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Opinion: Is it time to be seriously non-PC?

On the Beach chief executive Simon CooperIn the early 90s, mobiles and the worldwide web had barely been invented. Even forward-thinking businesses managed for most of the decade with a PC and a dial-up modem. Apple was a company that had been well and truly beaten into submission by Microsoft. And England lost on penalties to the Germans – again.
 
Twenty years later, our lives have been redefined. Carrying the internet in our pockets has become second nature and the collision between mobile and the web has catapulted Apple from an also-ran into the world’s largest company (overtaking Exxon with a market capitalisation of $350bn). Unfortunately, England still lose to the Germans. Not everything changes.
 
The pace of change is frightening. Ten years ago the web was dominated by the dotcom startups, but their bubble burst spectacularly, leaving all but a few to be replaced by the likes of Google, Youtube, Ebay, and Facebook. It is easy to forget that these household names have only existed for 5-10 years.
 
Legacy offline companies, and even some online players, have struggled to embrace this rapidly evolving world. First we were told that we needed a web presence. Then the web went transactional. Then the highest-growth online companies were those that were non-transactional.

We were told that we needed mobile-enabled versions of our sites, then thanks to Apple and the success of their smartphone we were told to scrap that and build an app.
 
And then came the tablets, a category in the process of (literally) reshaping the hitherto laptop-dominated portable computer market. If you still struggle to understand the place of the iPad in today’s world, try watching a 3-year-old navigate their way effortlessly to the game they want to play or the video they want to watch.

There are 5.3 billion mobile subscribers (that’s 77 percent of the world population). Half a billion people accessed mobile internet worldwide in 2009 and usage is expected to double by 2014 as mobile overtakes the PC as the most popular way to get online. Many mobile web users are mobile-only, i.e. they do not, or very rarely, connect from a desktop or laptop.

Even in the US, 25 percent of mobile web users are mobile-only. When it comes to marketing to the mobile audience the opportunities are almost boundless. SMS is still the king of mobile messaging, with the number sent in 2011 expected to hit eight trillion, but consumers are also embracing mobile email, IM and MMS rapidly.

In 2011, mobile ad spend worldwide is predicted to be US$3.3 billion, and paying by mobile is expected to be worth US$240 billion. By 2015, ad spend should skyrocket to $20.6 billion and mobile payment to US$240 billion. On top of that, one in eight mobile subscribers will be using m-ticketing for airline, rail and bus travel, festivals, cinemas and sports events.

Undoubtedly, the next big thing in mobile internet technology is already out there – we just don’t know it yet. We need to think about how mobile will provide travel businesses with new opportunities and allow us to reach new customers. The key is to accept that we live in the age of the mobile internet, and devise a strategy for it.

There is one certainty in all this; denying the rise and rise of mobile, or telling yourself that it doesn’t apply to your industry or your business, is a sure way to fail in the era of the internet in our pockets.

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