Is that a smartphone in your pocket?

By CMoz|Geek Things, fun bits & bytes ~|Be the first to comment!

I am writing this post for & to coincide with the JCI annual business lecture, which I have kindly been asked to be on the panel for. A bit about the event from their site:

This year’s Business Lecture is titled ‘Making Sense of a Social Networking World’. Your host and compere for the evening will be Steve Parks, an ex-BBC radio journalist, professional speaker, author and entrepreneur.

The guest speakers will include:

Patrick Crane: Vice President Marketing at LinkedIn (via video link-up from Silicon Valley)
Will Kintish: Leading networking and LinkedIn training authority
Christine Morris: Founder of Apps & Hats and Digital Communications lecturer
Consultant from v social: Leeds-based social media consultancy

SMARTPHONES CHANGING BUSINESS

My focus is on apps and how the smartphone is changing business. Although it is changing business, it is things like social media that has helped make that change. Let’s have a look at how this shift happened and where it may be headed.

We know the iPhone launch 3 years ago (05/07) and the app store launched a bit after that. In 9 months 1Billion apps were downloaded.

Where are we now – as of 25th May there are now 204,304 apps on the App Store. We are up to 4 billion downloads and 85 million iPhone / iPod touch users. It’s also worth noting 200K iPads are sold a week, more on this later.

I find these figures amazing, but it didn’t happen overnight – almost, so how did we get to where we are now, what has driven these sales and usage, why do we see this as such a different platform, and can this growth be sustained?

COMPUTING CYCLE

We are currently in a new computing cycle, connecting to the Internet from smaller mobile devices.

We go from mainframes to desktops, to internet Desktops, to mobile internet. The devices get smaller and smaller, we have more and more choice, no longer are we presented with a beige box and that is our option. There are numerous features in mobile devices and most are more powerful than our desktops of 4 years ago. (IBM mainframe shown right)

They also cost less and less for their incredible capabilities.

It is estimated based on current figures and trends that as early as 2015 there will be a shift from current internet desktops to using smartphones to connect to the internet. A dominance of using these devices for our everyday, ubiquitous internet usage, our email checking, our shopping, our document reading and of course our social networking.

How can we predict this? What changes have occurred?

UPTAKE

We know mobile technology uptake has been a lot faster than that of desktop computers. If we look at the graph below from Morgan Stanley [April 2010] we see 20 quarters depicted, and we are shown in a 20 quarter time frame the growth of Desktop Internet with Netscape (launched 12/94), Desktop Internet with AOL (launched 9/94) and NTT docomo (global Japanese mobile operator).

Looking at the figures we see that by the same timeframe, 11 quarters, mobile internet as launched on iPhone | iPod Touch (launched 06/07) has reached roughly 85 million subscribers, versus by the same time comparison, 11 quarters, 31 million for NTT, 18 Million for desktop Internet with Netscape and 8 million for AOL. By my thinking even if we added the two figures together for desktop internet with both Netscape and AOL, it would still only be 26 million, to the 85 million we are seeing by the same timeframe.

The uptake on mobile Internet is epidemic in comparison.

The mobile device (iPhone) is being credited with being the spark for this mobile liftoff, and being an Apple hater or not won’t make any difference to these figures and what they have done for the industry. It is compared to the equally impressive launch of Window’s 3.0 which sparked desktop PCs in 1990, and Netscape browser sparking desktop Internet in 1995.

SOCIAL SURGE

We need to look at other contributing factors, because we know people are not just checking their email on these devices. So what has happened to help the surge of usage and purchase of these devices?

Looking at this prediction based on past trends and usage, we can see that the cross over from desktop internet users to mobile use is estimated to happen by 2015. The overall number of internet users continues to grow but the way the data is accessed is changing. We are using our devices more and more to do tasks that we traditionally have been doing on the desktop. (Just a note here to say that the iPad may change these figures more dramatically and quicker as we are already seeing a surge in the numbers reported from the ads on websites that detail where the hits are coming from.)

So what are the things people are doing on their smart phones?

I’m sure it’s no surprise to hear that social networking has overtaken email usage. Back in 2007 Facebook, Twitter and MySpace were starting to make their presence felt and by 2009 there were more users on social networks then users of email.

Also interestingly video accounts currently for 69% of mobile data traffic. Are you using social media and or video with your business, are you one of the people who use social media now more regularly than email? Are you producing any video content for your mobile audience?

