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Yesterday I attended the “Hot Technologies in 2012 Local Briefing” for the financial services industry hosted by Gartner.  The venue was primarily for CIO’s of large financial firms.

They discussed a few interesting trends that I believe are very important for the street.

IT is losing control. 

• IT budgets are being cut or stagnated and being moved outside of the CIO’s control.  According to Gartner, by 2014 25% of the average firms tech budget will be outside of a CIO’s decision.  By 2018 it could be double that.

Mobile will dominate.

• By 2016 there will be 920 million tablets in the market, that’s 1 out of 8 people on the planet.
• By 2014 iOS and Android will have an installed base of more than 50% of operating systems in the world.
• By 2014 only 1 in 4 IT projects will focus on the PC platform.

So where are all of these mobile developers going to come from?  I’m not sure.  Also, where is the IT budget going to come from?  Gartner suggests that the budget will come from outside of IT, perhaps the chief marketing officer and other business groups.

Another question, why is the street continuing to focus on the PC platform and web apps if this is retro technology?

The cloud is huge.

Cloud technology is finally being adopted by the street, forcibly so.  Because of budget constraints on IT departments, many are being forced into the cloud because of the tremendous cost efficiencies.

However, Gartner claims “beware of cloud providers that might not be cloud providers in the future”.  Economies of scale and sinking server/component costs will drive many providers out of this commodity business in the future.

The consumerization of IT.

There is a consistent theme in all of this and it has to do with the continued empowerment of the consumer/employee and the consumerization of IT.

The the recent Web 2.0 Summit, Facebook CTO Bret Taylor claims “A few years from now, most every single person at Facebook who works there is going to be working on mobile almost exclusively.”

Should CTO’s take note.  I think yes.

It seems that VC’s are also telling portfolio companies to focus on mobile first, web second.

Here’s more evidence of the mobile/social revolution.

comScore estimates that nearly one-third of all U.S. mobile users are now accessing social media services, and that close to 40 million Americans are doing so on an almost daily basis.

If you haven’t been following this, HP dropped their price last weekend by $100 per unit, to $399.  And now they are making the price permanent.

Are they crazy!  I’m still convinced that HP should give this device away.  I wrote an article about it a few weeks ago.  They need market share and to hell with the price.  Here’s a strategy: gain market share by giving it away, and then sell a new version into the marketplace next year.

Wall Street firms must be getting mighty desparate to release iPad and iPhone apps.  Tuesday, State Street issued a press release about it’s up and coming iPad app, not to be released until fall.

Knowing what it takes to get an iOS app built, approved and released by a Wall Street firm (legal approvals, compliance approvals, IT security blessings, etc), I hope they can live up to the promise.

Here’s the press release.

This is disruption at it’s finest.  Square introduced their Register product on Monday, rendering the cash register obsolete, or at least unnecessary for many merchants.

Square has already shipped over 500,000 Square credit card readers consumers.  Why would a small retailer buy a new cash register when a $500 iPad will do the same, and much more?

The full article on Wired.com.

I’ve been using this product for about 9 months now and it rocks!  With your iPhone you can take credit card payments from anyone, anytime.

Your friend owes you $50, “yes I take credit cards Mark”. 

Now Apple has fully embraced the product by putting it into the Apple store last week.  They are most likely taking a cut of the transaction fee, but for Twitter founder  Jack Dorsey, this is a significant retail endorsement for his new company.

What about NFC?  Not sure how this fits in to the strategy for Apple.

There’s more info on TechCrunch.

The institutional app space seems to be heating up.  TD Ameritrade announces VEO Mobile for iPAD. 

JERSEY CITY, N.J.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Advisors that custody with TD Ameritrade Institutional can now access critical market and client account information on the go with the new Veo Mobile App for iPad. TD Ameritrade Institutional, a division of TD Ameritrade, Inc., a brokerage subsidiary of TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation (NASDAQ:AMTD) has combined the power of its trading and account management platform, Veo, with the freedom of mobile.

Here’s the full description of the VEO app in the iTunes store.

I just took a quick gander at this video released from TD Ameritrade where they are claiming that they will see more mobile app based access to their systems than PC based access by 2013.

With traders increasingly looking for customized mobile solutions, TD Ameritrade recently rolled out apps for the iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows phone and Android, and has seen its mobile trading increase by 125 percent over the last year.

I don’t think we’re going to see this on the institutional side anytime soon, but the momentum continues to shift away from desktops.

A longtime friend of mine wanted to get my company involved in this project but it never panned out. 

I heard that Barclay’s hired a 3rd party to build this iPad app on the cheap.  The 3rd party gets to keep the IP and sell it to other wall street firms. 

Not a bad deal for the 3rd party.  It also might not be a bad deal for Barclay’s depending on the quality of the app.  I haven’t had a tour yet.

Here’s a link to the press release.