The unlimited future of mobile

A little over a decade ago people realized that the mobile phone could do a lot more than make calls. Well, not too many people… the early days of mobile applications and mobile data generally didn’t get much further than early texting and pre-installed games. Go figure; nobody was too excited about playing Tetris, a game I wore out in High School, on their 80×80 black and white Symbian phone. Then Verizon and AT&T started making a bigger deal about it, companies like Glu and GameLoft started producing games that weren’t 20 years old, and people started to realize that buying movie tickets on their phone wasn’t a bad idea. The use case drove itself: you’re out to dinner, a movie sounds like a good idea, and bypassing the line for a new release sounded even better. Generally speaking not too many people “got it” when it came to mobile applications, but those that did found a clever new way to make their lives easier. Better still, it was all relatively secret… a hidden power the rest of the world was blissfully unaware of.

Well, until the iPhone at least. Clever commercials set to unassuming music where a hand taught the world that you could not only buy a movie ticket, you could book a restaurant, read reviews of their food and event scope out a menu from your car… hopefully while not driving, of course. You could discover what a song was you heard on an elevator by just pressing a button and holding the phone up to the speaker. You could win ever single trivia contest that involved movie trivia ever, construct a puzzle, do a video chat from the Jetsons… hell, you could watch the Jetsons. The whole series. From your phone. No problems.

The mobile phone transformed the daily life and the daily grind, and as mobile interactions became the new normal the next frontier became expanding beyond your home life to every aspect of your journey. The mobile phone goes with you wherever you go. Like your wallet and your keys, the phone is an essential part of your life… so essential that it’s trying to bump out your wallet and keys. Your digital wallet and your automobile ‘keys’ can reside on your device, making it the only thing you keep with you. Not five years from now, not tomorrow… today.

What works at home in your daily life continues to expand beyond into the threads of your journey throughout the world. A personal travel thread is not only be made easier and more convenient through your phone, it could go further to expand your experience, enhance it and open up new opportunities that you never could have experienced before. The use case of buying a movie ticket expanded to buying a plane reservation… then upgrading it. Reserving a hotel room… then checking into it in the cab because you’re just too tired to stand in line. Purchasing a cruise… then booking excursions, setting up a photo account and sharing out amazing vistas of the deepest blue ocean to all of your (likely jealous) friends stuck back home.

Evolution is happening quickly, but nowhere is it more exciting than in the bigger and broader world of hospitality. The enjoyment of a vacation is expanding with the help of the mobile phone; planes, hotels, cruise ships, cars, museums, shopping malls, parks… even the humble taxicab is not immune from the transformative power that is mobile. Experiences that were luxurious have become brilliant, product innovators are discovering that there is a near endless world of possible ways to take a business that was one dimensional and make it infinite.

We’ve been lucky to be part of a revolution of technology quite unlike anything that has come before it. The world opened up for computing, but it’s been made more complete through mobile. Ordinary experiences were not replaced through the phone, they were expanded, given new life and allowed to progress past their evolutionary dead end into something new and wonderful. The power of the mobile phone is a step forward quite unlike anything that has come before it… technology before it simple stepping-stones to this next horizon. If you’re fortunate to be close to it, to work with it, know that you’re helping steer the future in ways few can… but all experience.

To stand at the edge of the exciting unknown is a thrilling place to be; an abyss that is full of amazing possibilities and discoveries. The world of mobile and how it will transform our world we can only guess at, but fortunately the speed of evolution will not keep us guessing for long.