YESTERDAY, TOMORROW

2015 sure went by in a blink of an eye and we’re already stepping into a brand new year. Looking back, the tech industry was actually quite vibrant, though truth be told, all the most exciting developments centered around the mobile market. While this is surprising to no one, the fact that one single tech segment basically carried the momentum of the whole industry is rather telling.

Of course, I’m not just talking about smartphones here, but the convergence of mobile form factors that include wearables, smartphones, tablets and hybrids. You can read more about this phenomenon in this issue’s Think editorials. We’ve also witnessed the incredible explosion of mobile data and apps that have opened the doors to new usage scenarios and peer-to-peer services we’d never have though possible before - forget shopping from home, we now shop from phone.

In the last two years, the momentum of mobile trends became the force that awakened companies from an inward looking culture to reassess their positions. Apple relented to making phablet-sized devices with the iPhone 6 Plus, BlackBerry jumped onto the Android bandwagon with the Priv, Microsoft realized that people want their Start Button and desktop back even on hybrid touch devices, traditional watch makers can no longer ignore the connected smartwatch, and the list goes on.

What will 2016 bring? We won’t speculate, but you can be sure HWM will have it covered, even if we have to jump off a mountain to get that story.