8. mCommerce set to be major theme in 2012

By Joan Mulvihill, CEO of The Irish Internet Association

Smartphones are about to get a good deal smarter and more indispensible than ever. At a recent Irish Internet Association networking event, members were briefed by the mobile micropayments service Boxpay on this rapidly growing area – where consumers make mobile payments on their phones like a credit card, using near-field communication (NFC) technology.

ABI Research has estimated that shopping on the mobile web will reach $119 billion by 2015, and you can be sure that a growing number of these consumers will be replacing their wallets with their phones for making payments – online and offline.

Just when consumers and business owners were getting used to the internet as part of everyday business, the convergence of mobile, cloud and social will mean a year of rapid change in 2012. With pervasive smartphone devices, realtime social influence is leapfrogging SEO with Google tracking +1 social likes and crowdsourcing influence trends.
Within this combination of realtime and social via mobile devices, a potential commerce game-changer is the new breed of “contextually aware” technologies that anticipate user needs and deliver products and services proactively.

While 2011 marked a turning point for the open data movement in Ireland, in 2012 the focus is likely to shift towards the commercialisation of big data. “Enterprising OpenData: The Game Is On” was a brainstorming seminar/conference that explored the interesting possibilities for open data in the interactive gaming and social space.

While many people associate open data with eGovernment and citizen services, the potential for social gaming underpinned by a demand for contextually aware services makes for a wide-open platform for new business opportunities.

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