Mobile 2010 and Going Forward

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.