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Our smartphones are with us almost all the time, no matter where we are. Following the 2011 Stanley Cup hockey riots in Vancouver, Canada, witnesses sent a thousand hours of video and over a million photos to the police as evidence to help catch the thugs and muggers. Mobile devices have become integral to our daily lives.
Smartphone and tablet usage has exploded in four key areas:
- Social portal: Communications, social networking, photo and video sharing
- Entertainment portal: Games, music, videos
- Knowledge portal: Intelligence on everything including news, maps and directions, weather, sports, facts about the world we live in
- Transaction portal: Commerce transactions, banking transactions
Smartphones: An obsession and addiction
Mobile phones are becoming more and more integrated into the fabric of our daily lives. Americans spend almost three hours per day socializing on their mobile phones. Many people keep their mobile phones within about three feet of themselves, 24 hours a day. (See this YouTube video for more mobile stats.)
Forrester has identified a new class of individuals: the always addressable customer. This group owns and uses three or more web‑connected devices and goes online multiple times per day from multiple physical locations. Always addressable customers already make up 38 percent of the online adult population in the US. This is a coveted group of consumers since they are highly educated and a high proportion of them have an income over $75,000.
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Our growing attachment to mobile devices is remarkable. Consumers are now spending more time daily on smartphones than print publications and newspapers combined. Every day, more and more communications are moving away from traditional computers and onto smartphones. This makes sense, since people can simply speak into their smartphones and automatically have their words transcribed into email and text messages, and this can be done faster than they can type them into a notebook computer.
For many, smartphones are becoming their lifeline to the world. Research shows that when people misplace their phones, 94 percent of them actually feel panicked, desperate or sick. This panicked feeling even has a name: nomophobia (no-mobile-phone phobia). In China recently, Apple had to suspend iPhone sales in Beijing and Shanghai due to the actions of unruly fans desperate to get their hands on the latest model.
A recent UK study revealed that over one‑third of adults and 60 percent of teens admit to being highly addicted to their smartphones. Mothers appear to be especially enamored with their smartphones. According to a study from Meredith’s Parents Network, 21 percent use them in the bathroom!
In developing countries, this is not just about talking to someone on the phone, it’s about human and economic development—a mobile wallet to transfer funds and save money, a means for getting a job, a window into the community and government services, involvement in democratic processes and a better life.
Mobile mania is an obsession and an addiction. A recent study found that it is harder to resist a new text message than a nicotine fix. iPhone users would choose to give up the following things for an entire week rather than their beloved iPhones:
- Forty-three percent would go shoeless for a week. (tweet this)
- Forty percent would give up their toothbrush for a week. (tweet this)
- Twenty-two percent would go without seeing their significant other for a week. (tweet this)
This mobile obsession is really causing organizations to rethink their relationship with customers. It requires them to reconsider every interaction with customers, 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 #MobileMoment.
* This blog post is adapted from my book, Destination Innovation: Creative Mobile Marketing and Commerce Strategies.
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