Current dominance is Apple and Android platforms and there is a decline of Windows Mobile, RIM and Palm. So there may also need to be decisions made as a company regarding what platform you will aim to cater for initially and which as your second supported platform.

Interestingly we saw touch based devices before but the iPhone / iPod Touch is touch focused that is a huge departure. There is no stylus you are using your finger in a gesture based system and so apps, sites, programs… need to be designed and thought about differently. (Palm’s Pre was the first iPhone rival to include multi-touch.)

THE CLOUD

This is becoming a bit of a buzz word but actually, it will play an important part of our future computing. We are already using the cloud even if we aren’t aware of it. Users are expecting to have access to their things, their music, their files, their applications even, all to hand and all immediately accessible. When we log into our computers, we wait, and we watch for when the browser can be launched, where is our browser so we can check email, look at our Facebook, see who’s following on Twitter… all waiting for the internet to be ready for us. However, with our mobiles, we literally click a button and our mail is waiting for us, we expect immediacy.

From this same study we see that if Skype were a telecommunications carrier, it would be the largest carrier in the world, with 521 million registered users. That is a lot of people using the service for so many different reasons and equally so many different ways. Whereas initially many of these services when introduced were not trusted and people were worried about using them, we can see how it is quickly becoming mainstream.

BUSINESS AND SMARTPHONES, and sex?

In a survey from RingCentral they declared that smartphones tied with sex as the number one thing that business professionals can not live without. In a survey among RingCentral’s small to medium-sized business customers in the U.S., the importance of the smartphone in daily and business life was reiterated over and over again.

This study, (a survey of nearly 400 customers), showed that smartphones are taking on the defacto role in business communication.

Here are some highlights:

• Smartphones and intimate relationships tied at 40% for the number one thing respondents can’t live without.
• 79% of respondents use their smartphones to conduct most business calls, versus an office phone or home phone.
• 34% use a smartphone more than a computer for business. 7% even said they don’t take their laptops with them when they travel for business if they have a smartphone.

All it is really illustrating is that with platforms like Android and the iPhone, you can do a lot of work from your mobile device. It will be interesting to see how tablet devices like the iPad will be used for business and how those devices will be classified.

THE SHIFT

There was a time when people started to realize that you needed a website to exist. People would talk to you about your job and would always ask “do you have a website”, it seemed you didn’t exist if you weren’t on the web. Billions of webpages later, and yes we almost all have a website in some shape or form, heck a huge amount of people have a personal one, a professional one, a club one, a hobby one etc etc. Now we are starting to see the appearance of apps, becing the new norm. There’s an app for that which really has become a joke but actually, there most likely is an app for that, or one in development I’m sure!

I would add though that if you do have an app – do not have a bad poorly designed app. That seems more damaging to the business then is necessary. I recently came across an app for the estate agents ReMax and they had paid some company to essentially build “cookie cutter” apps for them. This means they had the exact same app, per location, and all of them were substandard. The wait for the app to load and get through all the ads was unacceptable, and it basically means I delete the app, and go pick up RightMove instead. So not only are they losing out on the slight ad revenue from the app, but I wouldn’t even buy my house from them. A bit extreme I understand but there is no excuse for some of the poorly designed time wasting apps out there.

Apps that have got it right are paypal, evernote, bump to name a few.

Here is an example of a new style of app that is appearing on the App Store – one to hopefully save us all money – these are brilliant! (Uk vouchercloud app)

Also the branded style of apps that offer the user more than just brand information are a great idea. They aim to make things easier for the consumer, and when you do that, then you will get customers because they will always go where things are easier. This Starbucks app is great, it’s all paid and you just get it scanned. Quick easy coffee, I think they are on to a winner here.

Hopefully we can see how these trends are occurring and the potential that we are experiencing this moment in time with technology. It is a real hive of creativity and ingenuity and I hope we continue to see real innovation with the creation of these apps and their uses.

SOURCES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainframe_computer
http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/pdfs/Internet_Trends_041210.pdf
RingCentral
http://www.businessinsider.com/10-ways-the-iphone-changed-smartphones-forever-2009-6#ixzz0owKtv8LE
http://mashable.com/2010/04/13/ringcentral-survey/
http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/apple-palm-multi-touch

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