Placing your bets in 2015: What’s hot in mobile? (Part 2)

Following on from Osborne Clarke ‘what’s hot in mobile’ event on the 11 February 2015, here’s the second in the series of blogs looking at the findings and delving into what was discussed.

M&A and financing trends in mobile

Julie Langley (partner at Results International) began by sharing the key questions that she is always asked.

Are we in a tech bubble?: “No, we’re in a healthy market but buyers are much more rigorous, much more disciplined, and much more thorough, than we have ever seen before in terms of diligence”.

What is mobile?: “When I think back… it was mobile operators, mobile networks… you had hardware, software, internet and mobile, those were the four basic categories. We then realised that mobile was a channel, you’ve got desktop and you’ve got mobile. And now… it is difficult to define what it is… but what I do know is that every corporate puts mobile at the top of their list of strategic plans”.

Julie then described some of the recent trends for mobile in M&A:

• Enterprise mobility is going to “transform the market”. There is a huge move from on-site software to enterprise mobility applications. Five years ago, nobody had a tablet, and now, tablets have become essential business productivity workplace tools. Further to this, we now expect different interfaces, similar to Facebook and Twitter, and this puts big pressure on corporates to create similar experiences at work. M&A is driven by this. Interest is in software, IT, applications and existing consumer products. As mentioned by Chris, consumer and enterprise is likely to merge and relationships such as those between Apple and IBM are likely to continue.
• How do you close the online to offline loop?: “Mobile is perfectly placed to close the loop” Most shopping, in particular grocery shopping, is still done in store. Therefore, there is a significant online to offline loop, a gap where retailers do not know whether a consumer that viewed a product online will buy it in store. Retailers will seek to close this loop and try to fully understand their customer journey through mobile. Developments in this area have already begun. Oracle recently acquired Datalogix and retailers are using mobile apps to assist them. In addition, offline data players have woken up to the value of the data that they have been sitting on by moving in M&A and picking up online businesses. The next loop will be in mobile e-commerce. Many online shoppers browse products on their mobile but choose to purchase on their desktop. This should change in time as payments technology and security improves.
• Mobile security: Security is now embedded into every product and device, making it no longer a concern for users but a hot M&A topic and this trend will continue. Julie concluded that: “the sheer number and diversity of buyers buying into [mobile technology]… brands, clothing manufacturers, consumer electronics manufacturers, media companies, broadcasters…” is what makes it such an interesting area; and a key piece of advice is to prepare for exit by “build[ing] commercial relationships/partnerships with the likely buyers… think who your likely acquirers are and start to get on their radar.”

Part 1 – Read about the mobile landscape here. 

Part 3 – Read about three start-ups provide insight into the use of mobile in enterprise here.