Focus on LTE-enabled devices this year

Wider LTE rollout, accelerated shift to smartphones and tablets, and Big Data opportunities will take centre stage this year. ET lists some trends...

Devices & OS

Smartphone sales will rise while the downtrend in feature phones will continue. Vendors will start focusing on LTE-enabled smartphone and tablets. 2014 will see emergence of new open source operating systems such as Tizen, Firefox, Ubuntu and Sailfish.

Chinese handsets could become popular, especially in tier 2 & 3 towns.

Low-cost tablet screen size will go up from 7 inch to 8 inch, primarily to retain the differentiation from phablets.

Dual OS laptops and tablets will gain prominence along with 3D printers. Notebooks will continue to rule. Touch laptops and hybrids are going to have a good run.

Apps & social media

Developers to come out with vernacular apps, especially in light of the upcoming national elections. Some political parties may launch their own apps too.

Social media advertising to gain prominence.Will become more popular than online banner ads.

Connectivity

Data card market will grow. Devices such as laptops, notebooks, Chromebooks and tablets will be sold with bundled data cards. Data card OEMs will launch more models of LTE data cards.

Electronic retailing may become important for emerging brands that are unable to grow their physical distribution network.

Big data & services

Big Data to take center stage, creating challenges and opportunities for the industry. Explosion of unstructured data and mobile applications will generate a huge opportunity for the creation of business value, competitive advantage, and decision support if this data can be managed and accessed efficiently.

Software as a Service (SaaS) will become one of the preferred ways for buying new applications. Solutions will move to the cloud. However, large enterprise suites will still not be available in a true cloud mode, or at least won’t find too many takers.