Mobile is Everyware

The next session I was moderating, so couldn't take a lot of notes, and it began with a short keynote from Paul Golding who' s CEO of Wireless Wanders. He's been in the mobile business 21 years and is an international guru on all things mobile. I've heard him talk a couple of times before, and he gives a very good overview of what's going on in the mobile world.

His key point is that Mobile is Everyware, and that we shouldn't be developing mobile strategies as it's now mainstream and will soon be the main point of delivery for our services.  I managed to jot down a few key points and facts and figures which you might find interesting:

• In 59 countries, there are more mobiles than people. 
• 6trillion texts sent last year. Average response time is 4 mins compared to email of 48 hours.
• We look at our mobile devices on average  150 times a day. That's once every 6.5 minutes.
• Photographs used to be why people ran into burning buildings. Now it's mobiles.
• 35% of us have smartphones. Expect by 2013 it will be 80%. 
• Android and iOS are dominant and will remain so. HTML5 is important but will never give as rich an experience as native applications. 
• A year ago people looked at the brand of the device before they bought it. Now it's the OS which is number 1 reason.  Selection of apps no2.
• The computer we carry round in our pocket has senses, and allows us to make sense of and interact with the world. Will increase, 
• By 2020 everything that can be connected to the Internet will be with power supplies that can last 10 yrs.
• The paradigm shift taking place is the move to information being collected, processed and streamed in real time.

A fascinating talk, and you can see Paul's slides here.

The next session was from a publisher about the philosophy of developing web apps and native apps, and the need for what he described as polymorphic publishing, or publishing for any device.

Finally, we had the story of the Little Red App, developed by an employment law company, providing useful employment law facts for HR professionals. An interesting story of their journey in producing it, and it looks as though it might be useful - will be downloading it later!