That’s so 2011 – what’s going to be 2012?

Happy old year! So that was 2011? Urrgghhh. Well, there is a recession on and things are a bit bleak right? Well, 2012 looks no brighter for the wider economy, however I think the telemedia industry is set to be OK. Already we are seeing more people spending on small treats – a bit of adult here, a spot of mobile gambling there, a load of social networking everywhere – and this trend is set to continue.

While people can’t afford to go on holiday or buy a new car, they want some joy (that hasn’t been ban yet has it?) and so turn to the myriad services offered via telemedia. So for 2012 we will see a load more mobile gambling, mobile gaming, social voting and TV interaction.

These little treats of services will help at least maintain the industry and help development of more low budget, small services for mobile. It will also be driven by the developments we are going to see in other, more high tech sectors that will have a direct impact on the telemedia sector as they get reverse engineered back into what you offer consumers.

Driven by the tidal wave of development this year, we will see huge numbers of people using mobile payments in everyday activities. M-payments is the topic du jour and so much work is going into it that we have to see some sort of full commercial, mass market deployment early in 2012.

Everyone from PayPal to Google to The Mobey Forum to even (perhaps) Apple will be on board with this. Retailers such as Starbucks have already made forays into letting consumers pay using mobile phones and it alone has seen 20million mobile transactions in the US. The consumer hunger is there.

The only thing that needs to be decided is how it will happen. NFC is on everyone’s mind as the way to make mobile payments work, but it is just a platform really – and the tech isn’t there in enough handsets yet. Yet.

There are still many hurdles to overcome with getting m-wallets and cards and so on working and trusted, but personally I feel that the weight of marketing behind this and the curiosity of the early adopter brigade will make this happen in 2012.

Fears over security – largely groundless – will evaporate as it is used. It only remains for the banks and operators to work out how they will work together and it will fly. In the meantime we have telemedia micropayments. In fact, even if mobile wallets and NFC do take off, there will be a growing thirst for micropayments on mobile and this will be filled by you guys. The mobile payment revolution starts here.

In 2012, we will also see a great deal more augmented reality services. This Christmas has seen many come to fruition and its my hunch that we will soon see AR as a much better alternative to barcode and QR code scanning – and becoming mainstream as result.

Right now you can use your phone to conjour up dancing characters around your coffee or chocolate bar, you can turn your ketchup bottle into a recipe book (albeit recipes that use ketchup) and you can even win a Mercedes playing a game based on AR. But this is just the start. AR has been grasped by the marketing world as it near enough delivers magic to users – images that just appear around what you point your phone at: it is mind bending. But its application goes much further. There is no reason why we won’t be wanting to augment everything we do.

And it will happen in 2012. In February 2010 I saw Layar demo-ed at Mobile World Congress and was blown away, but it seemed like a technology that was (1) in search of a market and (2) expensive and hard to do, so someway off delivering. November 2011 comes around and its so prevalent that its free to the end user via Blippar, Zappar and more.

This is extraordinary and will propel AR into the mainstream very rapidly. I believe that we won’t be scanning QR codes in June 2012 to buy something in the eBay pop up shop, we will just point our handset at the item, get all the details and buy it.

But there is more. We will be using it to enhance reading the newspaper (even on an iPad – you will double screen: read the paper on the iPad and use your smart phone to call up the AR). It will change how we watch TV and will totally alter everything from shopping to advertising to adult and beyond.

Finally, I believe that the tie up between mobile and the real world will be the big thing of 2012 – starting with live events, it will flourish everywhere and augment life. Live events already feature heavy mobile components and we will see more and more of this – with AR and with other services – as 2012 progresses.

Mobile will become an integral part of doing anything. It will be how you pay, your ticket, your programme at the theatre or cinema, art gallery or classical concert. It will let you get content from the performance you are watching, it will let you buy merchandise and it will let you order  your interval drinks.

It will also be the conduit through which artists and promoters, venues and ticket sellers stay in touch with you, build a relationship with their customers and turn a one off experience – a concert, play, exhibition, football match or whatever – into something that lasts for days, weeks or months after the event.

The London 2012 Olympics will of course drive a lot of this in the sports space this coming summer and will be a proving ground, but expect it to creep into every facet of life.

So, while the world’s economies goes to s**t, there are some fun things to look forward to. I can’t wait for a virtual riot AR app so I can superimpose rioters on rich people’s cars or find the best escape route when the kittling begins in earnest.

Happy new year!