The Ericsson Mobility Report forecasts that by 2015 there will be more mobile phone subscriptions then the population of the Earth. In the last twelve months the number of subscriptions was up 7 percent. Mobile broadband subscriptions are also on the rise: by 2019 their number is expected to reach 7.6 billion. Machine to machine (M2M) communication is also becoming more important, according to the report the number of active M2M devices will triple or quadruple by 2019 in comparison with the 200 million at the end of 2013. They currently use a GSM system but this technology will be replaced with 3G/4G. By 2016 there will be more smartphone subscriptions than traditional ones and their number will probably reach 5.6 billion by 2019. In Q1 2014 about 65 percent of all mobile phones sold in Europe were smartphones. Cloud-based solutions are gradually replacing the traditional IT infrastructure. Cloud-based systems make IT costs more predictable and users always have access to the latest technology. At the moment Hungarian firms employing 10-50 people are a bit wary of switching to cloud-based solutions – reveals a recent survey conducted by Magyar Telekom. Only 13 percent of IT decision-makers in the SME sector make efforts to change to cloud-based systems. One of the reasons – three quarters of the survey’s participants named this – is that they would have to transfer the responsibility of operating their systems to a third party/service provider. László Marton, Invitel’s ICT business development director told us that in most cases SMEs lack the necessary funds or professional competence to switch to cloud-based solutions alone: they need help to do so. Invitel rents out IT: everything from laptops, to telephones, to infrastructure to cloud-based services. One of the company’s strengths is compiling sets of services tailored to customers’ needs. For instance if a company expands in size the IT system follows.

Everything can be planned and changed according to the partners’ demands. Since media consumption habits are changing, the digital advertising market is conquering. Premium print ads will retain their key role and television commercials will reach many consumers too, but online, mobile and digital advertising will have much bigger role in companies’ advertising strategies than they have now. According to János Arany, sales and marketing director of Ebola Média, in 2013 22 percent of advertising budgets were spent on online ads (data: emarketer.com), while people spent 43 percent of their media time online. Great advantages of digital advertising include full measurability and result transparency, flexibility and precise targeting. These factors combined result in high-level efficiency. Digital ads are interactive as well, giving consumers the chance to look for further information at once or start shopping immediately. Mr Arany added that digital ads lose efficiency faster than traditional ones, so companies need to make sure they use new tools such as Ebola Play or other rich media platforms.