The Future is Mobile

Years ago, I used to have this running debate with a friend of mine regarding which platform was going to be the dominant one in the future, Windows of Mac.  I was the Windows fan, because I felt that it was a superior business platform, and was far more ubiquitous than Mac (which I relegated to the world of artistic/design types).  My friend (the artistic/design type) was steeped in Macs (they gave them out at Princeton University), and believed that the people at Apple were on to something.

Every so often, we'd sit down and compare notes, and as the years progressed, we discovered we were both right.  Windows is still the dominant platform, installed on 95% of the world's computers.  But Mac is the dominant platform for media.  And so we called a truce to our ongoing debate, since virtually everything you could do only exclusively on one platform or the other (back in the day), could be accomplished on either today (and fairly interchangeably, read: Intel Dual Core).

The dominant platform today, as I see it, is not Windows or Mac.  Its not even computer based.  It mobile.  Period.  Full Stop.  There are more mobile phones in operation today than there are personal computers.  In 2006 browsing on mobile phones overtook browsing on PCs as the dominant way to surf the internet.  Today, virtually any task you can perform on a computer can be accomplished on a mobile device.  And smart phones, like the iPhone, Blackberry and Treo, are affording the types of business productivity, typically offered by laptops.

While there are still issues of interoperability, and lots of content, applications and functionality is not yet device or carrier agnostic, these issues are being addressed.  Unlike the clash of the titans, between Mac and Windows, mobile device manufacturer, carriers, aggregators and the like, are utilizing lots of different standards, thereby giving users lots of options.  What's more, its not likely than a single uniform standard is on the immediate horizon.

But what's of singular importance, is the fact that mobile is still a vast untapped, undefined horizon.  Its the wild wild west (Kool Moe Dee, not Will Smith).  I stay preaching about the virtues of mobile, and regularly encourage my clients to get up on it (Salt N' Pepa style).  There is soooo much money to be made by content creators and aggregators.  And there are few barriers to entry.

Mobile phones are inherently social networking tools, and so anyone interested in capturing an increasingly mobile audience, needs to start capturing mobile phone numbers (as well as email addresses) to truly stay connected.  Failing to adopt a mobile strategy, in addition to an internet or web strategy is a fatal flaw in any marketing or promotions plan.  The low price point for acquiring a mobile phone, means that an ever increasing audience is ripe for the picking for the really focused player.

At the end of the day, mobile is where its at, and where its going to be for the foreseeable future.  

The following was a public service announcement.