While this date is also known as the Mayan Apocalypse or doomsday, the last few years have ushered in a NEW world, enabled by the rise of the smartphone. In fact, as suggested in a previous post, the smartphone is a “disruptive innovation”. It cuts across many lines of established businesses and disrupts their well entrenched markets. Several come immediately to mind.
– Books and book stores, music and music stores, video and video stores.
– One could argue that we don’t need a watch (or a reinvented watch which is just a smartphone on our wrist) or newspaper (interesting concept that we call it a “news” paper yet any news that is in it has already been reported on radio, tv, or now, smartphone), tv morning, mid-day, nightly and evening newscasts.
– And one could argue that we don’t need visual recreation of any sort that we previously depended on from our tv. Youtube, et. al.
– Shopping is different. We have supplanted the mall, the mini-mall, the downtowns and uptowns…retail in any space has been usurped.
– One could argue that information is gathered differently AND quicker, faster, more succinct and even more accurate in some cases with the likes of Wikipedia.
– We can even get our daily exercise by playing Pokemon GO.
– Getting an education is on the cusp of being supplanted.
– Banking anyone? No need to go there. Now we can take a picture of a check and have it deposited in our account…no deposit slip. It could be that in the very near future there could be a surcharge for paying with cash.
– Transportation? Not going to meetings anymore when you can all be in the same virtual room with Virtual Reality headsets (using your smartphone).
– What is left? Oh, food! Well that will never…oh wait…I can order on my phone and have it delivered by drone!
It is not “the end of the world” it is “the brave new world”. If you are a startup and your business plan does not include smartphone access or process as one of its marketing and/or fulfillment objectives then let us help you put it into your plan.