When Mobility Moves Mountains!

Some facts

• 4,239,956 people are having a cell phone conversation at any given second in the world
• Cisco VNI Forecast states that global mobile data traffic grew 2.6-fold in 2010, nearly tripling for the third year in a row
• According to new research from Universal McCann and AOL, one of every seven minutes of media consumption today takes place via mobile devices

Ladies and gentlemen – Welcome to the Mobile Age!

No matter the location, the time, the occasion – Mobiles have transcended the spectrum of human life. The comforting presence of the device has become our umbilical cord with the world. Any why not?? Mobile devices have dramatically changed the way we live and work. It has pervaded every aspect of our lives and opened infinite opportunities for us. Businesses too have not been left unscathed by the little guy. It has proved to be their worst nemesis and their best friend too.

So let us try to understand how these devices are influencing and in turn bringing about significant changes in our life.

Making the world searchable

Be it directions or a restaurant serving a particular cuisine, we find ourselves turning to Google. The fact is that “googling” has become a ubiquitous part of our life. And why not? Google’s search algorithm has the ability to provide answers to 70 per cent of the search queries. Not only this, technology is enabling consumers to discover the best value for their money. Applications like Red Laser and ShopSavvy enable shoppers to use their camera phone to scan bar codes and compare prices across different retailers. Not a comforting thought for retailers, but definitely a great feature for consumers!

It’s not that companies don’t have anything to cheer about. Geo-tagging and location specific services enables companies to discover the customer and then provide customized products and services. Apps like Foursquare (with 6.5M registered users) allow registered users to share their location with friends by “checking in” at particular venues. Users can also bookmark information about venues they visit and can also view relevant suggestions about nearby venues. It offers a great platform to companies to leverage and utilize a wide set of tools to engage the customers. Already companies like Pepsi and the New York Times have jumped in and are working with it in different ways.

Our very own personal assistant

How often have we all wished for our very own beautiful personal assistant who would take care of all the mundane data we need to remember to get by in daily lives. Maybe not in terms of glamour quotient but mobiles devices are proving to be very efficient in managing our lives. Right from our appointments, birthdays & anniversaries, reminders, phone number, etc mobiles are proving to be a great asset. By offloading the task of remembering such details they are freeing up our brains for complex and much more rewarding activities.

Less is more

ROFL, BRB, CIAO…

Nightmares for Grammer teachers but a must for Gen X. Our communication has becomes much more informal and abbreviated. And mobile phones symbolize this to the maximum. The screen size and rendering limitations of mobiles phones have introduced a new aspect to human communication. Texting lingo has emerged as one of most important medium of communication. A third of US teenagers send more than 100 text messages a day! The impact on mobile devices on social networking sites is no less. A research by Comscore has linked the exponential growth of Twitter to mobile users. The primary appeal is the 140 characters limit on Twitter which is similar to the text message size limitations on mobile phones. Similarly the Like button on Facebook is much more useful on a small screen of a mobile device than a PC.

Peer PowerPlay

This urge to share experience as we are undergoing them has been supported to a large extent by web enabled mobile devices. I see so many FB status updates and tweets from friends trashing a movie from the movie hall itself or how great Bryan Adams is performing in the event they are currently attending. The consumer decision making process is in turn being impacted by this real-information being shared by their friends on social networking sites. Companies too are looking at this real time user feedback and trying to act on this. Several businesses have "community managers" active on Twitter. These act as evangelists, customer service reps, and public faces for the company they represent.

Mobiles phones have indeed brought about a significant change to our lives and will continues to impact it in future too. True there might be several privacy related concerns in the short run, but the long term potential benefit of mobile phones would far outweigh such concerns.