游戏邦注：本文作者Brian Monahan，文章谈到移动设备发展所带来的5大营销趋势。

基础技术和用户接受度的提高表明营销行业未来的发展步伐将进一步加大。综观技术、消费者行为和营销效力，以下5大趋势值得我们关注。

物品同一性

互联网如今成为联系各个电脑的全球网络。在这个系统中，用户以网站名义输入信息，网络就会将信息转化成电脑“地址”，回复含有文本、图片和视频的页面。

SUN Microsystems

20世纪90年代中期，太阳微系统公司（游戏邦注：其为美国计算机公司）预言了“物联网”概念。虽然在传统互联网中，电脑能够寻找页面，但“物联网”却能够实际物体（从苏打罐到谷物盒）具备独特同一性，它们因此能够被检索，被追踪。1999年，MIT媒体实验室描绘了该系统架构。12年后，感官计算能力连同“物联网”架构带来了我们称之为“物质同一性”的趋势。广告商从中获得的启示是消费者如今能够同商店物品相联系，产生相关信息、建议和评论。

智能手机设备的涌现使得消费者能够通过各种途径（游戏邦注：如条形码扫描、2D标签、近场通讯或者视觉搜索）获得同物品相关信息或内容。

数字行业内容经历了两次发展。第一次是是关于URL。第二次是关于社交个人资料。我们即将目睹的第三波内容发展是关于物体。

传统移动设备淡出

趋势表明移动设备对消费者行为越发重要，它不再单纯是个功能装置，如今它对所有硬核设备和服务来说必不可少。这不仅是平板电脑和智能手机的实况，对于汽车、家用电器，甚至是CPG（游戏邦注：即消费品）零售商品来说亦是如此。

这个趋势超出设备之外，拓展至“云端”，所谓的云端是指内容和软件无需储存在本地设备，而是通过互联网访问。借助云端，任何设备均可获得情报，然后基于情景个性化玩家体验。在GPS中，情景相关内容也指玩家获取内容的某个具体位置。SoLoMo聚变诞生了更多源于手机设备的应用新用途。

资金来自其他活动的项目流程图不应再出现移动部分。明白消费者流动性及设计这些活动当中的通讯系统是项目发展的核心。

生活就是游戏

这个趋势很简单，很微妙。简单来说，它是指游戏作为娱乐活动越来越受欢迎，以及整个游戏行业日渐成熟。更重要的是，Kinect和Zynga《Farmville》等产品表示非传统、非掌机游戏获得广泛吸引力，成为主流游戏体验。此外，随着iPhone、iPad及其他智能手机、平板电脑的盛行，瞄准这些设备的游戏内容逐渐成为主要游戏类型（游戏邦注：Nintendo 3DS的问世表明，3D内容将成为杀手级应用）。

kinect

这个趋势更普遍的部分是游戏设计原理已经交织于我们的行为当中。随着手机设备融入定位和情境辨识技术，世界今后将变成消费享受游戏体验的舞台。对于零售商和品牌公司而言，这表示他们需要针对用户创造广告，了解用户喜好，传递有用信息和体验，主要通过奖励、排名及其他游戏衍生奖励和虚拟货币形式实现。

飞行常客里程数（Frequent flier miles）是全球仅次于美元的第二大货币（游戏邦注：超过欧元）。之所以有此规模原因很简单；忠诚项目所致。通过智能网络和设备，用户能够使用Foursquare之类的服务在访问各个公司和地点的时候角逐排名。同样地，消费者已经习惯通过虚拟货币获得折扣、优惠券和其他权利。对于品牌公司而言，这意味着传统忠诚项目的进化，如飞行常客里程数。在“新忠诚”世界里，消费者对于这类权利烂熟于心，同时愿意改变行为换得更多奖励。品牌公司开始创造面向消费者的体验，这些体验横跨广播、互动、直接和户外媒介领域促进激发忠诚度，同时又整合现有CRM和忠诚系统。

内容市场的兴起

如果说CES 2011有谈及硬件主题，那就是平板电脑。在CES上，硬件制造商宣布目前共有82款独立平板电脑（游戏邦注：大多采用谷歌的Android操作系统）。虽然众所周知，微软并非涉足该领域，但更值得关注的是谷歌和苹果未来将展开一场平板电脑霸主地位之战。

