Things Are Looking Up for Mobile in 2012

Mobile is on the rise and it will continue to dominate in 2012. We are not just basing this prediction on the number of users, although that in itself is telling enough.

Nope. Instead, we take a look at what happened in 2011.

In 2011, we saw how QR codes started growing mainstream. QR codes help make it easy to bridge the offline with the online world. For marketers and business owners, this means that they are now able to link marketing materials such as posters, flyers and even business cards to their websites, or special mobile sites that would help them capture more customers and get more sales.

If that is not enough, 2011 also saw a lot of movement in near-field communication technology. This gave marketers and business owners another chance to hook up their offline marketing materials with online properties. But NFC has a more exciting future in the area of mobile payments.

Google spearheaded the NFC payments movement in 2011 with the launch of its Google Wallet. This service allows people to pay for their purchases with nothing but a wave of their smartphones in front of an NFC terminal. Of course Google has enlisted the help of payment and card companies such as Visa and Mastercard, while the best tech and telecommunication companies such as Nokia, Samsung, Microsoft, Inside Secure and Intel helped provide NFC-enabled devices.

iPhones also continue to be more popular, ensuring that more and more people are online wherever they are. The latest, iPhone 4S, is Apple’s best version yet. It is very fast and has all the perks that any smartphone lover would want and need.

But as popular as iPhones are, the real winner in the operating system war is Google’s Android. In 2011, Android has surpassed Apple’s iOS and other operating systems to become the world’s most used and loved OS.

In relation with this, mobile apps are getting increasingly popular. Now people would take their mobile phones and launch an app to do something that they used to do exclusively on their desktop computers. In fact, we have recently reported that at least one in every eight Facebook users use the Facebook mobile app to do their Facebook activities.