Editor's Blog Section

From ‘Hanging Up’ column, issue 39 – Feb-Mar 2009

Most new mobile technology and applications are targeted squarely at the consumer market. It’s not hard to see why: a potential market of millions of users is more attractive to technology and application developers than the much smaller business-to-business community.

Nevertheless, developments in the consumer market often do eventually have their impact on the business world. Those same consumers are often mobile workers too, and their personal experience raises expectations when it comes to the way mobile technology affects their working life.

Businesses have long recognised that user acceptance is a key factor in the success of any mobile deployment, and the more users become accustomed to slick applications on their mobile phones in their private life, the more they come to expect similar seamless ways of doing things at work.

Nor is this phenomenon restricted to white-collar workers. Easier working methods have always tended to cascade down from the consumer market to business applications. Witness the shift from terminal emulation for handheld computers for warehouse operations to Microsoft Windows CE and Windows Mobile operating systems.

Initially, the handheld computer manufacturers all predicted that terminal emulation would remain king; after all, why would a business pay extra for a Microsoft licence when the tasks are straightforward, and undemanding of memory and processing power?

Productivity and connectivity are the answers. While it’s true that text-only handheld terminals would be perfectly adequate for many warehouse operations, few would want to go back to the old days. Why, indeed, should people be expected to continue doing things the hard way when the world has worked out an easier way, and consumers are already benefiting?

There can be business applications for consumer technology, too. For example, mobile TV might seem irrelevant for business, but application developers can already see it being deployed for operations such as field service.

Suppose, for instance, that instead of sending a schematic data file, for example, the engineer received a video clip, demonstrating exactly where the component is, and how to fit a replacement. Not only would time-to-fix times be speeded up, videos such as this would also be the equivalent of on-site training.

The mobile networks’ drive to increase revenues is also transforming some traditional mobile applications. Satnav, for example, is increasingly available as a location-based service, with directions to an address or the nearest bank or restaurant being delivered to your phone on demand.

To the user, it is offers a seamless experience – one that encourages them to use the service again (at least, that’s what the networks hope). A separate satnav application on the smartphone is an alternative, of course, but probably far too clunky for today’s consumer.

Those navigation directions are increasingly in 3D, using Google maps. Again, it makes the experience more intuitive; we all know how much easier it is to find a place if we know what the building or nearest landmark actually looks like.

Cloud computing is the latest vogue technology, and here the consumer and business markets actually seem to be feeding on each other to hasten a change in approach.

Consumers are already accustomed to sharing resources such as photos in online galleries, but are still dubious about the security of storing other personal data on the Web, even for their own use.

Businesses have been storing their own data online for years through hosted services, but have been slower to share information between them – though Isotrak’s new 3iS service (see news section of issue 39), which allows operators to pool data on empty running, could be a sign of things to come.

Gradually, consumers and businesses are showing each other the benefits. It’s a connected world, and wherever you see innovative technology that makes a difference, it’s likely to find its way into the mainstream eventually. Going backwards is seldom an option.

Sharon Clancy