期间为止，苹果在美国售出850万台iPad，占总iPad市场的88%。平板电脑总销量，特别是iPad销量，未来两年将会显著增加。据悉，苹果今年将售出2000万台左右的触屏设备，增幅高达127%，而2012年的销量则有望突破3000万。据预测，虽然Android覆盖面极广，操作系统设备具有定价优势，但苹果未来将会主导市场。福雷斯特研究公司认为，到2012年，苹果将抢占80%的市场份额。

iPad

苹果之所以能够占据主导地位，部分原因在于其抢占先机，产品设计精明，且便于操作。然而更重要的是，其设备同iTunes内容市场融为一体。苹果正是凭此及其计费方式，继续维持和拓展其霸主地位，尽管其产品定价高，功能设置小。

制造商赶上LED高清设置的需求周期末班车，试图寻求下个大突破。虽然3D TV能否成为流行趋势有待时间证明，但“连网电视”似乎是我们升级起居室装置的下个选择。这将进一步推动内容市场的普及程度。

网飞公司的订阅用户已超过康卡斯特公司（游戏邦注：其为美国最大的有线系统公司），但其仍旧没有出售广告。拥有下拉菜单的视频内容和绑定包装零售产品之间的冲突似乎不可避免。它将重塑内容发行方式，改变消费者所购买的硬件及其中蕴藏的广告机会。

持续的局部关注度

这个词语是微软研究员Linda Stone 1998年首次提出，表示消费者注意力的持续分散。这一社会注意缺失紊乱现象是由设备、媒介和分布局势的变更所导致的。媒介硬件反应了这些变化；用户可以利用早餐时间通过iPad阅读新闻和邮件，可以驾驶装有4G Pandora的汽车在上班路上听音乐。上班期间，用户可以畅游于工作邮件和Facebook之间，临近下班，用户还可以登陆Foursquare告知朋友他们即将前往的餐厅。到了晚上，用户可以通过Xbox观看网飞公司作品，通过笔记本电脑登陆推特讨论电影内容。临睡前用户还可以使用微软Kinect通过Xbox体验1小时游戏运动。

foursquare

大量研究表明，这些无处不在的刺激因素正改变着人类的关注焦点和学习内容，为了在复杂媒介市场中获得用户关注度，品牌公司不得不设身处地开发沉浸式通讯设备，充分吸引用户眼球。

总结

开发者的新决策若未能引起那些致力思考数字媒介发展趋势业内权威人士的共鸣，便难以获得很大反响（游戏邦注：发现自我价值固然重要，但如今更重要的趋势是发展步伐正逐步扩大）。不论开发商是借助趋势还是其他概念理解这一变化，对于营销者来说最重要的一点是，努力探索新途径帮助公司把握和挖掘变革中所蕴含的机遇。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Mobile is dead: 5 marketing trends

By Brian Monahan

Advances in underlying technology and consumer adoption assure that the pace of change in the marketing industry will continue to accelerate. From our perspective sitting at the crossroads of technology, consumer behavior, and marketing effectiveness, here are five trends worth watching.

The identity of things

Until recently, the internet has been a global network that allows any computer to connect to another. Within this system, a user types in the name of a website and the network translates the words into an “address” of the computer in order to return a page of text, photos, and video.

In the mid 1990s SUN Microsystems forecast a concept it called the “internet of things.” While the traditional internet allows computers to find pages, the “internet of things” enables physical objects ranging from soda cans to cereal boxes to have unique identities that make them findable and trackable. In 1999, researchers at MIT’s Media Lab blueprinted the architecture for such a system. Twelve years later, sensory computing capabilities, combined with the architecture of the “internet of things” is producing a trend we call the “identity of things.” One possible implication of this system for advertisers is that consumers can now be connected with in-store objects to trigger related information, recommendations, and reviews.

The proliferation of smart mobile devices allow consumers to access information and content tied to objects via various means like bar code scanning, 2D tags, near field communication, or visual search.

The digital industry has already seen two waves of content development. The first was anchored to URLs. The second was anchored to social profiles. We are about to witness the third wave of digital content development anchored to objects.

Mobile is dead

This trend refers to the fact that mobile has become so critical to consumer behavior that it has progressed beyond being a “feature;” it is now a necessity for all hardware devices and services. This is clearly the case for tablets and smartphones but it also applies to cars, household appliances and even CPG retail merchandise.

This trend goes beyond devices and extends to “the cloud,” a general term describing content and software that no longer needs to reside locally on a device but can instead be accessed through the internet. Using the cloud, any device can acquire intelligence in order to personalize a user’s experience based on context. With GPS, contextual relevance also refers to the exact place on the planet where the consumer is pulling down content. The SoLoMo fusion opens up new sorts of use cases that are native to mobile devices.

