The capabilities of multipurpose smartphones connected to the cloud are astonishing. Smartphones can replace many traditional devices by allowing you to access an entire range of services and functionality in a single place. Some of these devices and services include the following:
- Communication methods: home telephone and land line, mobile feature phone, postal mail, walkie-talkie, whistle
- Life stream recorders: diary, camera, video camera, audio recorder, ancestry history recorder
- Social lifelines: social communication by blogs, Twitter and other microblogs; Facebook timeline; photo-sharing services like Instagram; email; instant messaging; social GPS tracking (to find your friends nearby)
- Personal organization: watch, alarm clock, personal planner, social calendar
- Personal productivity: calculator, GPS navigation system, compass, calendar, address book, dictionary, thesaurus, white or yellow pages directories, car keys, bank ATM and teller (to do banking, send money, pay for things and even deposit checks)
- Entertainment: music player, game console, radio, TV, remote control, TV set‑top box, VCR and DVD players
- Knowledge hub: news feeds, sports commentaries, community forums, weather forecasts, general interest topics (for example, astronomy, cooking and so on)
- Personal travel and entertainment guide: instant foreign language translator; currency converter; restaurant, hotel, attraction, movie and transit guides; augmented reality city guide
- Personal health guide: real‑time auto accident monitoring, and with specialized attachments, the ability to monitor heart rate, blood pressure, blood glucose level
- Personal shopper: price comparison tool, product specifications, community reviews, coupons, classified ad listings
- Existing technological devices: notebook, desktop, netbook, tablet (including home Internet service), scanner, answering machine, printer, wireless router
- Reading materials: books, comic books, recipe books, magazines, newspapers, entire libraries
- Teacher: courses with every personal or business topic possible, just-in-time video education
- Business devices: cash register, employee time clock, filing cabinet, building or room access card
- Business productivity: memo audio recorder, notepad, meeting planner, meeting reminders, to‑do list, address book, PowerPoint presentation controller, business cards, networking and social events, project management, social customer relationship management
- Items in your purse or pocket: make‑up mirror, pedometer, wallet including credit cards, debit cards, loyalty cards, gift cards
- Tools in your toolbox: flashlight, measuring tape, level
- Wife, husband or best friend: okay, okay, not entirely of course, but at least this part of it—“Honey, where are my keys? Where is my phone? Where did I park my car? Where is cheap gas nearby? Where is our child?” Find all the answers with a key finder, phone finder, car finder, cheap gas finder, child finder and anything else you might lose on a regular basis.
- A billion other things: as Apple states, “there’s an app for that.”
Ninety-nine devices and services your smartphone replaces #99Devices http://ibm.co/1hZaPy9
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It’s no wonder smartphones are becoming an essential part of many people’s business and personal lives. Although the dedicated device being replaced may complete a particular task better than a smartphone, in some cases smartphone functionality is actually much better due to features such as the accelerometer, compass, augmented reality, speech-to-text transcription and GPS location tracking and directions.
And if you are not ready to replace your current Internet access device with your smartphone, it can effectively serve as a backup. When travelling, smartphones can eliminate hotel Internet access fees and long distance charges (for example, using Skype to Skype calls).
Quite simply, in most cases a smartphone is the clear choice as it is the only device most people carry around. If someone is having trouble reading the menu in a dark restaurant, they won’t go searching for a flashlight when they can simply use their smartphone flashlight app to read it. Furthermore, how often do you still carry your digital camera with you wherever you go? Not often if you have a smartphone. Young digital natives have never even used many of the devices and services mentioned above, so for that demographic there’s nothing to replace.
This mobile obsession is really causing organizations to rethink their relationship with customers. It requires them to reconsider every interaction, from providing customer support to moving prospects through the sales cycle to conducting commerce transactions.
Is your organization ready for this massive paradigm shift?
Businesses and government organizations are recognizing the power of utilizing mobile devices as a key means of communications with customers and citizens. Watch this series of IBM MobileFirst videos to generate ideas about how you can transform your organization using mobile.
And let’s connect on Twitter to discuss the #99Devices. What did I miss?
* This blog post is adapted from my book, Destination Innovation: Creative Mobile Marketing and Commerce Strategies.
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