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Chapter 4 Hardware, Software, and Mobile Systems
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Figure 4-21
Five Components of Mobile
Change and Opportunity Figure 4-21 summarizes the mobile-system impact for each of the five components of an
information system. We will discuss each of the components in this figure, starting with hard-
ware.

Hardware

Clearly, increasing demand for mobile systems means the sales of many more mobile devices, often
at the expense of PC sales. Hewlett-Packard, a large PC manufacturer, learned this fact when it
didn’t respond quickly enough to the onslaught of mobile devices and was forced to eliminate
27,000 jobs in 2012. In the future, there will be high demand for innovative mobile devices as well
as cheap copycats.
If you’re reading this book, you’re unlikely to be a hardware engineer, and if you’re not living
in Asia, you’re also unlikely to be involved in hardware manufacturing. However, any market hav-
ing 3.9 billion prospects is ripe with opportunities in marketing, sales, logistics, customer support,
and related activities.

Software

The reduced size of mobile devices requires the invention of new, innovative interfaces. The mobile
user is an active user and expects an active screen experience. The premium will be for moving graph-
ics, changing Web pages, and animation. Applications will need to scale from the very smallest to the
very largest, while providing a user experience appropriate to the device’s size.
Rapid technology change in mobile software continually levels the playing field. Today, for exam-
ple, expert programmers in Objective-C better not relax. html5 and css3 are gaining popularity, and
they will reduce the need for Objective-C expertise. Further, as you learned in Q5, while languages like
Objective-C are difficult and time-consuming to learn, html5, css3, and JavaScript are less so. With
the reduced barrier to entry, hordes of less experienced and less educated new entrants will appear as
competitors. You might be one of them.
Additionally, continually evolving software means new and exciting entrepreneurial opportuni-
ties. Are you sorry that you missed the early days working at Facebook? Right now, somewhere, there
is another Mark Zuckerberg starting . . . well, what? Because of the continually changing software
environment, new opportunities abound and will continue to do so for decades.