Mobile Internet Usage Trends are About to Increase posted by Michael Yared
Are we soon going to be using the phrase desktop marketing?
Marketers added line items and shifted their budget for mobile marketing in 2012. The browser, email, apps, SMS, and ad networks are keeping advertisers in front of their audience during and outside of office hours. With predictions of mobile Internet usage overtaking desktop Internet usage by late 2013, mobile is on the verge of passing the desktop. Ubuntu, a free Linux-based operating system, acknowledges this trend and is building their desktop operating system to be absorbed into mobile.
The maintainers of Ubuntu announced yesterday that they are releasing a version of their operating system that integrates with newer Android devices. Soon, you will be able to dock your mobile device to a monitor and keyboard, eliminating the need for a desktop.
The phone experience is pure Android - it’s a normal Android phone. When the device is connected to a computer screen, however, it launches a full Ubuntu desktop on the computer display. It’s exactly the same desktop used by millions of enterprise and home users on their Ubuntu PCs, and includes hundreds of certified applications, from office productivity to photography, video and music.
All data and services are shared between the Ubuntu and Android environments, which run simultaneously on the device. So Android applications such as contacts, telephony and SMS/MMS messaging are accessible from the Ubuntu interface. Indeed, all data on the smartphone can be accessed at any time, docked or not.
The industry has been moving this way for a while. Your data lives in the cloud, and soon the only key you will need to access that data will be your mobile device. With Android being Linux-based, Ubuntu is uniquely positioned to take advantage of Android mobile devices, but what does that mean for our Apple friends?
While Apple has publicly maintained the need for different operating systems, it’s clear with their recent announcement of Mountain Lion that Apple is moving full-force to unify iOS and OS X. Their opening tagline states: “With all-new features inspired by the iPad…” This shouldn’t be a surprise. Apple, as defined by Steve Jobs in early 2010, is the largest mobile devices company in the world, and their last quarterly results continue to prove it (Q4: 28.2 million iPhone/iPads vs 4.9 million Macs). Even Microsoft is on board with this strategy as their next iteration of Windows is being developed with metro-style apps that allow developers to reuse code across both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 operating systems.
For marketers, it’s important to include mobile on your your analytic dashboards; specifically, the trend of mobile devices accessing your content and how your goals are affected. Future web development must be optimized for mobile, and businesses should spend as much time optimizing email campaigns for mobile devices as they would for desktop email clients. Finally, continue to be open to new advertising opportunities. We hear that our friends at GenomeWeb are about to release a new mobile version of their website which will feature different advertisers from those currently advertising on their site.
For the curious, this author rocks Samsung's Galaxy Nexus powered by Android 4.0.
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