Retail Mobility: A Key Necessity
The pace of technology for mobility has been growing exponentially in recent years. Hundreds of millions of devices are being used across the world and are in the hands of nearly every business professional and consumer. These converged devices not only send and receive calls, email and instant messages but also run applications that access remote servers. Riding the phenomenal popularity of the Apple iPhone, Google’s Android platform and other smartphones, they are in every pocket and purse of the workforce. As a result, these mobile devices and their supporting technologies are changing how retail works, in some cases so rapidly that retailers are in danger of being left in the dust.
A glance at shoppers in retail locations or at metrics of devices used to shop online shows how business mobility has changed since the days when corporate-approved RIM BlackBerry and Nokia devices were the only options. Not only have the smartphones, which are in essence powerful computers, changed—so have the users of these devices. Nearly every worker today brings into the workplace the expectation that they will have ready access to information when they want or need it and wherever they are.