The so-called cloud and mobile should be a shining example of a marriage made in heaven, blessed by the gods and beloved by all.
For years we have been hearing that THIS is the year for mobile in travel. We are probably beyond that stage. So is the marriage working and are we all having a good time?
If you have a simple application such as HotelTonight, then this marriage works. It is straightforward simple and valuable. But can a large online travel agency’s depth and breadth of product match that?
One could argue that the perception that you have the WHOLE web in the palm of your hand is false.
Apple and others are telling us to abandon our laptops and rely on the cloud. The mobile telcos have been telling us how wonderful 4G is (mostly LTE which in reality is 3.5G). Sadly this doesn’t all fit together as well as we are led to believe, and things are not going to get a lot faster for quite a while.
Those of you who are using 4G today in different markets are finding a few things. It’s perhaps not as fast as you like. Service is spotty and erratic. Roaming charges are a bear, wifi still beats it, so adoption of cellular enabled tablets has been less than stellar.
While early reports of up to 50% of iPads would be configured as 3G and 4G enabled, the actual number is fewer. It is estimated that less than 20% of all iPads are cellular equipped and most of those are accessing wifi rather than cellular networks.
Last year, Localytics app analytics assessed the market for app usage and determined that only 6% of all app usage was via cellular connectivity.
While that will rise, it will be constrained by the low number of cellular enabled devices and the continued poor experience. On the other hand consumers are being pushed hard for mobile data usage and a meshed environment of cloud based and thin client (mobile device) access and the use of cellular connectivity.
Implications for travel
For travel this means that not only will cloud-based apps and mobile websites be constrained, but heavy users will stick to web top [ie. full browser like sessions] rather than pure mobile sessions (app or mobile web).
Indeed the users will be quite happy with mobile hotspots, mifi devices and USB sticks rather than app based inteeaction. Tablets make the standard browser experience a lot easier, and we see mobile usage on tablets for travel applications to be more conventional browser-based experience rather than an app-based experience.
Data roaming charges and the complexity of finding and logging onto wifi networks also means constraint in mobile usage. The poor quality of data networks in mobile will also restrict users who will feel unsure of trusting their commerce applications to give them a totally secure, cheap (meaning free) and reliable service while in trip.
So before the howls or protest come in, there are a few more factors to be considered. Many users in different parts of the world are on pre-paid or pay as you go plans where data is very expensive and metered, which will constrain mcommerce applications.
Downloads of travel applications are very low in the overall scheme of things (go to Appannie and look at the travel applications categories versus the other categories). Strip out local transportation, weather and mapping and you get some pretty poor results and some of the numbers are bordering on insignificant.
As a result, search and social will continue to shine but not ecommerce on mobile aka mcommerce. I challenge anyone to show me they are doing verifiable business on mobile, despite high interest. Typical results what I believe that will be seen are:
- Different session profiles – shorter and large numbers of abandoned sessions
- Many zombie downloads – ie downloaded but never used
- Declining numbers of annual downloads as the marketplace gets saturated
- Low transaction numbers
- Many applications are poorly designed
- Lack of attention to data protection.
The moral of the story is be careful what you wish for. Mobile is cool, but adoption and usage is very different from the typical browser based web top environment. For Travel where complexity reigns, migrating to mobile app from web top will be challenging
This is a marriage that we know will be long term wont necessarily be happy for the couple (Mr Mobile and Ms Cloud).
And, for sure, users will get tired of the squabbling between the various parties: telcos, app vendors, device providers not to mention product purveyors.
NB: Unhappy marriage image via Shutterstock.
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About Timothy O'Neil-Dunne
If I may throw in my 2 cents. I’m the founder of http://cloudbase.io and what we do is help mobile developers store their data in the cloud. Needless to say I do believe that connected mobile applications are the future. However, I do agree with the fact that technology, and data-roaming charges for that matter, are far from good, never mind perfect. I am also an avid traveller and having spent many months roaming around India I fully understand the pain.
On this subject I believe there is a way around for users.
We need to accept the fact that mobile connection especially 3g and internet connectivity will be sporadic for the foreseeable future. We have been working with developers building applications on our platform (some travel-related) to allow large chunks of data to be downloaded locally to the device making applications usable without connectivity for as long as possible. I believe we are getting there and soon thanks to open technologies such as Open Street Maps most of what is available on the cloud will be also available in local so long as you stick to the pre-planned route.
This is a tricky subject, especially for services like cloudbase.io tech-wise. Where should the “smartness” of the cloud stop and the cleverness of the application begin for data to be always available?
Agree. Like to see more mobile apps that make use of local storage. There’s a fair amount of libraries that make live easier for developers to switch from online to offline, although of course it’s not trivial.
As far as local mapping goes: I’m loving Mapbox. They’ve been allowing mobile offline caching of beautiful maps for a while now. http://mapbox.com/blog/ios-sdk-caching/
Thanks to both of you. We will POSSIBLY get there but for now the problem is the air is not free and app developers are doing a very poor job (some not all but you know who you are). Amazon’s costs for cloud can really rack up if you are not careful.
Yup challenges galore. It will take a bit of time to sort itself out.
Let’s hope the players get their act together. In the mean time – I will hold onto my Blackberry!!!
Cheers
Timothy
I’m a little confused, what type of apps are we actually discussing here. Travel guide apps? Hotel/flight booking apps, all of the above?
It seems to me these are very different beasts, travel guide apps are essentially going to have to work nearly 100% offline or they’re pretty useless. Hotel & Flight apps face a different set of challenges, they have to decide how much of their functionality is worth shunting into an app. Chances are at some point they’ll just be duplicating functionality that works better on their mobile site.
As a point of clarification, the article focused on Apps that rely on the Cloud (hence the marriage analogy). Thus its the Apps that by definition require the Cloud to operate. Even the loosely coupled ones like Travel Guides need updates etc. So while they may be good offline, I would guess that frequently people forget to designate them to download the content before the trip and consequently as they are “location aware” they donw load while roaming and thus cause a trip to the cloud – voila data roaming charges….
I wonder if we did a survey of all Tnooz readers and asked how many had suffered “inadvertent” data roaming charges. I would hazard a guess almost every single iPhone user has forgotten it at least once.
Cheers
Very interesting insights, it is important to face reality while we are driven by cool promising features .
I would also question considering tablets mobile devices, not only for cellular adoption, but for usage pattern. .CCS Insight’s latest publication, “Tablet User Survey” says that the living room and the bedroom are the most popular places for people to use their tablet, and while more than half of tablet owners take their device on holiday, just 15% use them while commuting, and this is quite different than mobile phones.
Fernando, Could you please point our readers to the survey? I think it would be very useful to look at these numbers. I think it is important to flesh out these issues early when evaluating the mobile space.
Cheers and thanks
Timothy
Sure Tim,
http://www.ccsinsight.com/press/company-news/1431-tablet-user-survey
Best
Fernando