Page 28 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

moving to mobility � 7

lions of LinkedIn members sharing professional career information,
or the millions of digital books being downloaded through Amazon
or Barnes & Noble, or the billions of downloads of the Apple iPhone
applications that entertain us and provide very useful applications to
make our lives easier.
Who would have thought that Apple Inc. could have driven a mo-
bile market vast enough to inspire three billion mobile app downloads
by January of 2010? This power brand is unlike any other, and its in-
novation and ability to deliver the best user experience has been a fas-
cinating success story that is exciting to watch. It has us “iTuned” for
new announcements. By launching the iPad in 2010, Apple primed
the pump for all its other products and services. Apple reconfigured
the business it is in, but, more powerfully and pervasively, it destroyed
assumptions about what constrains the way all organizations and sec-
tors might communicate and interact with one another and the world.
There is now a riot of creative, innovative activity capitalizing on the
opportunity that has become newly visible—just like it always does
when there is a major paradigm shift in the way people view the world.
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The fact is that mobile connectivity is rapidly becoming the stan-
dard rather than the exception. Remember the dinosaurs? That’s your
product or service if you aren’t carefully considering how you might
apply connectivity to it. New products with broadband connection to
the Internet that are now showing up at consumer stores such as Tar-
get, Best Buy, and Staples are replacing those products that don’t have
it. Manufacturers who know how to produce technology products that
integrate wireless may survive; those that don’t, surely won’t. Con-
sumers of the past uploaded and moved information in raisin-sized
Internet bytes compared to consumers today, who can move truck-
loads of data, video media, and urgent communications over VoIP
(Voice Over Internet Protocol) in fast, easy-to-use services.
Mobility lives on the Internet. It breathes on terabytes of informa-
tion and serves billions of people at the same time. We seemingly can’t
live without our Internet connections and the fanfare we receive on
our favorite social media sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter;
video portals, such as YouTube; or our personal blogging sites. Like it