Mobile Strategy Introduction

Want your mobile dollars to maximize the massive engineering investment?  Let’s begin our journey by diving into developing a solid mobile strategy.

There are some seriously innovative technologies coming together creating an incredibly bold and hyper integrated world and at the very heart of this ever growing inner connected world is mobile!  Mobile phones, IoT, Fog & Edge computing, AI/ML, robotics, wearables, and the coming MetaVerse - all will heavily revolve around a very mobile world.  

Over the past 10+ years in the mobile industry and having encountered an incredibly diverse set of opinions and viewpoints, I wanted to start this blog to bring - if not a common vision - a more common understanding around today’s mobile capabilities and possibilities, with a focus on business and technical leaders rather than a “how to develop” blog for just developers.

Mindset: Mobile of old

Even now, in 2022, I find it incredibly strange when I hear organizations make statements such as “mobile’s dead!  Or - No one does mobile anymore…”  Now, I’m not 100% certain what “does mobile” means, but I hear it more often that one might expect.  I understand organization’s have different business needs, but mobile is anything but dead. 

Instead, these organizations seem to be stuck and cannot see mobile beyond simple apps instead of the massively connected and distributed global network which most of us are actively engaged with and using on a nearly constant basis.  It seems they’re missing IoT’s impact, or the future of wearables, and the coming MetaVerse.

Regardless, Mobile is actually in its infancy, not on its deathbed.  It is largely around this vastly differing understanding of mobile which inspired this blog.

Questioning Mobile today:

Even as developers are asking the question - “should I learn mobile development?” and organizations are asking how much they need to worry about a mobile app vs a simple responsive web page.  Rather than answering these questions directly - in this blog I’ll be diving into mobile’s architecture and capabilities and their associated strengths and weaknesses to help answer these and many other mobile strategy choices from a multitude of perspectives. 

Often, the success of today’s business strategy which fully leverages mobile revolves around 2 aspects regarding mobile (with the “app” being the consequence of the following):

• How does the business strategy solution fully leverage mobile well beyond the isolated phone (ie: What tech. does your organization’s mobile solution connect to, additionally leverage, expand your data input - customer engagement - etc…) 

• How well will the business strategy evolve/shift to adjust to mobile’s fast changing eco-system

An example which shows how today’s successful mobile is a consequence of a successful business strategy is Uber. 

Disconnected Mobile decisions:

As stated, one of the larger issues which was the underlying motivation for this blog is the vast diversion many organizations have regarding mobile.  The following are some various viewpoints I have heard some of today’s (2022) technical organizations have regarding mobile:

 

• Mobile is dead - No one does mobile anymore

• Should we have a mobile app for the company or just a web page

While other organizations are:

• Developing mobile solutions which scan extremely detailed fingerprints with the device’s camera

• Developing mobile ID acceptance into our nation’s airports

• Scanning biometric pulse and other vital signs which are preparing to disrupt and potentially transform our Telehealth and healthcare

• Developing fibers to be woven into clothing to interact with devices

• Still some mobile app start ups which are focused on hyper performant and feature rich mobile apps.

Clearly, there is a serious disconnect in today’s industry around what mobile is, can be, and even what it really should no longer be.  It often seems there is either hyper awareness or a dire lack of understanding around mobile. We will absolutely be exploring all of these in this blog.

Starting with the complex:

As we explore deeper and more complex mobile topics, I believe it is critical that business leaders and decision makers have the same base technical knowledge. To that end, I want to start off this blog with a series of post addressing specifically mobile development paradigms. This will NOT be from a developers perspective - not at all.  This is from the perspective to help decision makers better understand the pro’s and con’s of each so they can make more informed decisions when investing their engineering dollars.  

As we dive into topics such as Augmented Reality, the MetaVerse, IoT Blockchains, fog computing, etc… Having a baseline technical understanding of mobile will allow for deeply technical posts which will benefit everyone. Primarily due to this point is why I’m starting with the various mobile development paradigms.

I am truly looking forward to this new adventure and am hoping to engage with everyone.

Best