By now, everybody has accepted that mobile is a necessity. It is no longer the wave of the future; it is the wave of right now, and industries that have not leveraged mobile are likely falling behind.
Now, obviously we could talk about the laggardly adoption of mobile compatibility in the B2B space at length, but today let’s focus on how business-to-consumer apps are affecting four key industries.
Gaming
Remember the days when you’d skate down to the arcade with a pocket full of quarters? How about when you’d invite your friends over to your house to plug into the latest gaming console?
While those avenues still exist, they are dramatically shrinking due to the fact that we all have a world of entertainment right in our front pockets. In fact, mobile gaming makes up the lion’s share of global gaming revenue ($35.3 billion out of $46.1 billion, as of 2017). It is estimated that by 2020, mobile gaming will represent just over half of the total gaming market.
The takeaway? It might be more lucrative to invest in the next Angry Birds rather than the next Halo or Atari.
Retail & Ecommerce
Retail is another industry quickly evolving due to changes in the ways customers view their shopping experience. This is obvious as you look at the ways traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are moving into ecommerce; or at how web users are building their own brands online.
But it’s not just web pages that are getting in good with consumers. Mobile apps are a wonderful way to engage customers and instill loyalty. In other words, you won’t need to resort to email newsletters to coax shoppers into returning to your mobile e-store, you’ll be sending them push notifications for the latest product releases and deals. Pretty slick, right?
Of course, it’s not just about getting someone to download your app. Who cares if you find 100,000 installers if none of those folks go on to make a purchase? Instead, it’s better to leverage mobile app marketing techniques that target specific users – namely, the ones most likely to make purchases shortly after downloading your app.
Journalism & Reporting
The news media hit a rough patch in the late 2000s as more and more readers dropped their newspaper and magazine subscriptions to read about current events online. Since this time, news organizations have scrambled to find new ways to generate revenue. And one successful model relies on mobile technology.
Not only are mobile devices perfect for keeping readers up-to-date on the latest happenings, users are once again preferring to read longer articles on their tablets each evening. Couple this with in-app advertisements and paywall options (such as a limited number of free articles or subscription-only featured articles), and you can see why journalism is surging with mobile.
Courtship Dating
It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that smartphones have changed the way we connect with one another. Texting and social media alone have evolved the manner in which we communicate with friends and family. But it is also transforming our love lives.
Pew Research found that 9 percent of American adults use a dating app on their cellphone, a share which has grown threefold in just four years. This trend will undoubtedly continue, especially as this trend gains popularity across younger and older demographics.
As you can see, it’s never been a better time to break into mobile. It doesn’t matter whether you are building a gaming, dating, retail or news app, there are swaths of mobile users ready to engage. The challenge now, of course, is finding the best users. But that’s a conversation for another day.
