The Growth of Mobile Use (Because Wi-Fi Wasn't Convenient Enough)

The world we live in is not gradually progressing towards a complete mobile experience, its already there. We started with the telephone, progressed past the cordless phone, car phone, cell phone, and made it to the smart phone complete with an operating system. The early desktop computers started getting smaller, sleeker, and included more power & memory. Then came the laptop, notebook, and now the tablet. Even our literature is becoming mobile with people storing libraries on their e-readers.

Dr. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, gave a speech at the Internet Advertising Bureau’s recent Annual Leadership meeting. You can view the complete keynote address at the bottom of this article but we wanted to focus in on some of the jaw-dropping stats presented. For starters, YouTube receives 200 million mobile playbacks per day.

  • During the Super Bowl, mobile searches for Chrysler increased 102 times while desktop searches only increased 48 times.
  • The mobile searches for GoDaddy increased 315 times during the game while only increasing by 38 times on a desktop.
  • 78% of smart phone owners use their phones while shopping.

This is why I personally love keeping track of mobile stats for our clients. It’s intriguing to see just how many people are using their phones & tablets to access the internet instead of their laptop or desktop. It’s also important to see the potential a client could have using different mobile applications.

However, there is a fine line to walk. It’s not fiscally responsible to start spitting out apps for everyone. If you can create an original, useful, and practical app for a client, then by all means do it. The app we created for Sherman Health meets all three of those qualifications. If you want some proof, check out the case study for the app here.

The growth of mobile users is an ever-increasing trend that probably won’t slow down until we have the capabilities to “beam someone up”. In short, if you’re not already keeping tabs on mobile traffic or thinking up ways to utilize mobile, you should probably start.