Archive for the 'Mobile technology' Category

Your future success is tied to mobile

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on February 27, 2012
in Mobile strategy and Mobile technology
. 0 Comments

Something happened last year, is happening this year, and will happen again next year that has never happened before in the history of the world: People from virtually every walk of life are acquiring the same thing, at the same time, for the first time.

Features-rich, application-ready mobile platforms – aka, smartphones.

Millions of Earthlings are acquiring smartphones that use a local mobile network to connect to the Internet and gain access to other World Wide Web resources. And, of course, to make calls.

Business owners and managers around the world are trading in their older mobile models for ones that allow increasingly handy mobile business apps. In many cases, a person can now make an overnight business trip taking no more technology than their robust smartphones.

First world consumers are upgrading to smartphones because of all the cool personal apps. In America, where consumerism was born, smartphones are changing how we access information, buy things and connect with our communities.

And as millions of citizens of second and third world countries acquire a smartphone, it becomes their very first computer and will connect them to the Internet for the first time in their lives. Before owning a house, a microwave, or a car, they will join the 21st century marketplaces of stuff and ideas through the power of a device they can hold in the palm of their hand.

We wanted to know where small business owners are on this global, smartphone adoption continuum, so recently, in our unscientific online poll, we asked our audience, “Not counting calls, how much do you rely on a smartphone for texting, email, music, social media, books, or accessing online content like news, videos, etc.?” Here’s what we learned:

Just over one in 10 of our respondents said, “It’s my primary device, every day, all day;” 16% chose, “Increasingly for more tasks;” while over half said, “It supplements my PC when out of the office.” The last group, 16%, admitted that they don’t own a smartphone – yet.

From a Park Avenue penthouse to a village in Valdivia, the shift to mobile connecting and computing is turning steeply upward. For Main Street small businesses from Beijing to Bakersfield, Age of the Customer forces are causing competitiveness to be trumped by relevance. And increasingly, relevance to customers is defined by your mobile strategy.

The future success of your small business will be directly connected to global mobile.

Today on The Small Business Advocate Show, I talked more about these poll results and why it’s imperative for small businesses to have a mobile strategy. Take a few minutes to listen and let us know how you have included mobile in your marketing strategy.

Check out more great SBA content HERE!

There’s an app for high tech, not high touch

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on October 14, 2011
in Mobile technology and Online technologies
. 0 Comments

“There’s an app for that.”

This marketing slogan refers to a mobile app. A mobile app converts content and resources that otherwise would have been consumed through a browser on a computer desktop, to the much smaller and variably shaped screens on the many different kinds of hand-held devices. Mobile apps are proliferating because they are almost always handier and sexier than their website counterparts.

In 1998, broadband Internet connection was in less than 4% of households and almost no businesses. Reporting on this emerging capability, I made the macro prediction that the world would change when broadband Internet became ubiquitous and broadly adopted. Well, broadband ubiquity, today thy name is mobile. The proliferation of WiFi and mobile networks we know as 3G and 4G, has spawned mobile apps which are at once exciting and disruptive.

In 1998, broadband Internet connection was in less than 4% of households and almost no businesses. Reporting on this emerging capability, I made the macro prediction that the world would change when broadband Internet became ubiquitous and broadly adopted. Well, broadband ubiquity, today thy name is mobile. The proliferation of WiFi and mobile networks we know as 3G and 4G, has spawned mobile apps which are at once exciting and disruptive.

A generation before my broadband prognostication, a real prophet, John Naisbitt, published his landmark book, Megatrends, in which he prophesied, “The more high tech we have, the more high touch we will want.” In the 21st century, Naisbitt’s Law, balance technology and humanity, must be the North Star for any successful small business strategy.

So, how does a small business maintain a competitive advantage in the face of pressure from high tech innovation and the primordial human desire for high touch connection? The answer, as with so many 21st century questions, is not either/or, but both/and.

If you want customers to keep your business at their fingertips wherever they are, there’s an app for that. If a customer relationship would benefit from a welcoming smile, there is no app for that.

If a product tutorial video posted on your YouTube channel would help a customer in the field, there’s an app for that. To be able to interpret the troubled look on the face of a customer as a clue that you haven’t yet healed their pain, there is no app for that.

If customers want to check the status of an order they placed with you, whenever and wherever they are, a mobile app can be built for that. If customers do business with you because you remember their face, name and what they like, there is no app for that.

Remember Naisbitt’s Law: Blend and balance the power of high-tech with the humanity of high-touch.

There’s an app for high tech, but there isn’t one for high touch.

Click here to listen to more about blending high tech and high touch.

Check out other great SBA content HERE!

