Mobile Devices and Mobile Applications: Key Future Trends

Impact Of Mobile Devices On People

People have become accustomed to changes in their environment as new generations of technology touch their everyday lives. This shift in technology is causing people to see the world through new views and paradigms (Singh, 2003). We see these paradigm shifts in phases such as when our parents went from listening to radio to watching television. We have seen the shift in the paradigm when our generation went from stand-alone personal computers to retrieving information off the Internet (Singh, 2003). The latest shift in paradigm is the explosive developments of the mobile devices and the applications. These developments are constantly being expanded upon to further the use of mobile devices in everyday personal needs and strategic business processes. People today are reeling from the benefits of mobile devices through increased productivity. The people benefiting the most are the mobile workers, especially the executives, middle management managers and salespeople who are not bound by a desk or specific work locations (Cozza, 2005). Mobile devices are giving added levels of service to people through better customer support and improved customer care that in turn has increased the company return on investment (Cozza, 2005). Employees have access their email, contacts, corporate data and up to date meeting schedules. This invaluable asset information is shaping the corporate employee of today.

The impact of mobile devices has created new experiences for people in a way that stretches beyond the individual. Corporations are feeling the impact of the added availability of mobile devices, as their employees are able to stay abreast of hour-by-hour changes in the company daily business. Corporate IT staffs responsible for supporting mobile devices are impacted by their own set of challenges in their daily work. Many companies have been forced to increase staffing positions specifically to support the mobile infrastructure. Companies are coming to understand that staffing requirements are changing as they look at the total cost of ownership in supplying mobile devices to employees (Cozza, 2005). IT staffing personal affected by deployment of these devices are responsible for maintaining the hardware, licensing agreements and the profiles associated with each device. Mobile devices can even impact people who don’t actually have their own mobile device. Companies must follow a strict security policy in securing the access and use of mobile devices to all employees. Otherwise data can and will be compromised.