Following on from my Blog on the 15th May about the Consumerisation of IT, I have come across some great research reports that help shed some light on why this is actually occurring, including research conducted in Australia.
In this week’s blog, I thought I would share some of these with you.
Whether you are a avid fan of mobility like I am or you are looking for some material to add to your business case to allocate funds towards a mobility project in the coming financial year, the information is truly amazing for a technology that is so young.
The reports are very diverse demonstrating that devices, mobile apps, social media and the internet are blurring together in a ways that are assimilating themselves into our everyday lives and actions.
More and more people are literally living and breathing mobility everyday and don’t even give it a seconds thought.
Why? Because it just works, because it’s easy to use and because it’s addictive.
So what is driving this phenomenon?
The first is a report conducted by Sensis in conjunction with AIMIA (Australia’s Interactive Media Industry Association).
They found that in only a few short years, the rise of social media has created a fundamental shift in consumer behavior. Today, 62% of Australian internet users use a variety of social media platforms, with many visiting these every day and most at least a few times a week.
Yet most small to medium sized businesses, and half of Australia’s large businesses surveyed don’t have a social media presence.
The comprehensive report recommends that Australian businesses need to be alive to the opportunities and challenges of engaging with consumers and customers in this very different environment. Businesses should also be monitoring, responding and looking at proactive strategies to manage the way their business is presented and reviewed online.
The seconds is a report from iPass about workers habits that use mobile smartphone and tablet technology. It found that mobile workers work, on average, 240 hours more per year than the workforce in general. That lends credence to the belief that employees who aren’t tied to the office put in more time on the job than their traditional counterparts. The report provides a great visual aid for reviewing the results of the survey.
The third is a report conducted by Ericsson ConsumerLab titled From Apps to everyday Situations. The research (conducted over the past 18 months) reveals an interesting turning point when it comes to consumer behaviour around mobile internet access: people are finding it increasingly difficult not to be connected to the cloud.
Prior to the smartphone, consumers tended to use the internet in “chunks” – confining their online activities to when they were close to a computer. But people are now using the internet constantly. With internet access, mobile phones are going beyond communication and entertainment, and entering the realm of everyday activities and chores. And it is the apps that are driving this growth. They are perceived as less time-consuming than browsers and less complex than applications on PCs; simply put, they provide direct access and the right functionality.
The findings of the report suggests that it is not devices that are the important factors in consumers choices, but the apps and content themselves.
I hope that you find the content as captivating as I did.
And what does mobility have is in store for us over the next couple of years? Have a look at some of these videos on the present and future of mobility.
TicToc: Delivering Apple to your wrist
The future of smartphones: A look at everyday life
The future of smartphones part 2: A look at everyday life
A Day in the life of Glass: A look at everyday life
Hey Johnnie – just a couple of thoughts…
ReplyDelete1. If any of your business readers are thinking of diving into social media as a way of boosting their turnover or even just their profile, there is one thing to beware of: over-exposure. It’s easy to ‘like’ a page but just as easy to block it, which is exactly what I’ve done to a few pages that I was initially interested in but I soon got sick of hourly updates about their products. Once a week is enough to keep in touch, or more often if you have a media release. But that’s it.
2. Hopefully, more people will achieve freedom from their office. Those of us who telecommute or are simply mobile have been telling everyone else for years that we work better and more often away from the office, as well as having better work/life balance.
3. Love the cloud but Australia needs to turn itself into one big ‘hotspot’ for it to really gain mass acceptance. I think.
MRJ
MRJ,
ReplyDeleteI agree with all your points and thank you for your feedback.
With social media, it is imperative that you don't smother people with a product pitch. If you are going to smother, then be creative with subjects like tips and tricks of a product to make it easier to use or a funny story where a product was used etc.
I have been pitching the benefits about telecommuting for almost a decade now. It is much more acceptable today than it was several years ago. Unfortunately, some are slow to change and some never will.
We definitely need more hotspots, but we also need low cost mobile data plans so that we don't have to worry about where or how we use the cloud. The challenge is that mobile data is growing exponentially and carriers all around the world are struggling to keep up with the demand. 4G, should hopefully assist in starting to solve these issues.