News From 2013 and What Will Make News in 2014

If you are in the Boston, MA area as I am you are starting off the New Year with a pretty decent winter storm.  About a foot of snow expected and it is gusting up pretty well right now.

Happy Holidays, Happy Winter Solstice, and Happy New Year to everyone.

First I want to cover a few articles that recap 2013.  There are always quite a few as the year ends and I've found a few that are worth sharing.  Then I'll take a moment to put down a few of my thoughts for what to expect in 2014.

2013

Payments.com has been a go-to site for me and Karen Webster's writings are the best.  This recap of 2013 is a good one for payments:

http://www.pymnts.com/briefing-room/consumer-engagement/Loyalty/2013/looking-ahead-at-the-close-of-2013/

Here are a couple of lines from that one I want to share to help us look forward to 2014:

The payments and commerce space over the next year will be the most interesting we've seen in at least the last five and unleash even more innovation. 

This one from TechCrunch says goodbye to 2013 and welcomes the rest of the world to the mobile internet:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/02/the-late-adopters/

User Experience is important to product management in the technology space.  This article from a blog is a good one:

milestones-and-missteps-in-ux-design-for-2013-winners-and-losers-not-the-usual-suspects/

Last one from 2013 deals with the advent of the "mobile internet" during the holiday shopping season.  The title of the article says quite a lot:

http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2013/1227/Santa-leaves-smart-phone-steps-in-Mobile-sales-soar-on-Christmas-Day

Here is a bit from that article:

Overall, online shopping continues to make a bigger dent in holiday shopping than previous years. IBM reports that online sales on Christmas Day were up 16.5 percent from last year, and mobile sales made up for 29 percent of all online sales, which is up 40 percent from 2012.

We will use that to segue to 2014...

2014

...speaking of mobile.  IBM is now declaring we must differentiate our data between smart phones and tablets.

http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240211774/Retailers-must-distinguish-between-smartphones-and-tablets-says-IBM

This is, of course, old news in this blog.  I wrote a white paper about this subject early in 2013.

Now how about a few thoughts on what 2014 might bring?

• Apple will attempt to make a splash in some arena, wearable devices maybe, maybe TV, maybe payments.  Meanwhile incremental changes will continue in their mature offerings but a move towards the now proven 2 in 1 laptop/tablet style by Microsoft will likely be forthcoming as well.
• This will be the year of the beacon.  Bluetooth 4.1 and Bluetooth Low Energy solutions will finally enable many of the brightest ideas around mobile internet interactions with people.
• Mobile wallets will have a breakout year.  The security breach at Target just might give EMV a push over the finish line and that could save ISIS.  Meanwhile MCX is on its way and PayPal isn't sitting around.
• Facebook will see big declines.  The "services" provided by Facebook have been chipped away at by a variety of other solutions such as Vine and Snapchat.  Overall the next generation of users has no interest in Facebook and this will begin to show itself this year.  Maybe the company will be mostly flat, maybe they'll find incremental ways to monetize their current offering, but the decline will be noticeable this year.
• Samsung will come out with yet another not-yet-ready product and declare itself the first to the top of the mountain once more ... and nobody will care.
• The biggest news I can't yet predict will likely involve a cloud-based solution for something.  I don't know what, but something.  The "internet of things" will take off in some way.  Will it be related to a cloud-based solution?  I don't know. 

Hope your new year brings you much happiness.

Happy reading,

J.W. Gant