I know you wouldn’t believe it, if I say it, that a large part of your life in terms of what you do with it, and how you live it, is governed by the use of mobile applications. OK I know you are reading this sentence with disbelief, but think… I take your smart phone from you for a few days… will you be able to live without it… can you see a life without smartphones ahead of you… of course your cant. That’s because much like how the World Wide Web enveloped us in its embrace so much so that we simply cannot do without it today, mobile technology is doing the same thing.
Of course the levels of adoption of mobile technology are infinitely quicker as compared to that of the internet. That’s because more and more people are getting hooked onto their smartphones these days and their adoption is increasing day by day. Mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous and this all pervasiveness has rubbed off on mobile applications as well.
Mobile Application Development
A Tectonic Shift in Thinking
Do we trust a mobile app to give us good advice? Yes we do. Humans are becoming increasingly dependent on technology to take decisions. Want to search for a good restaurant? You earlier used your desktop for the purpose, or for that matter asked your friend, family or colleagues; now all you need to do is just ask a voice enabled mobile app about the highly rated restaurants in your area and you will have an answer. What’s more you will have full trust in the information provided.
This is just a small example of how there is a perceptible shift of thinking in the mind of people when it comes to mobile apps. They trust them to deliver the right information so that they will be able to take the right decisions.
Across the Board Adoption
Everybody right from small kids to their grand daddies is using mobile apps. Yes, the reasons for use might differ, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that they are increasingly getting dependent on them. Kids love to use gaming apps and are spending endless amounts of time on them. On the other hand, there are plenty of healthcare apps out there that are a big a hit among people who are past their prime and need regular medical treatment.
As mobile apps become more responsive, intuitive and engaging, more and more people across age groups have begun adopting their use. This trend is not limited to certain age groups alone, just about everybody has his/her favorite mobile app that they simply cannot do without.
Business on the Go
Business agility especially when it comes to decision-making has received a big boost with the emergence of mobility. Every day, we see new mobile apps entering the market whose core focus is on making the business more agile. Yes, they focus on a core business process, for e.g. there are some apps whose use leads to better communication flow, there are some whose use improves productivity and there are still others that improve the efficiency of a particular business, but the overall objective is to help businesses to speed up their growth by making them ‘fast’. In a cut throat world, speed is of the essence, and this is what a mobile application professes to offer. I have used the word ‘professes’ because not all of them work wonders for a business, but there are plenty of apps that actually help businesses boost their growth.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The adoption of any new technology comes with its own share of negatives and positives. A technology becomes popular and actually achieves revolutionary scope, if the positives outweigh the negatives. In the case of mobility and the adoption of mobile applications, it is how they are being used that determines whether their ubiquity is good or bad.
The fact that more and more children are getting hooked on to their use is bad, but the fact that businesses are increasingly using them and benefitting from their use is good. There is no doubting their capacity to make things a whole lot easier for the user, but what this is doing in a way is reducing our capacity to think.
There is a thin line between taking help and being dependent and it’s increasingly looking that we are veering away towards the latter. But, that’s not to say that their adoption represents a problem. Anything excessive is bad, but in the case of technology the more the adoption the better it is, but servility to a technology doesn’t allow you to reap rich dividends. This fact is something else that is important.
