Emerging Mobile Business Applications

The mobile Internet may have gained popularity in Japan because of cool ring tones and text messaging, but now businesses are finding that using cell phones to track information increases productivity — and saves money. Just as entertainment has been an unexpected driver of growth and innovation in the overall mobile Internet, unexpected applications such as delivery, construction, maintenance and sales are driving business use in the mobile Internet. By Prof. Jeffrey L. Funk, this paper is a condensed version of a chapter from his soon-to-be-released book “Mobile Disruption.”

It is estimated there were between 100,000 and 200,000 business people accessing information in corporate databases from their mobile phones as of April 2003. This growth has been driven by the rapid diffusion of Internet-compatible phones and the innovations in the mobile Internet-related technology that began accelerating in the year 2000.

It is ironic that there are probably many more mobile Internet business users in Japan than in the United States or Europe in spite of the fact that U.S. and European service providers initially placed much more emphasis on business users than Japanese service providers (e.g., see J.P. Morgan, 2000). Continue >>