIONALS

November 9, 2015

Predictions 2016: The Mobile Revolution Accelerates

Landscape: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook

life cycle, from product research to in-store interactions.5 Indeed, trust and convenience and
logged-in experiences will lead consumers to spend more via mobile and to start using mobile
payments and wallet solutions like Apple Pay or Android Pay.
Privacy concerns increase, but most users daily habits dont change. Consumers will be
increasingly aware of the hidden harvesting of their data via mobile devices. With mobile ad
blockers and privacy plug-ins becoming easier to install and use, and Apple including native
content blocking in iOS 9, consumer adoption will significantly increase.6 But even with the medias
use of the Ashley Madison and Home Depot breaches as a springboard for privacy discussions,
most consumers wont change their daily mobile usage behaviors, relying instead on protective
technologies and privacy advocates to fight for greater privacy rights.
Employee mobile app adoption surges in the enterprise. App-enabled employees at global
enterprises are 50% more likely to report that their fellow employees are happy to work at their
company and 40% more likely to say their companys customers are satisfied with the companys
products and services.7 In 2016, 61% of mobility decision-makers at enterprises expect to roll
out new mobile-based products and services and 62% will increase their budgets to pay for more
apps.8 Laggards will begin rolling out mobile apps for customer-facing employees, while leaders
will enable more employees with mobile apps that improve operational tasks.

Technology Trends: Contextual Data Fuels Next-Generation Mobile

Mobile experiences are too static today and leverage too little consumer context. As customer
expectations of convenience escalate, the pressure will be on firms to tap new technologies to serve
customers in context where they already are not where brands find it convenient to serve them.
Firms must look to use context both to assemble and deliver experiences dynamically on their own and
third-party platforms. In 2016:
Digital platforms leverage mobile and IoT data to improve their own services. Connected
devices and services such as apps, cars, TVs, fitness bands, and scales are generating data about
consumer usage, preferences, and environments at an unprecedented pace. In 2016, companies
will begin to collect data from multiple sources, create insights through crowdsourcing and big
data solutions, and begin to use the insights to deliver utility back to consumers. Digital platforms
such as Amazon, Apple, and Google will fuel their own product and service development in 2016.9
Third-party access to mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) data via customer-permissioned platform
access will have to wait until 2017 and beyond.
Alternative ecosystems beyond Android and iOS emerge. With consumers using fewer or
more integrated apps, new mobile platforms such as WeChat in China or Facebook Messenger
in the US are quickly accumulating power as the owners of vast audiences and rich data about
those consumers. In 2016, these ecosystems will grow as brands look to serve existing customers

2015 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law.
Citations@forrester.com or +1 866-367-7378

FOR EBUSINESS & CHANNEL STRATEGY PROFESSIONALS

November 9, 2015

Predictions 2016: The Mobile Revolution Accelerates

Landscape: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook

in context and developers flock to platforms with large audiences. While Apple, Facebook, and
Google lead in the US, dont count out Amazon in the home, Microsoft in the enterprise, or US
market entry from large ecosystem players in China.
Google battles Android fragmentation but makes little headway. With 78% of smartphones
globally running on some version of Android in 2015, Google has the largest addressable mobile
ecosystem.10 This wont change in 2016. But Androids fragmentation problem will grow worse
as long as original equipment manufacturers and carriers are calling the shots. To combat it,
expect Google to reset its Android One program and invest more in expanding its services to
other platforms (e.g., Android Wear, Eddystone, Google for Work). This will benefit Apple, who
will continue to grow its premium share, but also Google, as it wont have to depend on wide
penetration for Android 6.0 (Marshmallow).
Due to exponential attacks, mobile security will extend to include user context. The number
of malicious mobile security attacks will at least double from 2015. While these breaches wont
significantly affect consumer behaviors, businesses will still have to invest more to meet the level
of risk they are seeing on a daily basis. Mobile security vendors will expand to include operating
system, user, application, and network contextual data to improve the user experience around
security controls such as mobile authentication and authorization. For example, we will see risk and
user behaviors embedded into mobile authentication technologies that allow mobile application
single sign-on to emerge. The combination of fingerprint, voice, and facial recognition will augment
passwords on mobile devices and enable new mobile payment use cases.

Business Trends: Execs Finally Integrate Mobile Into Their Strategies

Today just 18% of companies surveyed are beyond mobile-first and using mobile to transform the
entire customer experience.11 Next year, Forrester expects that more than 25% of companies will use
mobile not as a channel, but as a fully integrated part of their overall strategy. In 2016:
Mature marketing and eBusiness leaders will tackle cross-channel integration. Mature
business leaders will track and measure the impact of mobile on other online and offline channels,
fostering cross-channel planning thanks to mobile attribution. Vendors will enable it: Marketing cloud
vendors deliver across channels. For example, Tapad partnered with Ninth Decimal to combine
cross-device tracking and location intelligence. And Facebooks Atlas partnership connects some
mobile ads to in-store POS systems through deterministic tracking. Yet still only a minority of
marketers will actually use these solutions to prove and scale customer life-cycle engagement.
Technology management will prioritize mobile within the BT agenda. Mobility, along with
technology required to harness insights and provide context, will top cloud as technology
managements priority within its business technology (BT) agenda. CIOs will need to build
architectures that give life-cycle solutions such as enterprise marketing, product innovation, and
sales fulfilment access to real-time information and services. Beyond consumer apps, CIOs will
also face at least twice the amount of apps aimed at employees and partners.
2015 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law.
Citations@forrester.com or +1 866-367-7378

FOR EBUSINESS & CHANNEL STRATEGY PROFESSIONALS

November 9, 2015

Predictions 2016: The Mobile Revolution Accelerates

Landscape: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook

Exec teams will tap mobile to help transform culture and leapfrog competition. Leaders will
evolve their culture as they use mobile as a catalyst for digital and business transformation. How?
They will start by mobilizing employees working habits and then 1) break down the wall between
business sponsors and development and deployment teams; 2) build future-ready infrastructure;
and 3) become agile. Exec teams at leading firms will invest in these areas despite not knowing
exactly what the next-generation devices and services will be. They will make small bets, fail, learn,
iterate, and move on.

