Business 21C - Published by UTS Business

The biggest imminent change is for your mobile device to selectively let the world know where you are, what you’re doing, and what you want to do. The next revolution will be in the Here and Now, says Dr Chris Beare.

• The first mobile network in Australia only became operational in the mid 1980s.
• In the 1990s Telstra’s internal financial models assumed mobile penetration would peak at around 7% of the population – it’s now over 100%.
• More people in China access the internet from their mobile than they do from a PC.
• The cost of WiFi chips and GPS chips is approaching $1 each.
• You can access more than 65,000 i-phone applications from Apple’s i-store.
• The largest camera manufacturer in the world is Nokia

Your mobile device stopped being just a phone some time ago. It is a calendar, an address book, an internet browser, a camera, a photo album, an MP3 walkman, and more.

But the biggest imminent change is for your mobile device to selectively let the world know where you are, what you are doing, and what you want to do. It’s about Here and Now. The technology is available, but no-one has yet figured out the services people want. Privacy issues are not as concerning as they were first thought to be, given the openness of the Facebook generation.

You’ll be able to be as isolated or connected as you want. Here and now will mean you’ll have access to, and be pushed, information and contacts immediately relevant to where you are at any point in time – coupons and specials from the shop next door, advice that a friend is around the corner, the history of the building you’re looking at, news that there’s an accident in the direction you’re heading, and so on.

The business world is also fast switching on to mobile as a marketing channel. Innovative B2C corporations these days don’t just have a web page they have a mobile page, and many of them are very creatively using the mobile channel to reach their customers via promotions that go way beyond simple bulk SMS mail-outs.

Mobiles won’t be limited to people either. With technology costs driving down, anything is a potential mobile or WiFi source. Appliances in the home will talk to each other and to you, as will cars, street signs, doors, footpaths and so on.

And all of this is not as far off as mobile phones were in the 1980s.

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CHRIS BEARE | WHAT WILL THE NEXT REVOLUTION IN MOBILE TECHNOLOGY BE?

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