Andreessen Horowitz’s Benedict Evans penned a compelling argument a few days ago about how the “mobile internet” is now the primary market to build services for. There are a couple good charts in the post, too, if you bring top management quickly up to speed:
Mobile is not a subset of the internet anymore, that you use only if you’re waiting for a coffee or don’t have a PC in front of you—it’s becoming the main way that people use the internet. It’s not mobile that’s limited to a certain set of locations and use cases, it’s the PC, that can only do the web and only be used sitting down. It’s time to invert that mental model; there is not the ‘mobile internet’ and the internet. Rather, if anything, it’s the internet and the ‘desktop internet.’
In banking, I think it’s even more true. The location-awareness of the mobile platform is crucial to boosting security while improving UX at the same time (think: no-login balance inquiry). The mobile camera is finally reducing (eliminating?) paper, both paper checks, statements and even, finally, receipts. Then there’s that little thing that Apple, Google, Starbucks and others would have us believe is better than sliced bread, integrated mobile payments.
If you were forced to choose a single consumer delivery platform going forward, be it branch, online/desktop, or mobile, clearly it should be mobile. Are your strategic plans in sync with this reality?
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Image: Cellphone inventor Martin Cooper on a DynaTac, the first commercial cellphone introduced in 1983 (Source: CNN)
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