TNP Blog

4 Trends That Will Change the Internet as We Know It

Written by The Network Pro | Jul 12, 2012 9:08:04 PM

The Internet, as we know it, is all set to change. While we aren’t strangers to “changes” to the Internet, it’s always exciting to know what’s coming. For businesses, it also means preparation. Entrepreneurs very well know how difficult and taxing it can be to prepare for a future that’s more dynamic than ever. Here are at least 4 trends that we believe are going to shape our Internet in the future:

 

Mobile Apps

In a Forrester research recently, more than 36% of those surveyed believe that mobile apps are set to change how we consume content, do things on the Internet. In addition, another 32% of the respondents believe that mobile apps have tremendous business value. Being inexpensive, mobile apps will usher in a continuous development what with sensors, location-based services, security, and many other utilities. In a published research document , Forrester terms the future of the Internet as “App Internet” which will be a twisted realm of mobile apps, cloud computing, and existing devices.

 

Business is all about being social and contextual

According to Gartner, 40% of all smartphone users in the world will opt-in to track their online activities – a clear window of insights into the brave new world of consumer behavior. Even consumption of content on the Internet will head to gigantic proportions. Consider this: Gartner analyzed that 30 billion snippets of content were added in the month of October 2011. It’s estimated that the IP traffic will increase by 4 times by the year 2015. Youtube users watch billions of videos on a single day and Twitter alone registers at least 32 billion searches each month. With all this activity happening on the Internet, could businesses afford to ignore?

 

It’s an era of devices

Bring Your Own Device just makes sense today – more of a norm than an exception thanks to proliferation of media tablets and smartphones. When phones and tablets get just as capable of allowing users to get work done, this trend is inevitable. Gartner predicts that by the year 2015, tablet shipments will reach 50% of laptop shipments. By the same time, iOS and Android will dominate the market with 80% of tablets shipped with powered by these operating systems.

 

Touch, gestures, and voice

While it’s all video and text today with a bit of audio thrown in, most of the web as we know of will still retain these. Touch, gestures, and voice are going to kick in adding to the content. Every mobile application being created today is already optimized for touch and there are at least 70 billion mobile application downloads each year. Apps, websites, and obviously the devices will all be optimized for touch, gestures, and voice. Siri and other voice features are not freak accidents or fancy features; it’s the window for what’s coming in the future.

How prepared are you?