Mary McDowell, Executive Vice President for Mobile Phones at Nokia, states that “80% of the world’s population is now within range of a cell-tower – people aren’t going to use PCs to connect [to the Internet], they’re going to use affordable mobile devices”.
Few years back with the inventions of portable, compact computers the business transactions became very convenient. But today this technology is being replaced by smart phones at a rapid pace. When asked 79% of the respondents cited the smart phone as a means of organizing the business than the office PC’s or the laptop. According to another survey 38% of Chinese mobile subscribers access the Internet from their hand.
According to a research by Ypartnership/Harrison Group which involved of 2,524 households, three in ten mobile phones in USA are internet enabled phones. One in five of them (19 %) had downloaded travel-related application. Travel app is a particularly easy and efficient way to get information for the business individuals. Previously laptops were used to access to any information. For example with the invention of TripIt, iPhone travel app that keep routes updated whether one is online, offline or in airplane mode have made the trip for the business individual more feasible. According to a research about 47% travelers use GPS to find the way to destination. Hence the use of laptops is becoming outdated from the lives of the business individual in looking forward for the information about the destiny of their business trip. The maps are available in the phone which can be conveniently accessed.
Business individuals use smart phones to keep track of their daily appointments. Applications such as reminder in the smart phone play the role of a secretary. The functions on the smart phone for example a calendar let the user create a reminder and add details of the meeting. In his busy schedule, the business man might forget but the phone serves as his assistant. In order to run the business successfully, one should show up for the meetings on time. Otherwise this will have an adverse impact on the business. Clients may consider one as non-serious or unprofessional.
The smart phones are further used in organizing the business by pairing them up with the computer. The phone can be connected using a USB cable or via Bluetooth. An individual will stay updated with the information. The data can then be processed in text editing softwares which are easily available in phones. The information can be accessed when offline or immediate access in a meeting. So it gets very convenient to access the information just by clicking few keys rather than to carry a laptop. With the push of a button, one has instant access to a client’s email address, phone number, instant messenger name and much more. This becomes very efficient when contacting a client when one is not at the office. With the smart phone a business individual is always in reach of the co-workers and clients. There are no barriers of internet usage which occur while using e-mail service.
With the data and contacts the individual can work at any place whether he is relaxing at home or travelling in a car. The usage is very convenient too as the personnel just have to carry a small device of negligible weight when compared to laptops.
The next question which arises is “does a smart phone have a fax service?” The fax is not the first priority when a business individual has internet access via his smart phone which allows him to e-mail the important documents. The documents can be saved or read in the portable document format (pdf). Fax services such as “Myfax”, “efax” can be approached which allow the user to send and receive faxes on a smart phone.
The camera in the smart phone is used for video conferences with the clients and workers. The smart phone can be used as a mini copy machine as important document can be captured via camera. Some phone cameras, such as the one on the Omnia/Omnia II, include a Text mode setting to make it easier to photograph a document. In some phones, camera can further be used for the efficient uploading of the directory. For example in Omnia there is a business card reader called Smart Read; with this software we can photograph a card and the information is extracted and directly put in the contacts phone book. It makes use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) program that converts images to text.
If one is in a field, images of the items can be taken relevant to job and can be mailed to the office. It can even be sent to the client or used in a meeting to give a clearer view to the client rather than describing. Picture of the clients can be taken and later can be assorted in the directory along with their names. In this way it gets very easy to remember the people in future.
Due to the priority given to the smart phones over laptops, the software companies are devising new programs to further increase the efficiency of phones in business organization. One such software is “Google Finance”. It enables fast access to finance data, charts, and reports. With the aid of graphs and charts a person can predict the future trend. This is immensely useful in stock market and in other fields. In stocks a person can evaluate a constant change in stocks rate by device carried in a pocket (smart phones). This enables them to take quick decisions thus decreasing the reaction time. The individual can perform market research. This can in return save a particular company from potential loss as a person can understand the impacts and risks of investment. Furthermore the overall economy will also be strengthened. This is because of the integrated approach of the individuals in managing the capital due to the convenient access to market analysis with the aid of smart phones.
The smart phones on the other hand are not user friendly. They have a small screen of few inches and small keyboard size. It gets tiring while using them for a long time. At the end of the day, the individual may not be able to concentrate on the work and think intellectually. This may further lead to commitments and transaction which may result in a potential loss.
More over from the other aspect I will say smart phones have become essential part of one’s life. A person could not take a day off from using his phone. As a result there is no designated number of hours a person works daily. There is no clear delineation between home life and work life. This further impacts the relationships and give rise to social problems. Additionally this will affect the health of the individual. As the person is under continuous stress and workload with little leisure time, he may suffer from health drawbacks such as psychological problems, diabetes mellitus, cluster headache, blood pressure and heart diseases.
