Year 2012 is going to be a watershed year for mobile technology. There will be more mobile phones on earth by the end of 2012 than people. Is anyone surprised? Not at all! In 2011 more and more consumers and businesses have adapted themselves to the use of mobiles.

One of the most widespread changes in business is the growth of the mobile worker population. The global mobile worker population is set to increase from 919.4 million in 2008, to 1.19 billion in 2013 (IDC Market Analysis Report, Worldwide Mobile Worker Population 2009-2013 Forecast). Industries that have been built around the ideas of consolidation around fixed facilities and which have slowly moved to the co-located model are today re-architecting themselves to a more dispersed, dynamic and flexible mobile model, bringing in efficiencies that were not possible until less than half a decade ago. Today, mobile devices are becoming the first choice to access networked resources. The impact of this is staggering. Underlying this adoption is the fact that it is driving innovation and development in new technologies that will further cement the use of mobile devices.

Here are the top 5 mobility trends for 2012:

Tablets and smartphones will change the IT environment: Tablet and smartphone sales are going to outrun PC and laptop sales. That itself tells a story. Yes, there will be security and integration challenges. But it’s time for IT to roll up its sleeves and say “hello” to the mobile revolution. More employees are going to come to the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) party in the workplace especially as smartphone prices tumble. The device itself bristles with 3D, HD, GPS, QR codes, gyros, accelerometers, gesture recognition, object recognition, augmented reality, visual search, four-core processors and what-have-you. Expect eBook sales to go through the roof, new entertainment and gaming models to emerge, education applications to proliferate and a flurry of innovations that redefine user experience.

The app store era comes of age: A Gartner forecast suggests that end users will splurge USD 15.9 billion on the goodies in app stores in 2012. More importantly, the apps will drive secondary business in hardware sales and advertising spends. Which means app developers will sharpen their tools, and produce cutting-edge stuff for us to consume. That’s great news for consumers. But what about the enterprise? Will it go the way business has always gone – gravitating towards what consumers have already demonstrated as their preference? Even if the seeds of an enterprise app store are planted, what will it mean for the CIO? How will it transform the role of the CIO? That could be an interesting question to explore in 2012.

E-commerce to be overshadowed by the specter of m-commerce: Who wants a wallet the size of a PC or a laptop? Shouldn’t the wallet fit into your pocket? That’s exactly what a mobile phone will do. Transaction platforms are emerging and could begin to supplement – if not replace – credit cards and online payments. In fact, in emerging economies where credit card usage is low and online payment is limited because of poor IT infrastructure, m-commerce could leapfrog entire societies into the future. It’s a question worth pondering in 2012. The signs are already around: Research firm Arthur D Little says that in BRIC nations 1 million users sign up on mobile payment platforms every week. Will other trends in mobile commerce follow? For example, items may be bought simply by shooting pictures of the products on the phone and adding them to a “mobile” cart…it’s a Pandora’s box out there in 2012.

Near Field Communication is about to hit us between the eyes: With m-commerce comes Near Field Communication (NFC). We may not see a wild proliferation of NFC, but 2012 will be the year when consumers will taste the first fruits of NFC as mobile devices being to adopt the technology. The BlackBerry Bold 9900 and the BlackBerry Curve (9350/ 9360/ 9370) already come armed to the teeth with NFC. Just bump two Curves and exchange photos, knock it against another and your bank account can be debited for a purchase. The short range connectivity provided by NFC also creates entirely new ways in which machine-to-machine (M2M) technology will begin to reshape the world and create new business partnerships to deliver services that were previously unthinkable.

Augmented reality: It is a virtual platform that adds a new dimension to location-based search, making the function a lot more relevant. Some of the next generation BlackBerry smartphones powered by BlackBerry 7 OS are loaded with AR applications like Wikitude to help users find location based information instantly. In this way technology gives users a perfect combination of the real and virtual world and simplifies the way they do things.

2012 will be the year of the Mobile. As the world becomes more connected, begins truly global conversations, collaborates and develops colossal collective bargaining power, there will be pressure on businesses to deliver faster, cheaper and better.