“What am I supposed to do without my cell phone?”
Years ago this question was repeated day after day as people who watched Eddie Murphy and a young Raven Simone (who is quite the entrepreneur herself) in Dr. Doolittle 2. At the time many of us wondered the same thing as we flipped our cell phones and called our friends and texted our family. What started out as just a few young people's addiction has now turned into an EVERYONE addiction.
Now what was just a flip phone has now turned into a smartphone and they are everywhere. If that doesn't seem to be reality in your world, here's some numbers from a post earlier this year by Business Insider which was titled There Will Be Soon Be A Smartphone for Every 5 People in The World:
“By the end of this current year [2013], 1.4 billion smartphones will be in use: 798 million of them will run Android, 294 million will run Apple’s iOS, and 45 million will run Windows Phone, according to a new study by ABI Research.”
Read More: The Mobile Industry Infographic (via Teach a CEO)
That's a lot of smartphones and it's still growing, but what does that mean for entrepreneurs and business owners?
The truth is it depends…
- If you are a business owner trying to reach clients and customers, it could mean that you might want to develop a mobile plan into your overall marketing plan. This includes having a mobile friendly website and maybe even developing your own app.
Read More: How to Get A Mobile App for Your Business (via Rescue a CEO)
- For those that are looking to develop a business, it could mean that you become a mobilepreneur or an app entrepreneur and start develop the next Angry Birds app or even develop apps for small businesses.
- Or if you are a busy entrepreneur who is looking to become more productive and efficient maybe it's figuring out how to leverage your new Apple iPhone 5c or your Samsung Galaxy S4 for your business.
If that's not enough, the truth is that there's an entrepreneur that is running his entire business from a smartphone. This businessman is using Asana to organize and delegate, checking his email with the Gmail app, getting updates on his competitors with Google Alerts, using Square to take payments, leveraging Hootsuite to make updates to his Twitter and Facebook, texting his secretary (in another part of the world) for daily updates, managing his calendar and the often forgotten just plain answering the phone.
Read More: Life on the Run – Best Business Apps to Help the Mobile Entrepreneur (via Rescue a CEO)
Mobile is here to stay and this month we will show you how to leverage your smartphone and will also look at what these devices mean for the future of business and how it will even shape our world.
November Giveaway
As always, we have a giveaway and this month we are giving away a $50 Gift Card to Amazon.com. To Enter: Let us know in the comments below (1) how you're using mobile in your business and (2) What you think is the future of mobile.
Thanks as always
– Gresh
“We need to be where our reader [or customers] are, and our readers [or customers] are mobile.” -Paul Walborsky, CEO, GigaOM
Don't forget
Sign up for our newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/orpXH
Like us on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/ceoblognation
For a FREE Consultation with Blue16Media, contact us at [email protected].
VoIP Supply is a value-added reseller of VoIP equipment. We have an eCommerce site for customers to place online orders but we encourage them to call in and talk to a rep so that’s where the majority of our business comes from.
The only part of our website that is optimized for mobile is the blog. Our business model just doesn’t have a need (yet) for more mobile functionality.
I see the future of mobile with sites like Amazon that already offer one-click ordering on their website. I think we’ll see an increase of mobile customers using coupon codes from an email or text thats linked to their online account so that they can order on the go.
Thanks for the feedback Nathan!
So true! I have an app for most of my work: calendar, calculator, ProPay and PayPal plus I have 5 email accounts downloading, and apps for just as many bank accounts, all on my smartphone. There are several apps for free text and call that I use for international contacts. What I love is setting up appointments via texting! So many of my contacts are via text now. I think that is the future, voice recognition. I love that “speak now”!
Thanks for the post Liz!
The future of business is mobile, I do agree. And it has already come. Nowadays the amount of time people spend using their smartphones exceeds the amount of time spent in front of the computer. Take a look at these graphics.
The statistics clearly shows that it is no longer sufficient to have a website for your business, as you rightly mention in your post. First of all, your website has to be mobile-friendly, in other words – have aresponsive design. However, as the graphics from Techcrunch reflect, people spend much more time in mobile apps than in browsers. So developing an app is not just an option, it is a must in a highly competitive business environment. With an app you can reach out to your customers, enhance your company’s performance and so on. The list of advantages is endless, you can find out more here.
There are more and more such businessmen as the one you talk about. Going paperless today is a common practice. You can order, pay, sign, call, meet, scan and post with only a smartphone in your hands. I think in a decade every business might be paperless.
Although, I would not say that developing “next Angry Birds” or any other mobile game is a good idea. Almost everyone now can build an application – we have all the sources to quickly learn the basics, like Apple Developer guides and video tutorials. And the fact that millions of amateurs place their products on App Store or Play Market has boosted competition so that it it almost impossible to get to the top and get high revenues.
It is really cool that you talk much of how to increase enterprise productivity with mobile phones, it is essential in a digital world.
Well said, Smartphones gave rise to an entirely different technology with applications that have entirely business management solutions integrated into them. But of course, for eCommerce businesses placing an online order on their website is quite easier and you can get customers data that can be used for updating them with upcoming deals and offers through email in the future.