The websites viewed on the smart phones are edited by the software to optimize the web pages for the small screen of the phone. There may be some important data missing. The small size of the screen and the scrolling of the page become exhausting for an individual. As a result a person may ignore some information. This again is an important factor with can have unfavorable consequences.
The cost of using the smart phone for business purposes is relatively higher than using the computers. This is because of the long-term contracts between the users and cell phone providers. According to a research, the internet service provided increases the cost by $70 to $100 for the user. This tells us that small businesses cannot make use of smart phones to organize their business efficiently. So this can be regarded as a drawback. It can be concluded that this technology can only be availed by big enterprises.
Some users find the smart phones complicated. It takes time for them to learn and adjust to new features. As the new technology is emerging this means the user has to spent considerate amount of his time in learning the new programs. Handsets of different companies have unique features and graphics. So as a result it gets difficult for the user when he switches on a new handset. This problem is very frequent as the average life of phone is one year.
The smart phones have several advantages as discussed above but on the other hand there are many setbacks. According to my perspective the unique features of the smart phones outnumbers the drawbacks. The immense importance given to the smart phones can be judged by the sale of the smart phones even during the recession period. According to a research firm NPD Group “the high-end devices, which assemble computer-like features into handheld devices, accounted for 23% of U.S. mobile phone purchases by consumers in the fourth quarter of 2008, up from 4% two years earlier.” Due to the increasing use of the smart phones, the worldwide sales of smart phones grew 30 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 53 million phones. The number of smart phones in use globally is expected to hit 1.7 billion by 2014.
Under the light of the above discussion, the success of smart phones as mobile computing platforms can be attributed to the ‘micro- form’ factor. It is a tremendous benefit for convenience and portability. The smart phone for a business individual provides a dual function of a mobile and as an organizer or a laptop. Due to this psychological factor the use of smart phones for business is increasing at a rapid pace.
Reference
Few years back with the inventions of portable, compact computers the business transactions became very convenient. But today this technology is being replaced by smart phones at a rapid pace. When asked 79% of the respondents cited the smart phone as a means of organizing the business than the office PC’s or the laptop. According to another survey 38% of Chinese mobile subscribers access the Internet from their hand.
According to a research by Ypartnership/Harrison Group which involved of 2,524 households, three in ten mobile phones in USA are internet enabled phones. One in five of them (19 %) had downloaded travel-related application. Travel app is a particularly easy and efficient way to get information for the business individuals. Previously laptops were used to access to any information. For example with the invention of TripIt, iPhone travel app that keep routes updated whether one is online, offline or in airplane mode have made the trip for the business individual more feasible. According to a research about 47% travelers use GPS to find the way to destination. Hence the use of laptops is becoming outdated from the lives of the business individual in looking forward for the information about the destiny of their business trip. The maps are available in the phone which can be conveniently accessed.
Business individuals use smart phones to keep track of their daily appointments. Applications such as reminder in the smart phone play the role of a secretary. The functions on the smart phone for example a calendar let the user create a reminder and add details of the meeting. In his busy schedule, the business man might forget but the phone serves as his assistant. In order to run the business successfully, one should show up for the meetings on time. Otherwise this will have an adverse impact on the business. Clients may consider one as non-serious or unprofessional.
The smart phones are further used in organizing the business by pairing them up with the computer. The phone can be connected using a USB cable or via Bluetooth. An individual will stay updated with the information. The data can then be processed in text editing softwares which are easily available in phones. The information can be accessed when offline or immediate access in a meeting. So it gets very convenient to access the information just by clicking few keys rather than to carry a laptop. With the push of a button, one has instant access to a client’s email address, phone number, instant messenger name and much more. This becomes very efficient when contacting a client when one is not at the office. With the smart phone a business individual is always in reach of the co-workers and clients. There are no barriers of internet usage which occur while using e-mail service.
With the data and contacts the individual can work at any place whether he is relaxing at home or travelling in a car. The usage is very convenient too as the personnel just have to carry a small device of negligible weight when compared to laptops.
The next question which arises is “does a smart phone have a fax service?” The fax is not the first priority when a business individual has internet access via his smart phone which allows him to e-mail the important documents. The documents can be saved or read in the portable document format (pdf). Fax services such as “Myfax”, “efax” can be approached which allow the user to send and receive faxes on a smart phone.
