Six thoughts on mobility trends for 2018

Let’s face it, some aspects of mobility are getting long in the tooth. The demand for more capabilities is insatiable. Here are a few areas where I think 2018 will see some exciting capabilities develop. Many of these are not new, but their interactions and intersection should provide some interesting results and thoughts to include during your planning.

1. Further blurring and integration of IoT and mobile

We’re likely to see more situations where mobile recognizes the IoT devices around them to enhance contextual understanding for the user. We’ve seen some use of NFC and Bluetooth to share information, but approaches to embrace the environment and act upon the information available is still in its infancy. This year should provide some significant use cases and maturity.

2. Cloud Integration

By now most businesses have done much more than just stick their toe in the cloud Everything as a Service (XaaS) pool. As the number of potential devices in the mobility and IoT space expand, the flexibility and time to action that cloud solutions facilitate needs to be understood and put into practice. It is also time to take all the data coming in from these and transform that flow into true contextual understanding and action, also requiring a dynamic computing environment.

3. Augmented reality

With augmented reality predicted to expend to a market somewhere between $120 and $221 billion in revenues by 2021, we’re likely to see quite a bit of innovation in this space. The wide range of potential demonstrates the lack of a real understanding. 2018 should be a year where AR gets real.

4. Security

All discussions of mobility need to include security. Heck, the first month of 2018 has should have nailed the importance of security into the minds of anyone in the IT space. There were more patches (and patches of patches) on a greater range of systems than many would have believed possible just a short time ago. Recently, every mobile store (Apple, Android…) was found to have nefarious software that had to be exercised. Mobile developers need to be ever more vigilant, not just about the code they write but the libraries they use.

5. Predictive Analytics

Context is king and the use of analytics to increase the understanding of the situation and possible responses is going to continue to expand. As capabilities advance, only our imagination will hold this area back from increasing where and when mobile devices become useful. Unfortunately, the same can be said about the security issues that are based on using predictive analytics.

6. Changing business models

Peer to peer solutions continue to be the rage but with the capabilities listed above, whole new approaches to value generation are possible. There will always be early adopters who are willing to play with these and with the deeper understanding possibilities today new approaches to crossing the chasm will be demonstrated.

It should be an interesting year…

IT opportunities and cruising…

I recently went on a western Caribbean cruise on Royal Caribbean. This is the first cruise I’d been on in a couple of years and I found it interesting how much mobile device use there was on the boat. Everything from folks checking emails… to live streaming at the breakfast table (at an additional cost, of course). There still seemed to be numerous more subtle ways to enhance the cruise experience now that nearly everyone has an enhanced device.

There is an anecdote about cruising that for every couple that gets on a cruise, one of them doesn’t really want to be there. That’s probably a bit strong, but what’s true is that there are numerous activities going on at any one time and finding the right one to interest you could be improved.

I could easily see adding NFC or low power Bluetooth spots throughout the ship that personal devices could tap into for service information or even historic facts/trivia. As I drive across the country, I see numerous historic spot signs along the highway that’s because some people are interested in what’s happened at locations in the past. Adding some capabilities to share that information for the ship would be interesting:  where items of specific interest (music performers/performances, celebrity spotting, changes in ship design over the years) could be broadcast. It would make for an interesting gamification,  scavenger hunt and Pokémon Go like possibilities that would interest some on board.

Analytic data from IoT and business process systems could be shared to optimize the experience. For example, sharing how long the wait may be at “my time” dining. A news feed capability may be useful, so you can subscribe to information about where the ship is or when it will get into port. Naturally there will be a great deal of opportunity available to upsell passengers on jewelry, drinks, excursions… as well.

There may be some interesting peer-to-peer sharing experiences. The one I’ve thought about for a long time is: allowing folks to share their skills and interests so they could be notified if someone within 50 feet is an author/expert on a topic of interest. Or enable ad-hoc meetings, like in the case of our cruise where there was a quilting, veteran and Victorian dance group, that would have a public meeting at a specific time and place. These capabilities would encourage interactions with other passengers that they wouldn’t normally experience. These capabilities would have to be opt in though, to allow those who want to get away to have that experience as well.

The use of augmented reality also seems like a missed opportunity. An app to take some of the signpost information mentioned earlier and enhance it with directional information. This could help lead you to the experience you’d like to have, rather than the one you just settle for, based on what you know.

What I am getting at is: different people want a range of experiences on a cruise and its seems like there are numerous opportunities being missed by both the passengers and the cruise lines to make the most of the occasion, with relatively little additional effort. There are some significant privacy and customer satisfaction concerns, but I am sure a range of pilots would quickly point out the issues and possibilities.

Augmented reality is starting to be about sharing

If you’ve not seen the YouTube demo of Hololens and Mindcraft it’s definitely worth a look:

The augmented and virtual reality are definitely getting some new capabilities. I can think of some interesting applications… where multiple people can see the same augmented environment.

Another solution that looks interesting is Holus. This tabletop holodeck may have some interesting possibilities to generate a shared experience, without the glasses.

HaloLens – my interest is peaked

Augmented reality has always interested me and I finally got around to signing up for Microsoft’s HaloLens community. I used to do quite a bit of work with Microsoft (somewhere around here I have a crystal cube for the ‘lasting contributions’ to Visual Studio 2005) but I’ve not exercised those skills in a while – so HaloLens seemed like an ideal opportunity.

The hardware shown looks powerful and flexible. I’ll need to come up with some use cases that can exercise its capabilities. I am sure that somewhere between ham radio, data analytics, 3d printing and my other interests there must be something.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that I’ll make it to a build event but hopefully I’ll get my hands on one somehow.