“They may not be worth much, but after all, they’re property and portable. It don’t signify to you, with your brilliant lookout, but as to myself, my guiding star always is, get hold of portable property.”
(Wemmick to Pip, Chapter 24, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens)
Charles Dickens knew the value of portable property. In our tumultuous times, as urbanisation and mass migration to cities increase and the value of real estate falls, smartphones are a great example of Dicken’s ‘portable property’.
Did you know that:
- Mobile smartphone devices outsold desktop pcs in 2010
- Over half of all Internet activity is now via mobile
- Over 3 billion mobile impressions are served per month in Ireland
- Over 15 billion mobile impressions are served per month in the UK
- Mobile users go from search to purchase within 30 seconds. Desktop users take, on average, 30 minutes
- 5 billion people out of the World’s 6.5 billion population do NOT have a bank account
- There are more mobiles than people in the World
- Many people give a mobile number as an address, when there is no address (slums, shanty towns)
Check out the World Bank’s website, which is ‘wealth’ of research and information on related topics.
Phones now have senses. They can:
- Hear – phone, recorder
- Speak - Google Translate app
- See - Google Goggle app, Gps triangulation (they know where you are..), camera, video recorder, The Google Art Project
- Touch – touchscreen keyboards intelligently learn the pattern of your typing
The average smartphone today would have been the equivalent of a Supercomputer in 1979 and it would have cost $1billion to make. As processing power increases and the cost of storage decreases, we carry unprecedented power in our pockets!
Mobile commerce (mcommerce) presents a great opportunity for brands to extend their reach and frequency further.
I believe that mcommerce will change retail as we know it. The concept of a physical shop will completely change. A shop will be so much more and so much less than its current state.
Mobile will also change:
- Where we work – “bye, bye cubicle?” I think there will still be a need for an office base both for workers’ and employers’ welfare. Mobile does provide more work flexibility – working while travelling, working from home, constant updates.
- How we work - Keep it short and simple (KISS)
- Why we work - money is not the only currency. As global markets struggle to stand up from the World’s biggest economic Depression ever, the value of money has been brought into question. I think that one of the truest rules of Economics is ‘something is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it’.
I wish that I could unload the burden of my mortgage (french for ‘death cage’) and I’ll be heeding Dicken’s advice to invest in portable property in future. Mobile is the ultimate example of portable property and it is the definition of freedom as people become more independent, self-sufficient and transient.
Also of Interest?
App Ads – http://paperclip.ie/2011/02/17/mobile-app-ads/
“Square” Mobile Credit Card Reader – http://paperclip.ie/2011/02/21/square-mobile-credit-card-reader/
“Don’t Touch Me!” http://paperclip.ie/2010/04/21/dont-touch-me/
Message In A Pocket - http://paperclip.ie/2010/04/15/message-in-a-pocket/
Mobile Internet Marketing - http://paperclip.ie/2010/04/15/mobile-internet-marketing/
‘The Heart Phone’? - http://paperclip.ie/2011/01/12/dublin-students-smart-phone-defibrillator/
