Here are a few interesting pieces of information for your review.
- There are approximately 1.2 billion active PC’s in the world today.
- There are approximately 3 billion active smart phones in the world today.
- The iPad is not a PC.
- Is your message, brand or website ready for a landscape dominated by new devices?
- Will your message get lost amongst all this change? How long can you wait?
I purchased my first iPad earlier this month, and I’ve been amazed at how different the iPad is from a typical laptop or tablet. I was recently at a presentation and heard the statistic about PC’s vs. Smart Phones. Let’s look at some of the ideas that have started to take shape this year, as well as a few that may be more prevalent next year.
The PC is definitely on the way out, new devices are being designed to provide a better user experience (thank you Steve Jobs R.I.P.), instead of more PC related functionality in a different form factor. We only had to wait 10 years for someone to get the whole tablet concept right. As devices improve, your business has to understand the new devices, and how they will change the way we work. More importantly you need to understand how the new devices are going to change the way people communicate, interact, shop, read, and watch TV and movies. I know it’s been said before; “this changes everything.” This time they may be right.
It’s not simply changing your PC based website to look better on a mobile device or platform, it’s understanding how your product, service or brand is going to be able to communicate with the “New Consumer”, in a more interactive and engaging way.
I’ve been using a laptop since 1995, my first laptop was a Toshiba Satellite, and I think it weighed 100 pounds. I had Windows 95, and my first email account so at the time I felt I could control satellites orbiting the globe. I still use a laptop, but my latest laptop is a MacBook Air and it weighs 2 pounds, starts up in 2 seconds and is one of the most beautiful items in my office (I never considered any of my other laptops to be beautiful; productive… yes, beautiful… no).
I’ve now taken an extra step and moved from my laptop to an iPad, and I have every intention of moving away from taking my laptop to meetings. I am also moving away from paper documents now that I can scan paper in and upload my documents to my dropbox.com folder in the sky and retrieve those documents on my iPad. This will change the documents I keep on my local servers, and the devices I take to meetings. I will continue to find new and improved uses for my new device, including opportunities to use applications like dropbox.com, icloud and others to redefine my office and how and where I work.
I’ve made my living on PC’s, servers, and the early adoption of Internet based technology. I moved from green sheets in the early 90’s to spread sheet applications like Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel. I’ve had a good 20 year run with client-server networks, the PC and laptop form factor devices. As I finish up this article, I can’t wait to read it on my website from the iPad!
What does this mean for your business? Step one, start to get acquainted with the new devices and the new technology; Cloud computing, App Stores, tablets and smart phones. As you start to become more familiar with the new technology, start to brainstorm about how the future of devices and new technology is going to affect you customer. Adapt, and begin to develop solutions to the new challenges your customers are going to face, and begin to sunset those services you will not be able to upgrade in the future. The future is here, cheers! If you are interested in a copy of a comparison of specific workflow activities that will change when moved from PC to Device, please send me an email, and I will send you the PDF. Send Me The PDF!
