Mobile Internet – The Number One Disruptive Technology

April 2, 2014

If you read the McKinsy Global Institutes report, “Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy”, you will note that of all the disruptive technologies the very most disruptive will be the growth of the “mobile Internet”. In truth they are simply saying that the Internet we have always known now has fully absorbed mobility and the PC is no longer the preferred device for accessing it.

It is important to note that McKinsey looks at disruption in technology with the respect that it should stating, “Technology is moving so quickly, and in so many directions, that it becomes challenging to even pay attention—we are victims of ‘next new thing’ fatigue. Yet technology advancement continues to drive economic growth and, in some cases, unleash disruptive change. Economically disruptive technologies—like the semiconductor microchip, the Internet, or steam power in the Industrial Revolution—transform the way we live and work, enable new business models, and provide an opening for new players to upset the established order. Business leaders and policy makers need to identify potentially disruptive technologies, and carefully consider their potential, before these technologies begin to exert their disruptive powers in the economy and society.”

As an argument for picking mobile Internet for the number one spot included “the rate of technology improvement and diffusion”, which compared the cost of a super computer in 1975 ($5 million) versus the cost of a 2007 iPhone-4 ($400) with the same computing performance (MFLOPS). Add to that the growth of smartphones and tablets since iPhone’s launch, a growth rate of 6 times the revenue (as of May 2013), very nearly doubling every year. At that speed it is certain that the dominant method for using the Internet, whether through a home network and landline access or while away via Wi-Fi or Mobile access, will be a mobile device.

The report also mentions that there are 4.3 billion people remaining who are not connected and most likely they will eventually connect by way of mobile Internet access. It also noted that 1 billion transaction and interaction workers are engaged by way of the Internet (nearly 40% of the total global workforce), $1.7 trillion in GDP (globally) are related to the net, and that net-based interaction and transaction workers represent 70% of global employment costs.

These later stats are considered “illustrative pools of economic value” that longer term could be impacted by the growth of mobile Internet access, access devices and mobile based services.

As an example; mobile business intelligence (Mobile BI), up until a handful of years ago, was seldom considered. Most thought that business intelligence would always be a small group of analysts sitting in front of big PC monitors spitting out dashboards that no one understands. Any form of mobility was thought to be a luxury and what did exist didn’t exactly drive end-user adoption beyond those data scientists. Today most of the traditional BI systems and platforms have introduced mobile and software offerings to provide for BI on mobile devices.

According the TEC’s 2014 Mobile BI Buyers Guide, citing an earlier Citrix report, mobile is important now and will be more important in the future. In it it states; “mobile BI apps nowadays occupy a significant fourth place among other productivity apps in an organization. Information workers, ranging from top decision makers to middle management and operation workers, are increasingly using mobile BI apps for reviewing and analyzing data, thus replacing the traditional paradigm for performing data slicing and dicing using a PC or laptop.”

“Moreover, it appears that mobile BI apps are a natural fit with other mobile systems within the corporate mobile ecosystem. Due to their visual nature and ability to provide consistent and intensive interaction with other business systems, mobile BI applications enable users to perform data discovery and analysis using a user-friendly interface, while providing extensive collaboration features and enabling the sharing of rich content (e.g., voice, images, and text). Mobile BI capabilities can either be embedded within mobile BI offerings, or can sit nicely on top of enterprise collaboration platforms. The latter case is seen with platforms such as Microsoft SharePoint and TIBCO tibbr, which enable rich embedding of mobile BI and analytics as part of their collaborative offerings.”

Businesses of all sizes will need to evaluate carefully the disruptive nature of mobile and consider, like the BI community is, what other systems, end-users and opportunities there are to bring the power of mobile access to. There are many excellent firms across the globe already down this path and having a comprehensive understanding of the road ahead. Accessing one of these to aid you in evaluating how emerging technologies can be maximized for your business and harnessing the disruption may set you ahead of your competition.

However it is very clear that mobile is not just here but going to be a disruptive and world changing technology across many domains for a long time to come.

