Partner Article

Was 2014 the Internet Tipping Point?

Lee Cottle, Director, VP Global Head of Sales at Push Technology

At the beginning of 2014, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, said that 2014 would be the “tipping point for the evolution of the internet.” She said that “When you look at mobile, when you look at the bandwidth, when you look at the Internet of Things, it’s going to change everyone’s daily routines really fundamentally.” So was it?

Mobile

In February 2014, Americans used smartphone and tablet apps more than PCs to access the Internet reported on CNN. The article reported that “Mobile devices accounted for 55% of Internet usage in the United States in January. Apps made up 47% of Internet traffic and 8% of traffic came from mobile browsers, according to data from comScore, cited Thursday by research firm Enders Analysis.”

Why the increase in usage? Convenience, more powerful devices, apps that improve our lives, ease of use, entertainment. Whatever the reason, mobile helped push the Internet to the tipping point in 2014.

Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) was definitely a 2014 buzzword with good reason. 2014 saw the increase consumer adoption of IoT. No longer is IoT just a machine talking to a machine, instead it is the new mobile. It is the way we make our life more convenient – we can handle home security, heating, track our fitness or remotely monitor an aging family member. While many consumers are making use of IoT, we haven’t even see the full explosion of it over the Internet. According to an article in Forbes, Gartner gives IoT five to ten years to reach its final stage of maturity. “IoT says Gartner, ‘is becoming a vibrant part of our customers’ and our partners’ business and IT landscape.” If it is vibrant now because of increased awareness and adoption; and it is predicted to grow to 50 billion things to be connected by 2020, then we are absolutely at a tipping point.

Bandwidth and Performance

In the US, Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile are all battling to attract and keep customers by advertising speed, bandwidth and network performance. In the UK, it is BT, Virgin, O2, Orange, T-Mobile. The battle to deliver the best experience to customers is the war between telcos, mobile phone operators and cable companies. Not only that, it is a war to maintain the customer relationship as over-the-top (OTT) content has been steadily growing into what is now an $8 billion industry. Consumers want the right information delivered to the right device at the right time. Demands for this puts pressures on the owners of the networks, cable and bandwidth because if they cannot guarantee performance, consumers can and will go elsewhere.

As we reflect on last year, yes 2014 was a tipping point for the evolution of Internet. But I think 2015, will see even bigger transformation for the Internet, with Mobile, wearables and IoT adoption rates increasing beyond any of our own expectations, you can be sure of one thing bandwidth and bottlenecks are going to increase. Consumers will get restless and tired if performance is a problem so every organisation that owns a piece of this puzzle – the network, infrastructure, device, app, etc., needs to find new ways of Internet efficiency. This can only be achieved by managing data intelligently and controlling the flow of it without significantly increasing cost.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Push Technology .