A recent study released by Pew Research shows the
ownership of smartphones in the US has continued to increase over all other
forms of personal electronic device. “Today, 68% of U.S. adults have a smartphone,
up from 35% in 2011.” Also, “tablet computer ownership has edged up to 45%
among adults”, as compared to 3% five years ago.
At the same time, personal computers have stayed at
about the same level of ownership, meaning that relatively speaking, the use of
small mobile devices has grown relative to computers.
Indeed, research shows that the use of smartphones
and tablets for accessing the internet far exceeds the use of computers for
that purpose. At a time when a growing percentage of data available to people
now resides in the cloud, this is a significant trend. It means that decisions
are increasingly made by people getting their data from the cloud through the
use of smartphones.
Smartphones and tablets are very different from
computers in important respects. Obviously, they have very small screens
compared to computers, which means that websites need to be formatted so they
can be read on those smaller screens. The best way to accomplish this is to
have the websites prepared using ‘responsive design’, under which the website
detects the type of device attempting to access it and presents the data in a
format that is suitable for that device. Many organizations are using this
technique to present information.
Another major difference between mobile personal
devices and laptops is in that the former have less computing power than
laptops or other computers. That means that people who must use data for more
complex decision making must either use a computer to do the analysis or else,
if they are using a smartphone, have access to online tools that will interact
with a smartphone. Or else, they need apps that incorporate online analytical
capability.
In certain fields, online analytical capability is
getting richer. Certainly the power of smartphone apps is growing considerably.
As an example, most companies present their
investor relations information in a special section of their website. Some
present this information using responsive design. Some others, far fewer at this point, make
available IR apps for smartphones. The apps format key information for the
smartphones and in some cases make available online analytical capabilities
through those apps.
Investment decisions can be complex decisions and
is an area where a great deal of innovation is going to happen over the next
few years to reflect the growing use of smartphones in making decisions. Watch
for a lot more apps and a lot more analytical capability where investors can
select the data that is needed for their decisions and analyze it on their
smartphones.