Don’t be a “Killer App” victim

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on October 11, 2011
in Mobile technology and e-Business
. 0 Comments

Do you know the term, “killer app?”

Initially coined in the 1990s, a killer app is computer jargon for an application that significantly enhances the value of a larger, host technology. An innovation would be dubbed with this moniker when it became so compelling that the subsequent high adoption rate might literally kill any product and associated businesses that it replaced.

Although no one called it that, perhaps the classic killer app is the internal combustion engine, delivered in its host technology, the automobile. Those invested in the horse-drawn carriage industry – including the proverbial buggy whip – were asphyxiated by that new technology.

Modern killer apps include the Web browser – delivered over the Internet – which changed how we consume media and painfully shifted the paradigms of traditional media – radio, television, newspapers, etc. And ask the U.S. Postal Service about the impact of that little app called the email client – served by the World Wide Web – like Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc.

Mobile apps – delivered over WiFi and mobile networks – convert content otherwise consumed with a browser on a computer desktop into handy forms developed for the much smaller and variably shaped screens on hand-held devices. Mobile apps are so sexy that they are progressively wounding the personal computer industry. Did IBM see this coming when they sold their global PC business to China’s Lenovo in 2005? Michael Dell, call your office.

In 1998, I began reporting on my radio program about the emerging alternative to Internet dial-up: broadband, aka, “big pipes.” I told my audience then that when broadband Internet becomes ubiquitous the world will change. With the proliferation of WiFi and mobile networks today, the world has changed. Ask any business in an industry that once depended on humans being tethered to a desk, in an office, inside of a building, downtown.

Today, “killer app” is part of the vernacular as a handy metaphor describing any slayer of an entrenched business model. So here are two questions to ask your team in your next meeting: Are we creative and innovative enough to produce a killer app? Or are we so hidebound that we could become the road-kill of someone else’s killer app?

If you’re not trending toward the former you’re slouching toward the latter.

It’s okay to fall in love with what you do, but don’t fall in love with how you do it.

Click on one of the links below to listen or download more about small business killer apps.

Are you an innovator or a killer app victim? with Jim Blasingame

What killer apps are you developing? with Jim Blasingame

Check out other great SBA content HERE!

Small Business Advocate Poll: How do you consume online media?

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on August 17, 2011
in Mobile technology and Online technologies
. 0 Comments

Which Internet-connecting device do you use most often for surfing, social media, podcasts, and video?

94% - Personal computer (desktop or notebook)

6% - Smartphone (iPhone, Android, etc.)

0% - Tablet (iPad, etc.)

My Commentary:

For most of the last 16 years, the device we used to consume online content - text, graphic and streaming media - was the personal computer - desktops and laptops. But simultaneous with improvements to content delivery software, innovators were also busy creating new hardware and broadband capability that expanded our device and mobility horizons: laptops, small-form computers, tablets and the increasingly ubiquitous Smart Phone, all with connections to the Internet by WiFi and mobile 3G and 4G networks.

With all of these choices, we wanted to know what our small business audience was using, so recently, we asked this question: “Which Internet-connecting device do you use most often for surfing, social media, podcasts and video?”

It was no surprise that the personal computer came in first, but we were surprised to see that it was still so dominant, with 94% of our respondents using PCs as their primary device. The Smart Phone (iPhone, Android, etc.) came in second, with a surprisingly low 6% of our respondents.

The biggest surprise was that none of our sample chose the Tablet (iPad, etc.) as their primary device. But that will change.

When we take this poll again a year from now, Smart Phones and Tablets will have taken a much bigger bite out of PC usage.

Take this week’s poll HERE!

Check out other great SBA content HERE!

What kind of mobile phone do you use?

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on June 2, 2011
in Mobile strategy, Mobile technology, Online strategy and Online technologies
. 0 Comments

For some time now, I’ve been encouraging small business owners to buy and use a smart phone - the kind that allows those cool mobile apps to be downloaded - like an iPhone or a phone with Google Droid operating system. The reason is because mobile computing is the future. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google said he expected Google to be more successful in the future with mobile than they ever had been with the desktop.

We wanted to know what kind of hand-held communication device you were using, so last week we asked this question: What kind of mobile phone do you have? Here’s what our small business audience told us:

Those who said they used some kind of a smart phone, represented 53% of our respondents. The rest, 47%, said they were still using a regular cell phone. Based on industry numbers about the smart phone adoption rate of all users (27%), our survey would indicate that small business owners are employing smart phones to a higher degree.

I love it when people listen to me.

On The Small Business Advocate Show, I’ve talked with Chuck Martin, author of the new book, The Third Screen, many times about the future of mobile computing and creating a mobile strategy to remain relevant in the 21st century. Click here to see all of the conversations I’ve had with Chuck on this important topic.