Hola! Here we are in the heart of Mobile World Congress 2013. What we can observe so far is that innovation is in full swing fostering discoveries and development and it really seems endless. The mobile ecosystem is expanding at lightning speed, challenging everyone to adapt at the same pace.

So as not to get lost in this evolving innovation bubble, we’re keeping you up-to-date with 2013 mobile trends here on the blog and on Twitter at #GemaltoMWC. So, where should telecoms companies focus in order to take full advantage of this ‘New Mobile Horizon’?

Mobile World Congress this year is showcasing a host of trends from contactless payments and augmented reality, to embedded devices and connected cities. Two halls that caught my eye are The App Planet, which brings together more than 12,000 application developers, and mPowered Brands where the world’s largest consumer brands congregate to accelerate marketers’ knowledge of mobile as a marketing medium.

On day one at MWC13, I attended the conference Big Data: Big Questions, Big Value? presented by Paul Bloom, Chief Technology Officer for Telecom Research at IBM. It’s fair to say that Big Data is a hot topic for telecoms this year.  A delegate @yazmodo tweeted during the panel discussion: ‘big data is the key to transforming telecoms…’ and I’d add that the one of the key barriers to this transformation remains the respect of users’ privacy.

During the panel Khalifa Alshamsi from Etisalat said that the advantages of leveraging big data in telecoms should be the internal benefits. The use of big data for better customer experience, improved operation efficiency and improved tariff plans, to name a few, put this in the right context ensuring it is relevant for the user.

Key Mobile Trends

After checking several mobile influencers’ views (Thomas Husson from Forrester, Hayley Pearce from Trademob and Helen Keegan from Heroes of a Mobile Fringe, to name a few), seven key 2013 mobile trends have emerged to me:

1. Confirmation of contextual marketing needs, with geolocation at its center
2. Evolution of highly connected consumer behavior
3. Mobile App battle with Native versus Hybrid versus Web App a crucial choice
4. Mobile payment with NFC and In-app payment via mobile devices will become simpler and more secure, and as a result we’ll see increased mobile purchases
5. Big Data is being used across all industries by companies wanting to carry out more intelligent, strategic marketing campaigns based on all the data available to them, to deliver relevant ads to consumers
6. The booming tablet market with its specific characteristics means that marketers should address two separate use cases for tablets and phones
7. Exploring new challenges in human-machine communication by re-inventing the good- old communication tool – the Voice. It will simplify communication and make it more productive.

To sum up, mobile services will focus more on content than on delivery to offer more relevant value proposition to customers. Furthermore, the introduction of new services will engage consumers in long lasting relationships, but subsequently, this will be disturbed by privacy and data collection concerns. Only the future can show us clearer mobile horizon, but in the meantime, let’s use these trends as a guidelines for mobile marketing to deliver ever more relevant services.

Are you at #MWC13? Let us know your thoughts.