The Telephone - It's Still Good To Talk

British Telecom (BT) famously told us, "it's good to talk".

There are some things that are just better if done over the phone. 

Transactions and information transmission suit online and text, synchronous conversations work well on the phone or face to face.  Asynchronous conversations suit chat or text.

So far this year, I found the phone (voice) to be my channel of choice when; enquiring about holiday options, discussing sensitive work topics, ordering a taxi, speaking with my family arranging for a decorator to work on our house.

There are many high value transactions that are initiated over the phone.  High value, offline leads.  Buying a car, buying a house, booking a holiday, finding a tradesman, purchasing financial products.  Conversations convert.

Apart from talking, my phone has been my preferred device for the following activities; emailing friends, reading updates from family on their travels (Facebook / Blog), ordering groceries, renting DVDs, making bank payments, checking the weather, reading the news, tuning my guitar, finding out how to get somewhere, selling second hand goods, buying movie tickets, reading a book on the train, following content of interest (Twitter, Quora), taking photos, checking train schedules and using a calculator.

I may be stating the obvious but we are all becoming heavier and heavier users of phones.  We all have them, 62% of UK mobile phones are now "smartphones" and we generally have them with us 24/7.  17.4% of global web traffic comes through mobile devices.  49% of UK adults access the Internet on their mobile and the average household now owns more than three types of Internet enabled device, with one in five owning six or more.

Call volumes have been declining slightly but there are still over 233 billion minutes a year made (2012 data: OFCOM).

If my personal experience is anything to go by, I have moved transactions online where I find it easier to do so, however I will always use the phone for more complicated transactions or where a conversation is involved.

It's not surprising that investors have been piling money into mobile.  Latest figures show that in the US, in Q3 2013, venture capital investors poured $1.12 billion across 150 deals into U.S. mobile & telecoms companies, marking the largest financing quarter to the mobile sector ever.

As we look to the future, here's 12 2014 predictions  for mobile by app development company Goldengekko.

My 13th predication is that measuring all of the phone activity (on voice and in apps) will become increasingly used and understood by businesses  as they calculate the return on investment they get on their marketing where the response (call to action is a phone call).

In the same way that web analytics is now commonplace and understood by almost all businesses with a web channel, phone analytics will become known and used by all businesses that rely on the voice calls for their inbound leads.

It's very good to talk.

It Took 7 Years to Kill The PC Era

The rumours of the first Apple iPhone were around in 2006.  Sceptics posted blogs such as "Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly"




For years phones were getting smaller, cheaper and with more and more functionality.  Here was a phone that was more expensive, larger and (for the first release), not that much in the way of functionality.  It didn't even have copy and paste.

I guess the sceptics were wrong.  Apple stormed the market with a new product and the world quickly followed.

I remember a friend bringing a new iPhone to work as soon as they were first launched back in 2007.  He was hooked, loved it! I was intrigued. I liked it but I considered it too expensive to switch.

He was an early adopter.  He bought to be ahead of the curve, cool, hip.  He was also prepared to take a product that wasn't really that great yet (only 2G, 6 hour battery life) and pay a premium.

In our household, the first smartphone appeared in 2009.  That was when the price came down and the network connectivity improved (3G).  I was in the "early majority" group.

Last week, for the first time, every adult in our household now has a smartphone for the first time.  An old phone was being replaced and the standard replacement now for a contract phone is a good value Windows or Android phone.  Smartphones are now in the "late majority" stage of consumer adoption.

This is born out by the stats.  In the UK we have;

62% smartphone penetration
87% smartphone users searching for local information via their phone
73% smartphone users researching products via their phone
39% smartphone users who have made a purchase via their phone

This is information gleaned from Google's Our Mobile Planet Report, which is is a really useful tool to check the above numbers for any country in the world.  You can also drill down by usage, age and gender.

The world has moved on.  The PC era is over.  The mobile era is here.