A Few Predictions in Mobility for 2016

What would the beginning of a new year be without some predictions of what is to come? Below are some of my predictions for 2016. I began with a list of 24, but after careful review, we thought some would be best kept for my friends and family, so I'll avoid almost all discussion around the 2016 US presidential elections.
 

• Hybrid Was So Last Year—Ok, well let me clarify things a bit, the hybrid momentum will drop off a bit due to more focused use-case on when to go native vs mobile web. Platforms that offer flexibility in how apps are built will stand out from the crowd.


• Mobile First, Desktop Maybe—With the mobile media consumption numbers tipping the scales at 51% vs desktop at 42%, we’ll see a continued trend of consumer apps being developed for mobile first. Organizations that continue with a “desktop first” mentality will fall further behind.


• Mobile Payments—Mobile payments are on the rise from retail, to transit, to fast food & vending, parking and more. It’s hard to believe, but San Francisco’s “MUNI” just introduced their app with mobile payments last month. I’d expect to see this trend continue as mobile may finally replace your physical wallet.


• Enterprise Mobility—I think we’ll see some growth in enterprise mobility—perhaps baby-steps vs long strides. The traditional security risks arguments will yield slightly, with an increasing number of enterprise management solutions and stricter policies implemented to safeguard data.


• Voting—What good is a predictions blog post without having some ‘stretch’ goals. Is 2016 the year we’ll finally go mobile with our voting system in US? Look—it’s going to happen at some point folks, I am predicting some level of roll-out for the US 2016 elections in November.


• No UI (+AI is the New UI?)—Tony Aube took a look at the new face of apps in his November 2015 article on TechCrunch. He introduced many of us to invisible apps and how advances in AI are enabling such UI-less apps. While I agree with his conclusion—UI is here for quite some time—I’d expect to see a huge influx in AI–UI in 2016.

OK, so there we have a few serious predictions, now for a couple fun ones to round out my list.

• iPhone 7—The safe predictions and some from the rumor mill: new design, new processor, waterproof, peer to peer payments. It’s more or less a fact that we’ll see a new design, but I think they’ll go big on camera improvements for the iPhone 7. Perhaps a way to incorporate a full frame sensor or ultra low-light sensitivity? Hand-held shots of the milky-way?


• Lyft vs Uber—While I don’t see Lyft surpassing Uber in the ride sharing space this year, I do predict Uber growth to slow from that of 2014 and 2015 and Lyft to have massive growth in large markets such as San Francisco, Boston, and New York. The larger trend I am seeing can be explained in this way: as older generations begin to adopt Uber, younger generations are looking towards Lyft. Uber is to Facebook as Lyft is to Snapchat—I digress.

I’d love your feedback—tell me I am crazy, agree with me or make your own predictions in the comments below.

Happy New Year!