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36 Part One Organizations, Management, and the Networked Enterprise

(eMarketer, 2010). There are 242 million cell phone subscribers in the United
States, and nearly 5 billion worldwide (ITU, 2011).
By June 2012, more than 104 million businesses worldwide had dot-com
Internet sites registered (Whois, 2012). Today, 184 million Americans shop
online, and 150 million have purchased online. Every day about 67 million
Americans go online to research a product or service.
In 2012, FedEx moved over 9 million packages daily worldwide (6 million
in the United States), mostly overnight, and the United Parcel Service (UPS)
moved over 15 million packages daily worldwide. Businesses sought to sense
and respond to rapidly changing customer demand, reduce inventories to the
lowest possible levels, and achieve higher levels of operational efficiency.
Supply chains have become more fast-paced, with companies of all sizes
depending on just-in-time inventory to reduce their overhead costs and get to
market faster.
As newspaper readership continues to decline, more than 150 million people
read a newspaper online, and millions more read other news sites. About 67
million people watch a video online every day, 76 million read a blog, and 26
million post to blogs, creating an explosion of new writers and new forms of
customer feedback that did not exist five years ago (Pew, 2012). Social network-
ing site Facebook attracted 162 million monthly visitors in 2012 in the United
States, and over 900 million worldwide. Google+ has attracted over 100 million
users in the United States. Businesses are starting to use social networking tools
to connect their employees, customers, and managers worldwide. Many Fortune
500 companies now have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and Tumblr sites.
Despite the economic slowdown, e-commerce and Internet advertising con-
tinue to expand. Google’s online ad revenues surpassed $36 billion in 2011, and
Internet advertising continues to grow at more than 10 percent a year, reaching
more than $39.5 billion in revenues in 2012.
New federal security and accounting laws, requiring many businesses to
keep e-mail messages for five years, coupled with existing occupational and
health laws requiring firms to store employee chemical exposure data for up to
60 years, are spurring the annual growth of digital information at the estimated
rate of 5 exabytes annually, equivalent to 37,000 new Libraries of Congress.

WHAT’S NEW IN MANAGEMENT INFORMATION
SYSTEMS?

Lots! What makes management information systems the most exciting topic in
business is the continual change in technology, management use of the tech-
nology, and the impact on business success. New businesses and industries
appear, old ones decline, and successful firms are those that learn how to use
the new technologies. Table 1.1 summarizes the major new themes in business
uses of information systems. These themes will appear throughout the book in
all the chapters, so it might be a good idea to take some time now and discuss
these with your professor and other students.
There are three interrelated changes in the technology area: (1) the
emerging mobile digital platform, (2) the growing business use of "big data,"
and (3) the growth in “cloud computing,” where more and more business
software runs over the Internet.
IPhones, iPads, BlackBerrys, and Android tablets and smartphones are not
just gadgets or entertainment outlets. They represent new emerging comput-
ing platforms based on an array of new hardware and software technologies.

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