Mobile technology trend
Thirty years ago the Personal Computers (PC) has created a “Software revolution” with thousand software companies and along with it, many millionaires and billionaires. Today, we are at the beginning of another revolution, the “Mobile revolution” and it could be much bigger as it is changing the way people work, travel, shop, and more. If you think mobile is only a communication device, you really do NOT understand the power of mobile technology. Many businesses already made that mistake, as well as many countries and universities, as they are missing a very big opportunity.
First, there are more mobile phones than the PCs in the world today. As the number of PC sales is declining, the number of mobile phone sales is increasing fast with over half of people on earth already has them. Second, mobile is the new platforms that connect everything together. With PCs you need to have broadband connection to the Internet but with mobile phone, you can connect to the internet from anywhere that the phone signal can reach. As the PCs change the way people shop online, the mobile revolution is completely change everything with the explosion of mobile, social networks, location-based services and thousands more. According to the new study, we are only reaching less than 20% of the potential of the mobile capability that means we are just beginning to understand what mobile technology can do. It also means there are much more opportunities waiting to be explored and discovered. For example, more people are shopping using their mobile phone today than using PCs and mobile business (m-commerce) already reaching over $30 billion in 2012. It will change significantly as more people are having mobile phone, and the sale is expected to reach 10 billion by 2020. Wall Street analysts warned: “If your company does NOT focus on mobile technology, you will NOT survive the next decade. If your business does not have mobile apps, you will not be able to compete at all.”
For example many retail stores in the U.S. already use mobile technology to advertise products and increase sales. Last week, I went to a computer store, as I was looking at some ultrathin laptops, my mobile phone rang and a text message appeared: “We will give you 10% discount if you buy that computer today.” I was shocked to learn that the store video camera already found that I was looking at these ultrathin laptops. The store’s Big Data analytics software identified that I could be potential customers and automatically sends a text message to my mobile phone. As I shook my head and walked out, another text message appeared: “How’s about 15% discounts if you buy it today.” There was no salesperson, no advertising on newspapers, just the Business Intelligent software using Big Data analytics and effectively promote the sale on my mobile phone.
The effectiveness of mobile technology is significant in creating new approach to e-commerce. Instead of advertise using website and wait for people to access, it can be more active in promoting sales. This is a new ways to do business in the world today and that is why the demand for mobile software developers is reaching the highest level all over the world. According to a job advertising company, there are over a million job openings on mobile apps development today and the number is increasing each week. As companies are actively design their mobile environment to promote sales, they need more developers and testers. When I travel, my mobile apps can display addresses of restaurants, hotels, and driving direction etc. and sometime help me to choose them. When I was in New York attending a software conference last month, I used my mobile app to find restaurants within a walking distance from my hotel. As I specifically wanted a vegetarian restaurant, the mobile app found five restaurants nearby but within two minutes, I received a text message from one of the restaurant inviting me to come in with 10% discount. This restaurant has advantage over the others as its mobile technology have identified a potential customer is looking and response quickly.
There are much more that mobile technology can do than just turning smartphones into web browsers. Mobile phone is NOT a mini personal computer but much more. They can be a device to connect and interact with people on a massive scale and creates significant shopping experience. Companies that adopt this technology can see that their sales increase significantly without hiring salespeople. Instead of go to a store, talk to a salesperson, customers could interact with a “Virtual” salesperson on their mobile phones. The integrating of mobile technology with the store Big Data analytics is only one in thousands of application that mobile platform could bring. That is why I believe that mobile technology will be a new frontier, a new way to do business and it will grow much faster and bigger than the PC market.
Many people still think mobile apps as videogame apps selling in most apps store for few dollars. This type of mobile apps is only a very small part of a much bigger potential that mobile technology will bring. Instead of videogame, you must think of it a new technology that will grow very big and has huge potential. In my last blog, I have written about the potential of mobile health applications that are being implemented in Africa to reach rural people and that is also a small part of what the future of mobile technology will bring. As the market of mobile technology continues to grow, it will need more people to develop software to take advantage of this revolution. Today there is NO country that has enough mobile software developers, even large countries like India and China also have shortage of mobile application developers. Even mobile technology has been around for several years, few universities are teaching it as a main part of their training programs because schools are often slow to change but there are thousands of tutorials on the Internet and many MOOC courses are focusing on mobile technology. If you are Computer Science, or Software engineering students, make sure that you learn mobile application development so you will not miss this “mobile revolution” opportunity.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
