Forrester: Companies Trying to Catch Up to Consumers on Mobile

Mobile tech adoption by companies still lags behind adoption by consumers, says Forrester in a new report published Thursday.

While the mobile masses have illustrated an undeniable penchant for communicating with one another and the outside world through mobile, most companies still have ample room for improvement in how they harness mobile for marketing and communication purposes.

Companies worldwide are quickly realizing that mobile has not only changed digital operations, but that it will fundamentally change entire businesses in decades to come, Forrester reports.

Consequently, 2014 will be an incremental year on this journey, as companies increase investments to transform their businesses and race to keep up with the growing mobile mind shift, with an installed base of more than 2 billion smartphones globally.

According to Forrester, the key mobile trends anticipated for this year include:

• Big data, big data, big data. Mobile is transformative but only if consumers are engaged in their exact moment of need with the right services, content, or information. Insights gleaned from data over time will be essential to know how to best serve customers in that moment.

• Mobile advertising will start to mature. New mobile-centric ad formats will emerge, with more effective mobile video inventory and more mobile ad network inventory shifting to the exchanges.

Of course, the same report warns, the process of catching up won’t happen overnight. “Your customers’ expectations are higher than you can achieve and are evolving faster than you can move — unless you are a mobile leader with agile development teams in place.”