In his first Thursday Night Insight, Peter Mullarkey looks at how the Smartphone has drastically changed since Michael Douglas portrayed the Greedy Gordon Gekko in 1987.
On seeing the trailer for the new Wall Street movie, I noticed the size of the mobile phone Gordon Gecko is handed as he leaves prison; to be honest I would have been hard pushed to have missed it, it’s huge!
This led me to think about the development of technology within mobile phones and how in 23 years since the Motorola DynaTAC, a phone made to make and receive calls only, has changed into a device with such diversity that we are seeing the leading manufacturers develop differing mobile phone handsets for the needs of the modern consumer.
Cellular mobile phones are a fairly recent innovation; however, they have been freely available in the UK for over 20 years. This takes me back to my first mobile phone in 1999, the Motorola Colorado. This large bulky telephone, with an antenna, was the first time I had used text messaging and apart from calls, it didn’t do much else. But the latest phones offer so many different features.
Smart phones are reinventing the modern office. With access to e-mail, Internet, calendar and more advanced OS systems, with the ability to view attachments, meaning that work can be dealt with in the palm of your hand. But it is not just these features which have helped them to become such vital additions to pocket.
The iPhone has reduced the amount of items that I need for my travels, I used to take a camera, an MP3 player, a handheld games console, a book, GPS tracker, a laptop, a DVD player and the list continues, but now all this is done within one device.
Applications are also adding to the way that we use mobile phones. Apple and Android lead the market, which means I can now check the weather, to make sure I don’t get wet when running for my next train home that I know will be running two minutes late, While sat on the train I check my bank account to make sure there is enough cash for the Tesco shopping delivery that I did yesterday on the new Tesco Groceries App, while on my lunch.
It can also find the answer to the little questions that pop up during conversations and pub quizzes (I know it’s cheating, but it is usually for a gallon of cider!), all this at the click of a few buttons. Last week I wanted to remember the name of the shop at the end of my road, but for the life of me I’d forgotten, I reached into my pocket, opened a new browser and soon Google street view was feeding the picture of the shop on to my screen. I find that this saves time in the short term which is what makes it such a great tool.
In my house I don’t have a landline as the mobile phone has replaced this for me. I am not alone in this, I found that at the end of 2009 14% of all adults in the UK live in this same way and this number will keep increasing. My thought on this is why pay for two contracts a month when my mobile makes all the calls I need, has a voicemail facility, caller ID and with “Say No To 0870” I can usually find a landline number for these rather expensive calls.
Here at B2B International, With all the telephone based market research that is undertaken we understand the best way to contact people via the telephone. When speaking with professionals it is best to call on their work phone, with people in the trades in can be best to contact them on their landline when they return from the field and more importantly, the mobile phone is always within arm’s reach wherever you go! With it being so accessible and portable, you can talk anywhere, doing anything.
So if like Gordon Gekko you’ve been out of touch with your customers for quite some time, then maybe you should contact B2B International and we can get in touch for you.
