Page 174 - Using MIS

142 Chapter 4 Hardware, Software, and Mobile Systems

The major reason for the importance of mobile systems is the size of their market.
According to mobiThinking (an excellent source for worldwide mobile device use), there are
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7 billion wireless subscriptions as of 2014. Worldwide mobile subscriptions outnumber fixed
lines by seven to one. In some countries, like China, mobile Web usage is much greater than PC
Web usage; this is expected to occur in the United States in 2015. 28
According to a May 2012 issue of the MIT Technology Review, smartphones have
achieved mainstream use by 40 percent of the U.S. market in four years. That’s faster than
any other technology except television in the early 1950s, which tied the smartphone adop-
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tion rate. The May 2014 comScore Report shows 166 million people in the United States
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owned smartphones, which accounted for 68.8 percent of the mobile phone market. The
size of the mobile e-commerce, or m-commerce, market is expected to exceed $113 billion
by 2017. 31
Additionally, mobile use is favored by the young. According to Nielsen’s measures of mo-
bile device use, the younger the age group, the greater the percentage of people with mobile de-
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vices. Further, younger people have more devices per capita than older groups. These young
cohorts will further increase mobile systems use in the years to come.
Because of this vast and growing market, mobile systems are having a major impact on
business and society today—impact that is forcing industry change while creating new career
opportunities for mobile-IS-savvy professionals, as well as large numbers of new, interesting
mobile-IS-related jobs.
Figure 4-22 summarizes the mobile-system impact for each of the five components of
an information system. We will discuss each of the components in this figure, starting with
hardware.

Hardware

Clearly, increasing demand for mobile systems means the sales of many more mobile devices,
often at the expense of PC sales. Hewlett-Packard, a large PC manufacturer, learned this fact
when it didn’t respond quickly enough to the onslaught of mobile devices and was forced to
eliminate 27,000 jobs in 2012. In the future, there will be high demand for innovative mobile
devices as well as cheap copycats.
If you’re reading this book, you’re unlikely to be a hardware engineer, and if you’re not liv-
ing in Asia, you’re also unlikely to be involved in hardware manufacturing. However, any market
having 3.9 billion prospects is ripe with opportunities in marketing, sales, logistics, customer
support, and related activities.

Software

The reduced size of mobile devices requires the invention of new, innovative interfaces. The
mobile user is an active user and expects an active screen experience. The premium will be
for moving graphics, changing Web pages, and animation. Applications will need to scale

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mobiThinking, “Global Mobile Statistics 2014 Part A,” last modified May 2014, http://mobithinking.com/mobile-
marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats/a#subscribers.
28 Ibid.
29 Michael Degusta, “Are Smart Phones Spreading Faster Than Any Other Technology in Human History?” MIT
Technology Review, May 9, 2012, www.technologyreview.com/business/40321/.
30 comScore, “comScore Reports March 2014 U.S. Smartphone Subscriber Market Share,” May 2, 2014, accessed
May 16, 2014, www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2014/5/comScore_Reports_March_2014_US_
Smartphone_Subscriber_Market_Share.
31 eMarketer, “Mobile Commerce Roundup,” eMarketer.com, October 2013, accessed June 10, 2014, www
.emarketer.com/public_media/docs/eMarketer_Mobile_Commerce_Roundup.pdf.
32 The Nielsen Company, “Survey New U.S. Smartphone Growth By Age and Income,” accessed May 2012, http://
www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2012/survey-new-u-s-smartphone-growth-by-age-and-income.html.