Introduction

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INTRODUCTION

This pocket guide is about connecting dots for the mobile services industry within Europe. We identify the dots that demonstrate knowledge about success factors and search for new, as yet unknown dots. We look at the dots that highlight excellence and link them with the dots that are striving to achieve excellence in the belief that it is only when people, regions and nations connect and communicate with each other, that we can meet the challenges that lie ahead of us.

This guide is designed as a way to understand the drivers behind excellence within the field of mobile and mobile services in Europe. It can be used as a practical handbook to put general recommendations into a context and make them specific. It can also be used as a way to start connecting your dots with all  the other dots in Europe. 

It is about the experiences from, and work of, the EMMIA Policy Learning Platform and what we can learn from those regions in Europe which have already achieved excellence within the mobile industry and with new mobile services. It has been written for those of you who have the ambition to take your regions towards excellence with the help of mobile technology. This guide is filled with insights, experiences, suggestions and recommendations. It also provides practical advice for those who want to start contextualising general recommendations in order to make them more specific to a certain region.

This pocket guide summarises, in an easy and digestible format, the key conclusions of the much more detailed “mobilise europe report” which is available at www.mobilise-europe.mobi.

BACKGROUND - WHAT IS MOBILE

Trends come and go; but we already know that the influence from mobile services on other industry sectors will increase during the immediate future. Some general technology trends that will definitely affect us, are:

Into the Cloud Even if we think that cloud services are something natural today, only about 5 percent of business applications are run from the cloud. For SMEs the step into the cloud will not only mean new business opportunities, but also new challenges. Big Data Using Open Data as a source combined with huge amounts of other information will give us totally new ways of identifying customers and their needs; following their behaviour and making decisions. Mobile solutions that use Big Data will affect our daily life even more and create new business opportunities. In particular, the COPERNICUS/GMES program of the EU will add to Big Data when achieving a freely accessible, autonomous, multi-level operational Earth Observation capacity.

Internet of Things We have heard researchers talk about the Internet of Things for many years, but now it is becoming a reality. Cisco talks about there being 50 billion connected devices by 2020 this development will introduce a number of challenges such as: security and integrity issues, standards, environmental aspects, etc. The opportunities for SMEs are obvious – the market, is estimated to be worth over 15 trillion Euros. Localization New localization technologies (for instance provided by the GALILEO system) are providing much better accuracy. Also indoor positioning is opening up new possibilities for location-based services. Positioning will therefore become something that is completely ubiquitous and used in all types of items. In the short term, wearables and public objects will create new innovative business opportunities.

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