It is no longer acceptable for campaigns to have a mobile section on the flowchart that only gets funded after other activities. Understanding consumer mobility and designing communications that reside throughout those movements must be core to campaign development.

Life is a game

This trend is both simple and nuanced. In the simplest sense, it refers to the increasing popularity of gaming as an entertainment genre and the relative aging up of the gaming generation. More importantly, products like Kinect and Zynga’s Farmville highlight massive, mainstream appeal for non-traditional, non-console based titles. Additionally, as the iPhone, iPad, and other smartphones and tablets become more pervasive, the content marketplaces associated with them are revealing games as one of the largest categories. The Nintendo 3DS is showing that games will likely be the killer app for 3D content.

The more pervasive element of this trend refers to the idea that game design principles are clearly being woven into all we do. As mobile devices are built with location and context aware technology, the world is being turned into an arena in which consumers enjoy playing. For retailers and brands, this means creating advertising that recognizes users and knows their preferences, delivering messages of value and experiences in the form of rewards, rankings and other game-derived forms of incentives and virtual currency.

Frequent flier miles are the world’s second largest currency, slightly behind the dollar but ahead of the euro. The reason for such scale is simple; loyalty programs work. Enabled by smart networks and devices, users are capable of using services like Foursquare to compete for rankings as they visit various businesses and locations. Similarly, consumers have become accustomed to redeeming virtual currency for discounts, coupons, and entitlements. For brands, this marks the evolution of traditional loyalty programs, such as frequent flier miles. In the “new loyalty” world, consumers are familiar with such entitlements and are willing to make large behavioral changes in order to earn rewards. Brands can now begin creating consumer-facing experiences that span broadcast, interactive, direct, and outdoor media to inspire loyalty while integrating with existing CRM and loyalty systems.

The rise of content marketplaces

If there was a hardware theme for CES 2011 it would have to be tablets. At CES, hardware manufacturers announced a total of 82 separate tablets, the majority of which are running Google’s Android operating system. While Microsoft’s absence from this market is noticeable, the larger story is the emerging battle between Google and Apple for tablet preeminence.

To date, Apple has sold 8.5 million iPads in the US, making up 88 percent of the market. iPad sales in particular, and tablet sales overall, will increase dramatically over the next two years. Nearly 20 million of Apple’s touchscreen devices will be sold next year, an increase of 127 percent, and by 2012 sales are being estimated to surpass 30 million. Our prediction is that despite the breadth of Android availability and pricing advantages on devices running it, Apple will control this market in the coming years. Forrester Research concurs, estimating that by the end of 2012, Apple will retain 80 percent market share.

The reasoning behind Apple’s projected dominance can be partially attributed to its head start, attractive design and ease of use. More importantly, however, is the deep integration between the device and the iTunes content marketplace. Because of this, and the billing relationship with the consumer, Apple will be able to maintain and extend its dominance, despite its higher price tag and smaller feature set.

Manufacturers are approaching the tail end of the demand cycle for LED high definition sets and in search of the next big thing. While it remains to be seen if 3D TVs catch on, “connected TV” seems to be the next reason to upgrade the centerpiece of the living room. This will continue to make access to content marketplaces more ubiquitous.

Netflix already has more subscribers than Comcast yet it sells no advertising. The conflict between a la carte video content and bundled packages seems inevitable. It will shape how content is distributed, the hardware consumers buy, and advertising opportunities therein.

Continuous partial attention

This term, originally coined by Microsoft researcher Linda Stone in 1998, refers to the continued fragmentation of consumer attention. This societal attention deficit disorder is being driven by changes in the device, media, and distribution landscapes. Media hardware reflects these changes; news and email may be read during breakfast on an iPad, and music might be streamed to a Pandora enabled 4G car on the way to work. During the day, a consumer may toggle back and forth between work email and Facebook, and upon leaving work may check into Foursquare to tell friends about the restaurant they are heading to. In the evening they may then watch Netflix on their Xbox while surfing the web on their laptop to Tweet about the movie. The day might end with an hour of play on an exercise game through the Xbox using Microsoft Kinect.

There is a growing body of research indicating that this pervasive stimuli is changing human’s ability to focus and to learn. In order to compete for consumer attention in this complex media environment, brands must develop immersive, empathetic communications to fully engage their audience.

Conclusion

You can’t throw a rock without hitting some industry pundit willing to opine about digital media trends. And while I hope you found value in ours, the most important trend is that the pace of change is accelerating. Whether it is trends or some other construct your organization uses to make sense of the change, the most important thing for marketers is to have some way for getting the organization to engage and unlock the truly transformational opportunities for their business.（Source：imediaconnection）