Strategic Considerations for "Going Mobile"
The era of mobile computing is rapidly coming to life. Vendors must adopt new ways of doing business in order to succeed.
By Andrew Dod, Whoop
Apr. 07, 2009
It's 1994 all over again
Remember when the web raced into the public's consciousness? Terms like www. and dot.com entered our cultural lexicon as networks of networks passed data to and fro over blistering fast 14.4k dial up modems. Businesses jumped on the superhighway and discovered an entirely new communications medium, an information wild west. Companies snapped up domains, retained developers in garages to build "brochure-ware" web sites, and readied for the stampede to begin. For the 20 million people online in 1994, it was heady times and clearly marked a transformation in how businesses communicate and compete.
Fast forward to 2009, and you'll feel another transformational juggernaut bearing down on business. This time, it's mobile. Executives are figuring out how to fully leverage mobile to their benefit, framed by traditional objectives of increasing revenue, growing customer share, improving profitability, building brand and aligning business operations. For the strategic and smart vendors who think broadly, new levels of business success are close "at hand."
4 Billion Customers are Waiting
In case you hadn't noticed, mobile devices are rather popular. Four billion of them ring and buzz all over the planet, up from 3.5 billion last year. That's approximately four times the number of PCs. Essential to our personal and professional lives, mobile devices are always with us, hooked at the hip or perched in a purse. Where we go, they go. Leave them behind, and we become discombobulated. Andrew Robertson, CEO of global ad agency, BBDO, believes: "We are rapidly getting to the point where the single most important medium that people have is their wireless device."
So capable and feature-packed, mobile devices are more like sleek, portable interactive TVs or jukeboxes than the mere talk and text devices of eons ago (circa 2004). And this makes them enormously intriguing as a marketing, communications and entertainment medium for businesses. Key questions today parallel those asked back in 1994 when it was all about "getting online":
Content: One Size Doesn't Fit All
Compared to the standards-driven Internet, the mobile arena is highly fragmented. There are more than 30 major handset manufacturers producing over 500 different phones, with significant variations in operating systems, screen sizes, display resolution, processing speed, memory, and performance. This makes it particularly challenging to move content across networks and have it play optimally on a plethora of devices.
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Remember when the web raced into the public's consciousness? Terms like www. and dot.com entered our cultural lexicon as networks of networks passed data to and fro over blistering fast 14.4k dial up modems. Businesses jumped on the superhighway and discovered an entirely new communications medium, an information wild west. Companies snapped up domains, retained developers in garages to build "brochure-ware" web sites, and readied for the stampede to begin. For the 20 million people online in 1994, it was heady times and clearly marked a transformation in how businesses communicate and compete.
Fast forward to 2009, and you'll feel another transformational juggernaut bearing down on business. This time, it's mobile. Executives are figuring out how to fully leverage mobile to their benefit, framed by traditional objectives of increasing revenue, growing customer share, improving profitability, building brand and aligning business operations. For the strategic and smart vendors who think broadly, new levels of business success are close "at hand."
4 Billion Customers are Waiting
In case you hadn't noticed, mobile devices are rather popular. Four billion of them ring and buzz all over the planet, up from 3.5 billion last year. That's approximately four times the number of PCs. Essential to our personal and professional lives, mobile devices are always with us, hooked at the hip or perched in a purse. Where we go, they go. Leave them behind, and we become discombobulated. Andrew Robertson, CEO of global ad agency, BBDO, believes: "We are rapidly getting to the point where the single most important medium that people have is their wireless device."
So capable and feature-packed, mobile devices are more like sleek, portable interactive TVs or jukeboxes than the mere talk and text devices of eons ago (circa 2004). And this makes them enormously intriguing as a marketing, communications and entertainment medium for businesses. Key questions today parallel those asked back in 1994 when it was all about "getting online":
- How do we get our business on mobile?
- How can we easily create and distribute content on mobile?
- How do we integrate mobile into our business operations?
- How do we ensure effective adoption of our mobile applications?
- How do we extend and grow our business on mobile?
Content: One Size Doesn't Fit All
Compared to the standards-driven Internet, the mobile arena is highly fragmented. There are more than 30 major handset manufacturers producing over 500 different phones, with significant variations in operating systems, screen sizes, display resolution, processing speed, memory, and performance. This makes it particularly challenging to move content across networks and have it play optimally on a plethora of devices.
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