The PC market is being surpassed by mobile according to Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt who announced at the Mobile World Congress that Google will be taking a “mobile first” approach to everything.
“This is the time for us, now is the time for us to get behind this. … We understand that the new rule is mobile first.”
Alan Moore explains how profound this statement is on his blog Communities Dominate Brands where he explains how this impacts “… your business, project, team, budget – or even your personal career”. Moore makes the point that the largest Internet companies in Japan already have a mobile first approach. He offers some very compelling rationale for why mobile first is a no-brainer, including this paragraph:
Its because Google are a very smart company and they know the numbers. Mobile has already overaken the internet in total users. And in total revenues. And in total profits. Not just overtaking the internet, mobile has passed the PC industry, and passed the fixed landline phone industry. Get this, the mobile industry alone, is about as big as the global worldwide PC/IT industry, plus the internet industry, and the landline phone business – all rolled into one! In 2008 mobile became one of only a handful of industries on the planet that generates a Trillion dollars of revenues annually. Thats almost three times what the televsision industry earns. More than twice what the advertising industry makes in a year. About twice the size of the total worldwide print industry (before the economic crash) ie all newspapers, all books and all magazines. Trillion dollar sized industries are things like cars, the food industry, construction, and armaments. And mobile telecoms.
We recommend reading the entire post as it is well organised and provides several key takeaways such as “Mobile is also bigger than any other mass media channel by reach - far bigger than TV or newspapers or cinema or radios even”. The section on mobile payment alone will probably eye-opening to many.
