“Are the Laptop’s Days Numbered?”

My latest issue of CIO Magazine (Dec. 1, 2005, p. 19 – the sidebar is here) contains an interesting sidebar. It is written by Thomas Wailgum and quotes Richard LeVine, an expert in mobile device security at Accenture. He is quoted as saying, “In three years, more people are going to be using smart phone devices than laptops in some cases.”
I started to think about who is primarily ‘mobile’ right now, today. The actual market today is among those who will, and can afford to, pay – mobile business users. Their Blackberry addiction (called Crackberries by some) and Palm Treo hip holsters define the current caricature of the business road warrior of our era. That’s great but what are the consequences for libraries if most phones are smart phones and the price comes down to the easier to afford range that we already in the Pacific Rim and Europe? Remeber when cel phones were exhorbitantly expensive? Heck, I remember when calculators were hundreds of dollars! So, who will want to adopt mobility oriented services when teh prices come down, soon?
Who is mobile? Students for one. Many libraries depend on the student for their enterprise use. Meeting their commuication, learning, music entertainment, and networking needs on a single device. Hmmm. Sounds easily addictive, beyond their cel phones and text messaging today. In ths space teens and scholarly users could overlap.
Who else is mobile? Mothers for another. Mothers (working and home based) are constantly moving about to work, to shop, to childcare, to ballet and sports, and more – with and without kids in tow.
Who else is mobile? The home-based small business owner. They are using their PDA’s and cel phones to be constantly connected to their offices while appearing to be just like the big guys.
Add a few addictive features to the smartphone – music subscriptions, gaming, stock quotes, golf reservations – ooops, all of these are already done. We’re on our way!
As I thought about it, it seemed that very few of libraries’ major categories of users won’t be impacted by this trend. Then again, if we ignore it, we’ll only see the ones who lag and not the early adopters indicative of the trends.
Sounds to me like libraries better be ready for this next transiton. XML coding is essential to allow our content and services to sense the device the user is using. Portal development needs to be aware of this. Better check out what we look like on those handhelds!
Stephen