Wileyfox co-founder Nick Muir tells Mobile News his thoughts on what might happen this year, including features the mid-low end handset market will deem critical for survival
Any hardware manufacturer that cannot hit critical mass in terms of units sold (not shipped) will collapse under it’s own financial weight. The need for urgent profitability will continue to drive financially heavy organisations to ever increasing price points, with little added value for the consumer.
The combination of mobile security like fingerprint sensors or iris scanners alongside NFC-payment will be critical in the mid-low end of the handset market, as they become increasingly sophisticated and proliferated, respectively. IoT emergence will be limited by a lack of monetisation and billing to cover the costs of implementation, except as a part of a broader digital ecosystem
The value of consumer-generated data will rise in line with the market’s ability to process and use it effectively. This will increase the importance of digital ecosystems as revenue generators and increasing the value of owning that data, changing the relationship between consumer and carrier.
The case for the mass adoption of VR in 2017 is currently overstated. Content is fragmented and the required hardware combinations are too expensive. The headsets are cumbersome and it’s hard to wear one without looking less than optimal. Daydream is a massive step forwards of course, but Google’s minimum hardware requirements are exacting. One to watch.