The implications of SmartPhones for the enterprise and education

This post is a brief summary (Part 3) of my lunchtime presentation to the NZCS Wellington branch  about the implications of SmartPhones for the enterprise and education.

It’s smart

The iPhone is the first truly ‘personal’ computer.  The iPhone 3Gs has the following sensors:

• Location sensor: location coordinates from GPS
• User orientation sensor: directional heading from a digital compass
• Touch sensors: Multi-touch input from one or more simultaneous gestures
• Light/dark sensor: Ambient light detection
• Device orientation & motion sensor: from built-in accelerometer
• Proximity sensor: device closeness to other objects or people
• Audio sensor: input from a microphone
• Image & video sensors: capture/input from a camera
• Device sensor: through Bluetooth

Plus its a phone too 🙂

It’s productive

I’m more enthusiastic about the iPhone than other smartphones for a reason.  A survey of more than 10,000 adults, showed:

• 84.8% of iPhone users accessed news and information on their phones compared to 13.1%  of the overall mobile phone market and 58.2% of total smartphone owners, including Blackberries and devices that run Windows
• 58.6% of iPhone users visited a search engine on their phone, compared to 37% of smartphone users in general and 6.1% of mobile phone users
• 30.9% of iPhone users have tuned into mobile TV or a video clip from their phone, which is more than double the percentage that have watched on a smartphone

It’s coming

Nearly 80% of companies saw a rise in the number of staff wanting to “bring their own devices into the workplace,” the overwhelming majority of which specified iPhones.

The pressure is on

Apple continues to focus its efforts on the consumer over courting enterprise IT.  But Apple knows that people who use its products at home, will put pressure on the enterprise.

“Enterprise is just 10 percent of the market—consumer is over 50 percent. Our heart and soul and DNA is in the consumer,“
— Apple COO Tim Cook

Are you in Apple’s sights?

If you were in the music industry 7 years ago, did you forsee the impact that the iPod would have?

The iPhone is currently having massive effects on the telco industry; witness the overdemand for high-speed wireless bandwidth in the US and Europe.

It’s a safe bet that the iPad will have an impact as well; but do we know for certain which industries?

• iPod –> music,  (recording industry)
• iPhone –> cellphones (telcos)
• iPad –>books (Amazon); TV(recording)

Value Chain fallout

Your organisation may not be in the digital media business, but it may not be immune from the new technology shock.

As an example, each of these Apple innovations has a direct impact on NZ Post.  More digital media, means less physical media to be distributed over the postal network.

Digital media:

• Letters
• CDs
• Books
• DVDs

The flow-on effects will include plastic case manufacturing companies, sleeve art publishing companies, shipping companies, advertising companies, etc.

School cakestalls

If the future holds truely personal computers (iPad, iPhone) , why are our schools still running cakestalls, to fund obsolete computers in schools?  Strategically, investing in school computing infrastructure and services may be less important, than allowing telcos to provide smartphone services for educcation.

If nothing else, I’d suggest that schools and communities should be ensuring good wireless broadband data access, to futureproof themselves.

NZ limitations

New Zealand’s ability to take advantage of new technologies such as the iPad will be curtailed by the characteristics of our national infrastructure.  Some examples of national differences between the US and NZ, demonstrate these issues:

• NZ has bandwidth limits
• NZ has poor 3G+ coverage
• NZ does not have free wifi
• NZ does not have differential GPS (next generation GPS)

References:

• http://mikepearsonnz.amplify.com/2009/10/13/opinion-there%E2%80%99s-no-such-thing-as-a-%E2%80%98business-cell-phone%E2%80%99/
• http://mikepearsonnz.amplify.com/2009/09/07/new-study-shows-iphone-users-to-be-in-a-class-by-themselves/
• http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/02/apple-is-a-mobile-devices-company-in-post-iphone-world.ars