4 thoughts on “Mobile Internet – The Number One Disruptive Technology”

  1. Please let me know if you’re looking for a aritlce author for your weblog. You have some really great aritlces and I believe I would be a good asset. If you ever want to take some of the load off, I’d really like to write some material for your blog in exchange for a link back to mine. Please send me an e-mail if interested. Kudos!|Have you ever considered about adding a little bit more than just your aritlces? I mean, what you say is fundamental and all. However think of if you added some great pictures or videos to give your posts more, “pop”! Your content is excellent but with images and video clips, this website could definitely be one of the best in its niche. Amazing blog!|Nice blog! Is your theme custom made or did you download it from somewhere? A design like yours with a few simple tweeks would really make my blog jump out. Please let me know where you got your design. With thanks|Howdy would you mind stating which blog platform you’re using? I’m looking to start my own blog soon but I’m having a hard time making a decision between BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and Drupal. The reason I ask is because your layout seems different then most blogs and I’m looking for something completely unique. P.S Apologies for getting off-topic but I had to ask!|Hi there just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The words in your post seem to be running off the screen in Chrome. I’m not sure if this is a format issue or something to do with browser compatibility but I thought I’d post to let you know. The design look great though! Hope you get the issue resolved soon. Cheers|With havin so much content and aritlces do you ever run into any issues of plagorism or copyright infringement? My website has a lot of completely unique content I’ve either created myself or outsourced but it looks like a lot of it is popping it up all over the web without my agreement. Do you know any solutions to help reduce content from being ripped off? I’d definitely appreciate it.|Have you ever considered creating an e-book or guest authoring on other sites? I have a blog based upon on the same information you discuss and would love to have you share some stories/information. I know my readers would value your work. If you’re even remotely interested, feel free to send me an email.|Hey! Someone in my Facebook group shared this website with us so I came to take a look. I’m definitely enjoying the information. I’m bookmarking and will be tweeting this to my followers! Terrific blog and fantastic style and design.|Fantastic blog! Do you have any tips for aspiring writers? I’m planning to start my own blog soon but I’m a little lost on everything. Would you suggest starting with a free platform like WordPress or go for a paid option? There are so many options out there that I’m totally overwhelmed .. Any ideas? Thank you!|My programmer is trying to convince me to move to .net from PHP. I have always disliked the idea because of the costs. But he’s tryiong none the less. I’ve been using WordPress on a number of websites for about a year and am worried about switching to another platform. I have heard fantastic things about blogengine.net. Is there a way I can transfer all my wordpress content into it? Any help would be really appreciated!|Does your blog have a contact page? I’m having problems locating it but, I’d like to shoot you an e-mail. I’ve got some recommendations for your blog you might be interested in hearing. Either way, great website and I look forward to seeing it expand over time.|It’s a shame you don’t have a donate button! I’d most certainly donate to this superb blog! I suppose for now i’ll settle for book-marking and adding your RSS feed to my Google account. I look forward to brand new updates and will share this site with my Facebook group. Talk soon!|Greetings from Carolina! I’m bored to tears at work so I decided to check out your website on my iphone during lunch break. I really like the information you present here and can’t wait to take a look when I get home. I’m amazed at how quick your blog loaded on my mobile .. I’m not even using WIFI, just 3G .. Anyhow, amazing site!|Hey there! I know this is kinda off topic nevertheless I’d figured I’d ask. Would you be interested in trading links or maybe guest authoring a blog aritlce or vice-versa? My website goes over a lot of the same subjects as yours and I believe we could greatly benefit from each other. If you’re interested feel free to send me an e-mail. I look forward to hearing from you! Fantastic blog by the way!

  2. This is the right site for everyone who wishes to understand this topic. You know a whole lot its almost hard to argue with you (not that I actually would want to…HaHa). You certainly put a new spin on a topic that’s been discussed for many years. Great stuff, just wonderful!

  3. Strange this post is totaly unaltreed to what I was searching google for, but it was listed on the first page. I guess your doing something right if Google likes you enough to put you on the first page of a non related search.

Comments are closed.