How mobile technology leads the new digital landscape

New developments and curiosities from a changing global media landscape: People, Spaces, Deliberation brings trends and events to your attention that illustrate that tomorrow’s media environment will look very different from today’s and will have little resemblance to yesterday’s.

Throughout 2014, People, Spaces, Deliberation has focused attention on the rising importance of mobile phones, cloud computing, data and business intelligence, and social media. These megatrends have dominated the technology and communications landscapes and promise to do so in the future as well.

Executives— in both the public and private spheres— are taking note of these megatrends. When asked, “Which do you believe will have the greatest positive impact on your business over the next five years?” survey respondents of a global report, Digital Megatrends 2015, from Oxford Economics gave the following answers.

Not surprisingly, mobile technology ranked #1— no other consumer technology has spread as fast and no other offers the same degree of diversity in services.

One survey respondent, John Sviokla, a principal with Diamond Advisory Services (a subsidiary of PricewaterhouseCoopers), also acknowledges that for many people, their mobile phone number “is more stable than their home address.”

The impact of these megatrends is also clear for the development sector. According to the World Bank, for every 10 additional mobile phones per 100 people in low- and middle-income countries, GDP grows by roughly 0.8% and in high-income countries, GDP grows by about 0.6% (see figure 3.1, Chapter 3: Economic Impacts of Broadband, Information and Communications for Development 2009, World Bank).

This article is published in collaboration with The World Bank’s People, Spaces and Deliberation Blog. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Roxanne Bauer is a consultant to the World Bank’s External and Corporate Relations, Operational Communications department (ECROC).

Image: Men are silhouetted against a video screen as they pose with smartphones in this photo illustration taken in the central Bosnian town of Zenica, May 17, 2013. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic