It’s interesting to look back over the last few years at what we thought the mobile phones would look like and the functions they would have. Who would have thought that the reality is quite different and the change so rapid! One of the great things about following companies on Twitter is that you learn a lot! A recent tweet by Digicom’s thetelecomblog.com talked about telephone fatigue and the changes in mobile use. That got me thinking- how has mobile changed? What will it look like in the next few years? A quick review found some pretty interesting things:- For starters, the good old voice phone call is no longer the primary reason to buy and use cell phones. A recent report from Wired[1] indicates that the average number of mobile phone calls is declining and the calls are getting shorter every year.
- The immense success of the App Store — more than $1 billion has been paid to developers in just under two years — has caused many businesses to shift focus. Longtime desktop application developers have shifted to mobile development around Apple, Android and Windows 7 in particular.
- In five years, we’ve transitioned from keypad to touch screen, from 2G to ubiquitous broadband, and from social as an afterthought to social as an intrinsic part of the mobile web.
- Most people would rather lose their wallet than misplace their cell phone. The mobile world is quickly becoming a new hub for business. For many of us, our cell phone never leaves our side. It holds a place at the dinner table, is easily accessible in your bag’s front pocket, and often, somehow it even manages to end up sharing your pillow at night.
- Smartphone sales rose 49% in the first quarter of 2010. There is an enormous amount of ongoing market research, and although there are a variety of estimates, all conclude that mobile commerce is a profitable and rapidly growing market.
- Google is going mobile in a big way. As Hugo Barra[2] noted “we’re entering the mobile supercomputing era”. What he means by this is that thanks to computation in the cloud, modern mobile devices are becoming more like supercomputers.
- By 2015, it’s estimated that shoppers from around the world will spend about $119 billion on goods and services bought via their mobile phones[3].
- Research firm IDC expects the global mobile worker population to increase from 919.4 million in 2008 to more than 1.19 billion in 2013, representing nearly 35% of the worldwide workforce[4].
- Cisco forecasts that more than 400 million of the world's Internet users will access the network through a mobile connection by 2014[5].
- And one more- by 2014, over 3 billion of the world's adult population will be able to transact electronically via mobile or Internet technology[6].
Who would have thought a little over three years ago, before the iPhone was even made public, that in 2010 Apple would have introduced iPhone 4, sell 3 million units in the first 3 weeks and would be hard pressed to meet ongoing demand in spite of antenna problems. Or that the Tablet would emerge and compete against desktops and laptops. Or that talking on your cell would be decreasing in importance as the primary application in favour of a diverse array of mobile business applications.
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[1] Clive Thompson on the Death of the Phone Call, Wired Aug. 2010
[2] Google’s director of product management at Android 2.2 launch Aug. 12, 2010
[3] ABI Research, February, 2010
[4] IDC Worldwide Mobile Worker Population 2009–2013 Forecast, Dec. 2009
[5] Cisco’s Visual Networking Index, or “VNI,” Global Mobile Data Forecast for 2009-2014, Feb. 2010
[6] Gartner's Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users, 2010 and Beyond: A New Balance, Jan. 2010
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