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Mobile devices have become a part of everyday life for most of the human beings living on earth. After iPhone entered the market in 2007, the industry was revolutionized and the growth of mobile devices and the usage of them grew up exponentially since that time and it is still growing. According to Cisco Visual Networking Index the number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the world’s population in 2013.
“The number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the world’s population in 2013.” – Cisco Visual Networking Index
For the past couple of years we are hearing a lot of buzz around words like mobile web, responsive design, mobile design. We can not ignore mobile devices if we want to stay in the business and most important grow as a business.
In this article you will find five reasons that hopefully will help you to make up your mind on starting a mobile business.
1. Market is huge and keeps growing
Apple recently hit 50 billion downloads mark on the App store. Isn’t that amazing? Mobile apps are selling more than ever and sales are increasing at a rapid pace. The market of the mobile apps is relatively new so there are endless possibilities of starting up an app business and reaching success. You do not have to invent something, just look around you and try to solve problems that people face. Your colleagues are always late? Come up with an app that reminds them to do things that save time, so they can go to bed earlier and arrive to work on time. Just a quick idea for example.
2. There are lots of opportunities
As I stated above possibilities are endless. For the beginning you can start designing mobile interfaces, check job boards on Dribbble Jobs, Smashing Magazine Jobs, Authentic Jobs where you can find loads of work for mobile designers. You can specialize just in Android design which currently takes massive 75% of mobile operating system market share or jump to the most popular alternative – Apple iOS which holds 17.3% of the market share.
More into coding? Take a course on Treehouse or Lynda or any other education website on iOS or Android development and start creating apps yourself. Internet gives you everything you need. Just start.
3. Mobile web design
For a long time we used to create separate website for mobiles that usually sucked from the perspective of the design. Now with CSS3 new feature called media queries we can make our designs to adapt theoretically to any screen size so it opens a niche for mobile designers. You have to make thorough research of CSS3 and testing methodologies, and test the concept of mobile version of the website, then you have to design it keeping in mind the most important elements that have to be shown for mobile users. And then comes the development. This niche of responsive web design is growing but is still in its infancy so it is more than perfect time for jumping into this train and becoming an expert in the near future standard of websites technology.
4. People spend more time (& money) on mobile than desktop
One of the best advantage of a mobile device is portability. People can take it anywhere and do lots of things while on the go. Reading in a tube or bus, shopping, booking tickets, checking weather and much more makes people spend more time on their mobile devices than on any other gadget.
People don’t mind spending $0.99 for an app that organizes their photos, manages calendar, entertains them or is fun and makes them happy. According to Engadget average money spent on apps per month is around $8 while on desktop people don’t have such apps and if there are some alternatives they cost ten or hundred times more.
5. Mobile offers more flexibility and interactivity
Mobile devices are giving you more flexibility and freedom in creating more interactive products and businesses. Integrated cameras, GPS trackers, maps and internet connection basically everywhere let you to convert everyday life into a huge playground which can be used for creating a game, or an application. Last but not least winning feature of mobile device is its size. Newest smartphones are as powerful as computers were 4-5 years ago which means that they can be taken everywhere in the world and execute complex and important everyday tasks.
What about you?
What are your thoughts on mobile business? What about your habits on using mobile devices? I’d love to hear your opinion on this topic.
Featured image, OLPC Campaign Site (WIP) by Carter Digital (via James Noble).
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