Consumer technology: Mobility
By Mark Helme
Date 19 December 2010
We’ve been talking for a few months about how to manage the consumerisation of IT, and what that means for the IS organisation (balancing choice and the need for security for example).
It does seem to us that there is one well established consumer technology still underutilised by corporations, both internally and in the way they deal with their customers: mobility.
Although creating the 3G network came with a $100bn tax bill (yet to be recouped) mobile continues to advance apace. Smart phones have larger screens, better web browsing capabilities, and longer battery life; faster network speeds and ‘all you can eat’ data packages mean that mobile usage encompasses more than just voice and text services. However, the way forward is not obvious. Just putting a brochure on-line didn’t exploit the capabilities of the internet (think of Amazon’s feedback, reviewers, and recommendations); just putting on-line services onto a mobile device isn’t exploiting the peculiarities of mobile either. It needs rethinking to make a big difference.