Four Mobile Truths: The Coming Device Revolution

The first mobile phone I remember setting eyes on was Gordon Gekko’s brick phone in the movie Wall Street. More ostentatious than practical, it symbolized the best that technology had to offer in 1987.

Fast forward to 2011, and the brick phone has long since been replaced several times over. It is more likely to be found in an antique store than an office. 

The mobile world has gone from a nascent nice-to-have to a rapidly maturing need-to-have. We have evolved from the brick/car phone to the Nokia blocks to the Razor to sleek smartphones and tablets. These devices are on the edge of global ubiquity as the price of hardware components continues to decrease, wireless providers look for incremental revenue streams, and platforms such as Android begin to be make the offerings very affordable. This expanding world presence will have a ripple effect across numerous industries.

There are four areas in particular that appear to be on the brink of a mobile device revolution:

Healthcare – Mobile is taking the healthcare industry by storm. I was at HIMSS 2011 last week, the largest healthcare technology conference held annually, and mobile health or mHealth was front and center. The use cases are many. The home health and telehealth industries are taking advantage of user friendly form-factors like the iPhone. Management of diabetes, stroke patients and the elderly can now be handled through robust mobile apps that enable patients to take part in their daily health regimen. Physicians are using iPad-native EMRs to engage with patients at the bedside. Nurses are able to record care administration at the point-of-care allowing for more accurate coding and charge capture. This is only the beginning of the role of mobile in the healthcare arena as these technologies will inevitably spread from the early adopters to the greater community.

e-Commerce and Marketing: Mobile commerce and marketing across devices is in the back of the slingshot: pulled back and when released in the next year will take off like a bat out of hell. Nearly every Fortune 500 company today is looking at how best to leverage a mobile strategy to increase their competitive positioning. 78 percent of smartphone users have made a purchase on their mobile device in the last year. Corporations are expected to spend billions on developing apps over the next 5 years to take advantage of this rising tide. Any company’s content marketing strategy will be heavily influenced by mobile in the years to come.

Education: Three years ago, using remote control-esque clickers in class was advanced. Today, institutions are redesigning curriculum around tablets. Surveys on smartphones enable live participation and feedback in lectures. iPads are the new FiveStar notebook. Learning management systems (a la Blackboard) have no choice but to include several mobile interfaces in order to be adopted.

Government: As the recent events in the EMEA region show, the use of mobile devices is having a transformational impact on how citizens effect change in government. Mobile-enabled platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have combined with widely available news outlets to allow citizen participation/awareness to spread like a wildfire. As the availability of mobile devices increases in the developing world, this effect will grow exponentially. 

As an associate at OpenView Venture Partners, a Boston-based venture capital firm, I continue to see interesting mobile software offerings pop up across these verticals. The world is truly in a transition and we are excited to be a part of it.