Today, smartphones are being used more frequently and are planned to institute 50 percent of all cell phone usage by the end of 2011. These phones have been proven to be supportive and beneficial to consumers worldwide from grocery shopping, online menus, to leisure fun. Some of these mobile applications show consumers where farmers' markets are, some allow their audience to throw a variety of birds at a tower of pigs, while others show where to buy sustainable seafood. To illustrate how specific and random these applications are, one application offers a wine database search to compare what places sell wine at a cheaper price and the distance the consumer would have to drive to get there. NY Times states, smartphones are now more often used for their data than their main purpose, making phone calls. NY Times also explains that, according to their government and industry data, the percentage of households in the United States that own one is approaching 90 percent. With this percentage rising everyday, the growth in voice minutes used by these phones has almost flat lined.
The sky-rocketing application usage of these smartphones are taking up the time users used to spend making calls. One person makes the best of these applications, Mrs. Colburn uses these applications to make life more convenient by helping her stay connected to the outside world and managing her family's lives at the same time. The craze has led the world into a direction of listening to music, sending emails with ease, watching television, playing video games, and online shopping. The principle of the smartphone is simple, but if most companies do not harness its attributes and learn how to use their applications to network, they run the risk of becoming tuned out in all of the noise.
On another end of the spectrum, companies can benefit from the applications of these smartphones. The data being transferred through packet exchange can show industries what locations are more promising for a regularly searched product. With all the information provided by every individual phone, the information can determine where it is most efficient to build the local farmers market or the next Apple retail store. The variety of smartphone applications help customers shop around for great deals or find that perfect trinket shop, but as explained these applications can help marketers with data mining. Along with data mining, these applications offer convenience and information at your fingertips, and with the tech craze at its beginning stages of growth everyone should expect to see more applications to come.
