As we can see, the more people that own smart phones, the more customer use will continue to grow. According to CIO Magazine, "smart phone use is expected to double in the next five years" as more and more people own and carry smart phones with them.
Take a moment and think of the implications that your customer will have a computer in their pocket that your business can communicate with any time you want to. In the past, if you wanted to communicate with your customers (advertise) you would select a highly rated TV show, magazine with your reader demographic, or even advertise on a billboard downtown or along side a highway to reach the highest number of potential customers. The problem with this method was that a significant portion of those people who viewed your communication/advertisement were not interested in your product. With a mobile app, you will be able to communicate with all of your current customers, placing your message directly in their pocket, and making your communications with your customers more effective and personalized. Sending targeted messages to new customers, to women customers, or customers in a geographic area is now possible through your company's mobile app.
While it seems in some areas that everyone has a Smart phone already, if not two in cities like New york and San Francisco. Looking worldwide, there are more than seven times the number of "dumb phone" users than there are "smart phone" users. However, there is a strong shift coming as feature phone users replace older phones and upgrade their handset to smart phones. It is estimated that the percentage of smart phone users increased by 12% in the past nine months while the percentage of feature phone users decreased by 8% in the same time period. The smart phone, or pocket computer, is now in the hands of a majority of cell phone owners.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
The Future of Mobile Computing
What kind of phone do you have in your pocket? Blackberry? iPhone? The Android? In this day and age, when everyone over the age of ten years old seems to have a cell phone in their pocket, you ask your friends and acquaintances. The accepted term that is all encompassing is "Smart Phone", but really what each of us carries in our pockets every day is a computer in our pocket.
The cell phone industry long ago merged with the computer industry and the television and entertainment industry is not far behind. Software applications are being developed at an ever increasing pace to run on all of our cell phones that do everything from weather forecasts to grocery lists to navigation to games. The challenge now is to deliver functional applications that improve our access to information, our ability to accomplish tasks more efficiently or better, and ultimately, to make our lives better. "Better" is a relative term that has a wide range to most adults depending on whether their teenager's cell phone is constantly chiming with irreverent text messages during dinner or if they are trying to meet at a spot to pick them up after the high school football game. It is not the app that is bad, it is how the app is used that can make it annoying or a "can't live without it" sort of thing.
Most parents today have provided their children with a cell phone so they can call them and keep in contact with them. According to the MacArthur Foundation Exploring Digital Media and Learning report in March 2011, "Mobile device ownership among children ages 4-14 has experienced double-digit growth since 2005 and almost all children in the U.S. have access to a mobile device, with 93 percent of 6-9 year olds living in a home with a cell phone." In the past, parents would never have provided a laptop to their children, but now, with the advent of the cell phone, a child is provided a computer with a small screen, a keyboard sized to type with two thumbs, and a phone, too. If you were to re-phrase the findings from the report, 93% of children today are likely to have a computer in their pocket at any time.
The cell phone industry long ago merged with the computer industry and the television and entertainment industry is not far behind. Software applications are being developed at an ever increasing pace to run on all of our cell phones that do everything from weather forecasts to grocery lists to navigation to games. The challenge now is to deliver functional applications that improve our access to information, our ability to accomplish tasks more efficiently or better, and ultimately, to make our lives better. "Better" is a relative term that has a wide range to most adults depending on whether their teenager's cell phone is constantly chiming with irreverent text messages during dinner or if they are trying to meet at a spot to pick them up after the high school football game. It is not the app that is bad, it is how the app is used that can make it annoying or a "can't live without it" sort of thing.
Most parents today have provided their children with a cell phone so they can call them and keep in contact with them. According to the MacArthur Foundation Exploring Digital Media and Learning report in March 2011, "Mobile device ownership among children ages 4-14 has experienced double-digit growth since 2005 and almost all children in the U.S. have access to a mobile device, with 93 percent of 6-9 year olds living in a home with a cell phone." In the past, parents would never have provided a laptop to their children, but now, with the advent of the cell phone, a child is provided a computer with a small screen, a keyboard sized to type with two thumbs, and a phone, too. If you were to re-phrase the findings from the report, 93% of children today are likely to have a computer in their pocket at any time.
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