On August 27, Mark Zuckerberg posted the following message on his personal Facebook account, “We just passed an important milestone. For the first time ever, one billion people used Facebook in a single day. On Monday, 1 in 7 people on Earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family.”
The Facebook one-billion-users-in-a-single-day accomplishment on August 24, 2015 is remarkable for the social network that was started by Zuckerberg and a group of college dormitory friends in 2004. With Facebook becoming available for public use less than ten years ago, the milestone illustrates the speed and extent to which social media has penetrated the daily lives of people all over the world.
While Facebook is very popular in the US and Canada, 83.1% of the 1 billion daily active users (DAUs) come from other parts of the world. Despite being barred in China—where there are 600 million internet users—Facebook has hundreds of millions of active users in India, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, UK, Turkey, Philippines, France and Germany.
A major driver behind the global popularity and growth speed of Facebook is the mobile technology revolution. According to published data, Facebook reached an average of 844 million mobile active users during the month of June 2015 and industry experts are expecting this number to hit one billion in the very near future. Clearly, without smartphones, tablets and broadband wireless Internet access, Facebook could not have achieved the DAU milestone since many of the one billion people are either “mobile first” or “mobile only” users.
From mobile devices to wearables
When I last wrote about mobile technologies two-and-half years ago, the rapid rise of smartphones and tablets and the end of the PC era of computing was a dominant topic of discussion. Concerns were high that significant resources were being shifted toward mobile devices and advertising and away from older technologies and media platforms. The move from PCs and web browsers toward apps on smartphones and tablets was presenting even companies like Facebook and Google with a “mobility challenge.”
Today, while mobile device expansion has slowed and the dynamics within the mobile markets are becoming more complex, the overall trend of PC displacement continues. According to IDC, worldwide tablet market growth is falling, smartphone market growth is slowing and the PC market is shrinking. On the whole, however, smartphone sales represent more than 70% of total personal computing device shipments and, according to an IDC forecast, this will reach nearly 78% in 2019.
According to IDC’s Tom Mainelli, “For more people in more places, the smartphone is the clear choice in terms of owning one connected device. Even as we expect slowing smartphone growth later in the forecast, it’s hard to overlook the dominant position smartphones play in the greater device ecosystem.”
While economic troubles in China and other market dynamics have led some analysts to the conclude that the smartphone boom has peaked, it is clear that consumers all over the world prefer the mobility, performance and accessibility of their smaller devices.
According to the Ericsson Mobility Report, there will be 6.1 billion smartphone users by 2020. That is 70% of the world’s population.
Meanwhile, other technology experts are suggesting that wearables—smartwatches, fitness devices, smartclothing and the like—are expanding the mobile computing spectrum and making it more complex. Since many wearable electronic products integrate easily with smartphones, it is expected this new form will push mobile platforms into new areas of performance and power.
Despite the reserved consumer response to the Apple Watch and the failure of Google Glass, GfK predicts that 72 million wearables will be sold in 2015. Other industry analysts are also expecting wearables to become untethered from smartphones and usher in the dawn of “personalized” computing.
Five mobile trends to watch
With high expectations that mobile tech will continue to play a dominant role in the media and communications landscape, these are some major trends to keep an eye on:
Wireless Broadband: Long Term Evolution (LTE) connectivity reached 50% of the worldwide smartphone market by the end of 2014 and projections show this will likely be at 60% by the end of this year. A new generation of mobile data technology has appeared every ten years since 1G was introduced in 1981. The fourth generation (4G) LTE systems were first introduced in 2012. 5G development has been underway for several years now and it promises speeds of several tens of megabits per user with an expected commercial introduction sometime in the early 2020s.
Mobile Application Processors: Mobile system-on-a-chip (SoC) development is one of the most intensely competitive sectors of computer chip technology today. Companies like Apple, Qualcomm and Samsung are all pushing the capabilities and speeds of their SoCs to get the maximum performance with the least energy consumption. Apple’s SoCs have set the benchmark in the industry for performance and the iPhone6 contains an A8 processor which is 40% more powerful than the previous A7 chip; and it is 50 times faster than the processor in the original iPhone. A new processor A9 will likely be be announced with the next generation iPhone in September 2015 and it is expected to bring a 29% performance boost over the A8.
Pressure Sensitive Screens: Called “force touch” by Apple, this new mobile display capability allows users to apply varying degrees of pressure to trigger specific functions on a device. Just like “touch” functionality—swiping, pinching, etc.—pressure sensitive interaction with a mobile device provides a new dimension to human-computer-interface. This feature was originally launched by Apple with the release of the Apple Watch which has a limited screen dimension on which to perform touch functions.
Customized Experiences: With mobile engagement platforms, smartphone users can receive highly targeted promotions and offers based upon their location within a retail establishment. Also known as proximity marketing, the technology uses mobile beacons with Bluetooth communications to send marketing text messages and other notifications to a mobile device that has been configured to receive them.
Mobile Apps: The mobile revolution has been a disruptive force for the traditional desktop software industry. Microsoft is now offering its Office Suite of applications to both iOS and Android users free of charge. In August, Adobe announced that it would be releasing a mobile and full-featured version of its iconic Photoshop software in October as a free download and as part of its Creative Cloud subscription.
With mobile devices, operating systems, applications and connectivity making huge strides and expanding across the globe by the billions it is obvious that every organization and business should be navigating its way behind this technology juggernaut. This begins with an internal review of your mobile practices:
- Do you have a mobile communications and/or operations strategy?
- Is your website optimized for a mobile viewing experience?
- Are you encouraging the use of smartphones and tablets and building a mobile culture within your organization?
- Are you using text messaging for any aspect of your daily work?
- Are you using social media to communicate with your members, staff, prospects or clients?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, then it is time to act.
MULTIMEDIAMAN 