Demographic and technological trends are converging to create tremendous opportunities in the global mobile market, especially in the segments targeted by Kunekt. These trends include:

1. Strong growth in mobile phone sales worldwide, increasing 35% to 417 million units in Q3 2010 from 309 million in Q3 2009.
2. Strong growth in smartphone sales, especially in mature markets, doubling to 81 million units in Q3 2010 from 41 million units a year ago.

3. Strong growth in media tablet sales in higher-end markets, with sales on pace to reach 19.5 million units in 2010, 54.8 million units in 2011, and surpassing 208 million units in 2014.
   • In 2010, cellular/Wi-Fi media tablets will account for 55% of sales. By 2014, cellular/Wi-Fi media tablets will account for 80% of sales.
   • 10 inch tablets will be the most successful form factor. “While we expect 7 inch tablets to be popular in the short term due to the limitations of Android and because they are closer to smartphones we expect that in the long run 10 inch tablets will be more successful as they offer a superior experience.” (Carolina Milanesi, Gartner)
4. Increasing sales of cheap unbranded “white-box” handsets in emerging regions: China, India, Russia, Latin America, and Africa. White-box manufacturers from Asia doubled their market share to 33% of total sales in Q3 2010 from 16% in Q3 2009. Total white-box sales now exceed those of Nokia, whose market share dropped to 28% from 37%. Larger white-box players are offering customer support and warranty on the devices which makes them much more attractive to consumers as it lowers the risk of buying an unknown brand.
5. The dominant mobile device type shipped globally will be feature phones without an identifiable OS because emerging markets dominate handset demand. Organizations operating in emerging markets should assume smartphones will be a niche device beyond 2014.

6. Accelerated evolution of smartphone OS platforms. Android—the most open, flexible smartphone OS platform—has taken advantage of this trend and achieved stunning growth. Fully 26% of all mobile devices sold in Q3 2010 were running Android, from just 3.5% a year ago. All the other operating systems lost market share. "The worldwide mobile OS market is dominated by four players: Symbian, Android, Research In Motion and iOS," said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Market share in the OS space will consolidate around a few key OS providers that have the most support from CSPs and developers and strong brand awareness with consumer and enterprise customers."

7. Rise of the third era of mobility—the service and social era. The first era was devices, characterized by iconic devices such as the Motorola RAZR and dominated by device manufacturers. The second era was applications, which arrived with the iPhone, popularizing application and media stores. The third era—service and social—will build on the application era, but “it will be characterized by cloud services and streaming media. Applications will survive, but often as a component of a more complex end-to-end experience involving the cloud.”
8. Context will be a defining principle of mobile business for the next decade. It will play a key role in many areas of mobile business, especially advertising and marketing. Contextually aware systems anticipate a user’s needs and proactively serve up the most appropriate and customized content, product, or service. By 2016 one-third of worldwide mobile consumer marketing will be context-awareness-based.
9. Mobile will generate revenue from a wide range of additional services such as context, advertising, application and service sales, and so on. Each of these will be a significant business worth several tens of billions of dollars per year. Gartner estimates that by the end of 2010, 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of rich, mobile commerce providing an ideal environment for the convergence of mobility and the Web. There are already over 300,000 applications for the Apple iPhone and over 100,000 for Android phones.