If I had known how big the desktop internet would be, back when I was small, I would have done many things differently. I would have collected and saved my allowance and spent it on purchasing web site urls like amazon.com or weather.com or even gap.com, rather than tetherball poles, see through telephones and well, lots of sugary candy. I would have spent less time worrying about cursive, d’nealian to be exact, and I would have spent more time learning Java or HTML or Flash. And when the time came, perhaps I would have gone to a technical school or majored in ISY or computer science.
But I didn’t know then what I know now. And so instead of being ahead of all things desktop internet- I’ve grown with it in parallel. And that’s been fine. But it could have been great. Can you imagine what Amazon or Gap might have paid me for those urls? I could be on an island somewhere sipping margaritas…telling stories about how I somehow had the insight to predict the future…and how really it was no big deal, it was just a feeling I had. Or an idea I came up with during a slow day at my lemonade stand.
Anyway- I digress. Skip forward to 2010.
As I read the latest Morgan Stanley reports that talk about how mobile internet is ramping far faster than the desktop internet ever did and that it will be far bigger than desktop internet in just five short years, or that *smartphones are set to overtake features phones BY 2011 (right now, in 2010, the split is 79% feature phone, 21% smartphone) I realize that I might still have some opportunity to get ahead of this trend.
What an opportunity we have as marketers right now. We have the opportunity to learn the skills, to figure out the strategy, to facilitate the full emergence of the next big thing- the thing that is going to be more important than the desktop interweb. SHOCK. GASP. And yes, we’re already in it. People have been saying that each new year is “the year of mobile” and while I think 2010 really is the year of mobile, there is still so much room for growth. I would venture to say that in comparison with where we will go with mobile, right now we’re in the place where we ought to be hedging our bets, buying those figurative urls, learning the strategy and tools we need now and will need even more in the future, so we aren’t looking back thinking we wish we had gotten ahead of it.
The world is going mobile. You’re a consumer. How much time do you spend on your mobile? How do you like to receive your information? On your mobile.
Mobile is where it’s at. So what does that mean to you?
