Agile Business Change Blog Thoughts on Agile Strategic Business Change and Agile Delivery

Mobile devices are becoming an increasingly important channel for customer contact, but as with many new technologies, it is important to cut through the hype - in this case that mobile will replace PCs and that investment should be solely directed at mobile.

The evidence shows that across all areas - access, interaction and purchasing - people are using mobile devices more and more. Some figures here are that 23% of individuals made at least one purchase from their mobile last year; 2% of e-commerce in the US is currently carried out on mobiles and this is expected to rise to 15% by 2015. e-commerce is becoming an increasingly important factor in business cases.

However, PCs are generally preferred for many common, high value tasks. The answer is likely to be for organisations to invest in content for mobile channels, but not to cut off investment in websites designed for PC use, providing multiple channels for their customers and contacts.

This the presents the issue of whether to develop apps, probably for multiple device types (Apple, Android, Windows, etc), or to use the website and provide formatting for different screen sizes. There can also be a need for different navigation and potentially contents for mobile devices.

As we’ve discussed in a previous post, organisations need to be careful to assess the business case for developing apps, but the economics are moving towards larger businesses investing in apps. There are some trends away from apps however, particularly the case of the FT, who have abandoned their iPhone/iPad apps because of Apple’s 30% charging model.

The alternative - of developing device independent web technologies - is likely to be more attractive for many medium sized businesses. HTML5 is likely to become increasingly prevalent in this area to provide richer, device independent websites and, more importantly, web applications. Although apps can provide greater richness of functionality, HTML5 provides much greater capabilities than have been available previously, including graphics and web 3.0.