“I believe that 2018 is going to be a huge inflection point for the mobile world,” Michael Gartenberg writes for iMore. “Everyone’s still looking at the app space and it’s still an important space. Watch, however, as competitors ratchet up the pressure on Apple and shift the conversation from devices to services. The biggest push will come from service vendors looking to co-opt the iOS platform. WeChat in China is just the beginning.”
“The 1 billion-plus Facebook users will increasingly rely on their phones for access, and even further rely on these services for news. Look for more scrutiny from governments over the role these services play in disseminating information and the impact of that information,” Gartenberg writes. “The things we saw this year are merely the tip of the iceberg.”
“AR will become the preferred method for targeting and reaching customers in ways they have not ever been able to do before,” Gartenberg writes. “Watch for Apple push the device space forward with new hardware innovations. The iPhone X is already a full generation ahead of the competition, and Apple will keep building on it and its ecosystem.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Gartenberg also says to “look for some very interesting things from” Microsoft in the mobile space in 2018.” Not so much hardware, but in services, he says.
We pity anyone who relies on Facebook for “news” almost as much as we fear for future societies here on the planet of the misinformed where logic and comity are drowning in floods of laziness and hysterics.