“I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry. They’re going to pry it out of my hands.”—President Barack Obama.
Listen, you know mobile technology is important when the then president-elect, despite both resistance from the Secret Service and the collective coronary failure of a whole pack of attorneys, patently refuses to relinquish his smartphone upon entering office.
As
The New York Times recently
reported, mobile applications are even becoming available on feature phones (“regular old cell phones”), though smartphones are heavily gaining in market share. In fact, the sales of traditional feature phones are flat, while smartphones posted double-digit growth in Q3 2009.
Currently Apple’s iPhone is the most popular mobile smartphone in use in the US, capturing 4% of the total mobile phone market share. However, 2009 marked a true dogfight for the “Best in New Sales” moniker between the iPhone and the Blackberry Curve, as they switched in and out of the top spot.
And then there’s Google’s Android system. No joke, I received this exact quote in a recent email entitled “Unnecessary Purchases” from a radiology IT manager:
“I am now the proud owner of a Droid. I believe I may be in love with an inanimate object.”
I’m not sure if
everything Google touches turns to some sort of precious metal, but Gartner
predicts that by 2012 Android will overtake the iPhone in worldwide popularity. (Incidentally, if Gartner’s guess is correct, the President’s beloved BlackBerry is poised to become a veritable global outcast in the next two years.)
So, what are people doing on their smartphones? The
top 10 websites accessed on mobile phones through September 2009 are not surprising—folks are searching the web, checking email and Facebook, looking up driving directions, reading the news and checking the scores. Actually, that should read “checking the scores and reading the news”—ESPN’s site ranks above CNN, the only news site on the list. I’m not sure if that amuses or frightens me, but I digress.
Website browsing and mobile applications are two different animals, and the popularity of mobile applications shakes down a bit differently. Facebook, Google Earth and Pandora are the top three free app downloads, out of the more than two billion downloads that have occurred from the iPhone’s App Store. That’s right, two BILLION. With a “B.”
For the low, low price of free, lucky Connor Mulcahey, age 13, downloaded the one billionth app and also received a $10,000 iTunes gift card, an iPod Touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro.
If Gartner’s
crystal ball is correct, consumers will be adding more applications geared toward productivity to their smartphones in the next couple years. The forecasted top 10 consumer mobile apps of 2012 are:
- Money Transfer
- Location-Based Services
- Mobile Search
- Mobile Browsing
- Mobile Health Monitoring*
- Mobile Payment
- Near Field Communication Services
- Mobile Advertising
- Mobile Instant Messaging
- Mobile Music
*I was going to make a joke something along the lines of “iStethoscope perhaps?” but, indeed, there is actually an app called iStethoscope Pro. Rather, Mobile Health Monitoring is the use of IT and mobile telecommunications to monitor patients remotely, and could help governments, care delivery organizations (CDOs) and healthcare payers reduce costs related to chronic diseases and improve the quality of life of their patients, especially in developing countries.
With all the statistics that have been collected on our current and future mobile behavior, one has to wonder…which stations has the President loaded on his Pandora account, and what in the world is he looking at on Google Earth?