Vendor Trends: Mobile Success Defines Which Vendors Grow Or Flag

The headlong rush to profit from the mobile mind shift has spawned an explosion of mobile specialists
and mobile opportunists, all trying to convince business and technology decision-makers that they have
the right approach. In 2016, the mobile bazaar will continue to grow even while consolidation occurs:
The battle for mobile moments drives acquisitions from Internet giants. Winning in your
customers mobile moments demands both context and data and ownership of those moments.12
Acquisitions will help Internet giants like Facebook and Google expand their audience to reach new
demographic segments (e.g., teens or kids), geographies (e.g., WeChats investment in Canadas
Kik for $50 million), or markets (e.g., Googles acquisition of Nest and Dropcam).13 Streaming music
players (e.g., Spotify or Pandora) or news curator Flipboard would be ideal targets since they drive
significant audiences and contextual data. Pending complex financial valuations issues, Yahoo
could be of interest to a major digital platform.
Enterprise mobile vendors consolidate. The mobile infrastructure services market is still quite
fragmented with over 30 solutions.14 The convergence between mobile middleware and mobile
back-end-as-a-service markets, coupled with the need to support front-end developers with
application programming interface management, JavaScript stacks, and IoT, will accelerate
consolidation in 2016. Expect enterprise software players, large systems integrators, and public
cloud vendors like Adobe, Amazon, Cisco, HP, Intel, and Salesforce to acquire smaller players like
AnyPresence, Appcelerator, Kinvey, Kony, Xamarin, or Xively.
Big marketing tech vendors invest in mobile and automate it. Consumers string together a brand
experience from moments that traverse channels and devices, and marketing tech stacks have to
do the same. In 2016, marketing tech vendors will find themselves in an arms race to provide not
just automation, but machine learning to derive insights from big data and campaign optimization.
They will focus R&D on improved data management capabilities and predictive algorithms. Mobilecentric solutions like Kahuna, Localytics, Swrve, and Urban Airship will grow and polish their in-app
life-cycle management stacks, while the big-cloud marketing companies like Adobe and Salesforce
will look toward more acquisitions and more integration mobile engagement solutions (in-app
messaging, content pages, advertising, and cross-channel customer management).

2015 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law.
Citations@forrester.com or +1 866-367-7378

FOR EBUSINESS & CHANNEL STRATEGY PROFESSIONALS

November 9, 2015

Predictions 2016: The Mobile Revolution Accelerates

Landscape: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook

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Endnotes
1

Source: Forrester Research World Mobile And Smartphone Adoption Forecast, 2015 To 2020 (Global).

Source: Forrester Research World Mobile And Smartphone Adoption Forecast, 2015 To 2020 (Global).

For more information on consumers mobile intensity, expectations, and behaviors, see the The New Mobile Mind
Shift Index: Global Forrester report.

Source: Forrester Research Mobile And Tablet Commerce Forecast, 2015 To 2020 (EU-7) and Forrester Research
Mobile And Tablet Commerce Forecast, 2015 To 2020 (US).

Source: Forrester Research Web-Influenced Retail Sales Forecast, 2015 To 2020 (US).

The following survey found that 24% of US online adults who use a laptop or desktop use ad-blocking technology on
their desktops, and predating iOS 9, 14% of US online adults who use tablets were using these tools on their tablet
devices. Source: Forresters North American Consumer Technographics Consumer Technology Survey, 2015.

App-enabled employees is defined as employees with six or more company-specific mobile applications. Source:
Forresters Global Business Technographics Telecommunications And Mobility Workforce Survey, 2015.

Source: Forresters Global Business Technographics Mobility Survey, 2015.

For more information on digital platforms and their opportunities, see the The Clash Of The Digital Platforms
Forrester report.

10

Source: Forrester Research World Mobile And Smartphone Adoption Forecast, 2015 To 2020 (Global).

11

Source: Forresters Q2 2015 Global Mobile Maturity Executive Survey.

2015 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law.
Citations@forrester.com or +1 866-367-7378

FOR EBUSINESS & CHANNEL STRATEGY PROFESSIONALS

November 9, 2015

Predictions 2016: The Mobile Revolution Accelerates

Landscape: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook

12

For more information on platform strategies, please see the Your Customers Will Not Download Your App Forrester
report and see the Mobile Platforms, Partners, And Power Forrester report.

13

For more information on Tencents investment, check out the following link. Source: Drew Olanoff, Kik Raises
$50M From Tencent To Become The WeChat Of The West, TechCrunch, August 18, 2015 (http://techcrunch.
com/2015/08/18/kik-raises-50m-from-strategic-partner-tencent/#.0tglfa:F3nw).
For more information on Googles acquisition of Dropcam, see the Brief: Googles Nest Buys Dropcam To Disrupt
Digital Lifestyle Forrester report.

14

For more information on the rapidly converging MIS platform market, see the Market Overview: Mobile Infrastructure
Services Aid Developers Forrester report.

2015 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law.
Citations@forrester.com or +1 866-367-7378

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