The year 2013 was one that saw the mobile technology trends accelerate more quickly than perhaps most anyone ever imagined, punctuated by signs of the winners of losers that were either riding that wave or cast asunder by it.
Samsung Corp. continued to amaze us with its new hardware devices that had ever-larger screens with more impressive displays and features packed in like you’d stuff candy canes into a stocking and claimed the smartphone throne from Apple. BlackBerry kept us wondering as it released new devices, then made overtures towards going private or selling the farm, only to go back to the drawing board with a new CEO and restructuring effort. Microsoft made efforts to improve the less-than-rapid adoption of Windows 8 by offering a major update and a refresh of its Surface tablet hardware. Apple didn’t give us the iWatch, but refined its premium mobile products to be even sleeker and faster, with a new user interface look in iOS 7.
The top five most popular stories on ITBusiness.ca reflect the mobile technology trend. Readers were most interested in the stories about new products, the decline of PC use, and staying secure while making the move to mobile tech.
An Adobe study reveals that tablet users consume far more web content than smartphone users. While we may carry our smartphones around with us more often, we spend less time using them per session. When it comes to the more luxurious screen size on tablets though, we dive in deeper and are willing to explore more content. In Canada the amount of traffic coming from tablets is still less than 10 per cent, but you can expect that to keep growing. Remember when some people mocked Apple and the first iPad as just being a bigger iPod touch?
From its Las Vegas-based Symantec Vision conference, the security vendor unveiled the new version of its security suite that balances user convenience with security. To address the trend of more workers bringing their personal mobile devices to the office, Symantec has released an app to keep enterprise data safe – from e-mail, to cloud storage, to third-party apps of all kinds.
No surprise that with all those smartphones and tablets we’re using, we just feel less need to buy a new PC. Whether people are opting to wait longer to refresh hardware or just going without them entirely, the PC category is dipping down to the tune of 10 per cent year over year. When the PC market hit its fifth consecutive quarter of declining sales, it was the longest run of decreasing sales in its history.
After ITBusiness. editor Brian Jackson (hey that’s me) got a first look at Microsoft’s Surface 2 unit, he praised its performance and user interface, but raised three problems that may get in the way of sales: a limited channel program, lack of Windows Store apps, and the size and price of the units. Many readers voiced their opinion to the contrary, that the Surface 2 would be a hit and stated intentions to run out to the store and buy one.
From a tablet to a gaming laptop to a touchscreen desktop PC, Toshiba’s new line of products showed how flexible devices running Windows 8 can be.
Ahead of its official  Office 365 app released for the iPhone, many couldn’t wait for their favourite productivity suite to become available from tablets or smartphones. This article that gives four alternative options to access Microsoft Office using third party apps and websites was our most-viewed article of the year. The desire to access a tried-and-true software suite from new hardware form factors demonstrates that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