The camera in the smart phone is used for video conferences with the clients and workers. The smart phone can be used as a mini copy machine as important document can be captured via camera. Some phone cameras, such as the one on the Omnia/Omnia II, include a Text mode setting to make it easier to photograph a document. In some phones, camera can further be used for the efficient uploading of the directory. For example in Omnia there is a business card reader called Smart Read; with this software we can photograph a card and the information is extracted and directly put in the contacts phone book. It makes use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) program that converts images to text.
If one is in a field, images of the items can be taken relevant to job and can be mailed to the office. It can even be sent to the client or used in a meeting to give a clearer view to the client rather than describing. Picture of the clients can be taken and later can be assorted in the directory along with their names. In this way it gets very easy to remember the people in future.
Due to the priority given to the smart phones over laptops, the software companies are devising new programs to further increase the efficiency of phones in business organization. One such software is “Google Finance”. It enables fast access to finance data, charts, and reports. With the aid of graphs and charts a person can predict the future trend. This is immensely useful in stock market and in other fields. In stocks a person can evaluate a constant change in stocks rate by device carried in a pocket (smart phones). This enables them to take quick decisions thus decreasing the reaction time. The individual can perform market research. This can in return save a particular company from potential loss as a person can understand the impacts and risks of investment. Furthermore the overall economy will also be strengthened. This is because of the integrated approach of the individuals in managing the capital due to the convenient access to market analysis with the aid of smart phones.
The smart phones on the other hand are not user friendly. They have a small screen of few inches and small keyboard size. It gets tiring while using them for a long time. At the end of the day, the individual may not be able to concentrate on the work and think intellectually. This may further lead to commitments and transaction which may result in a potential loss.
More over from the other aspect I will say smart phones have become essential part of one’s life. A person could not take a day off from using his phone. As a result there is no designated number of hours a person works daily. There is no clear delineation between home life and work life. This further impacts the relationships and give rise to social problems. Additionally this will affect the health of the individual. As the person is under continuous stress and workload with little leisure time, he may suffer from health drawbacks such as psychological problems, diabetes mellitus, cluster headache, blood pressure and heart diseases.
The websites viewed on the smart phones are edited by the software to optimize the web pages for the small screen of the phone. There may be some important data missing. The small size of the screen and the scrolling of the page become exhausting for an individual. As a result a person may ignore some information. This again is an important factor with can have unfavorable consequences.
The cost of using the smart phone for business purposes is relatively higher than using the computers. This is because of the long-term contracts between the users and cell phone providers. According to a research, the internet service provided increases the cost by $70 to $100 for the user. This tells us that small businesses cannot make use of smart phones to organize their business efficiently. So this can be regarded as a drawback. It can be concluded that this technology can only be availed by big enterprises.
Some users find the smart phones complicated. It takes time for them to learn and adjust to new features. As the new technology is emerging this means the user has to spent considerate amount of his time in learning the new programs. Handsets of different companies have unique features and graphics. So as a result it gets difficult for the user when he switches on a new handset. This problem is very frequent as the average life of phone is one year.
The smart phones have several advantages as discussed above but on the other hand there are many setbacks. According to my perspective the unique features of the smart phones outnumbers the drawbacks. The immense importance given to the smart phones can be judged by the sale of the smart phones even during the recession period. According to a research firm NPD Group “the high-end devices, which assemble computer-like features into handheld devices, accounted for 23% of U.S. mobile phone purchases by consumers in the fourth quarter of 2008, up from 4% two years earlier.” Due to the increasing use of the smart phones, the worldwide sales of smart phones grew 30 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 53 million phones. The number of smart phones in use globally is expected to hit 1.7 billion by 2014.
Under the light of the above discussion, the success of smart phones as mobile computing platforms can be attributed to the ‘micro- form’ factor. It is a tremendous benefit for convenience and portability. The smart phone for a business individual provides a dual function of a mobile and as an organizer or a laptop. Due to this psychological factor the use of smart phones for business is increasing at a rapid pace.
Reference
- http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/smartphones/?p=1364
- http://www.allbusiness.com/reports-reviews-sections/polls-surveys/14415704-1.html
- http://reviews.cnet.com/4321-6452_7-6544038.html
- http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/194137/business_professionals_choose_smartphones_over_coffee.html
- http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Trends/9-Reasons-Smartphones-Will-Take-Over-Business-Computing-743743/
- http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Finance-Optimized-for-Smartphones-153641.shtml
- http://www.pavingways.com/category/statistics
- http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/09/23/how-mobiles-will-drive-social-media-in-developing-countries/
- http://www.cellphone-advertising.com/mobile-applications-revenue-to-reach-32-billion-in-2015/
- http://www.ehow.com/how_4524176_use-smartphone-organize-business.html
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