Awhile back, Dave and I had the privelege of delivering the keynote at the TNGIC annual conference in Gatlinburg, TN.  While we were preparing our slide deck and honing our message for that event, we happened upon a post by the folks at Carsonified declaring that "mobile is the new black".  Clearly applications in the mobile space are important...but let's have a look at why.

All about the numbers
According to the Internet World Stats website, the total market penetration of internet service via notebooks and PCs in the US in 2009 was 74.1%.  Personally I find this number appalling but that's an economics and equity issue for another post.  At the same time, mobile subscriptions were at 88% penetration in 2008 and the projected penetration of by 2014 is 104%.  In 2009, that market penetration figure stood at 91%.  What does that 104% figure mean?  It means that many individuals will be carrying multiple plans.  A Blackberry for work, supplemented by an iPhone, Android, iPad, or other device for personal use. 

During the plenary on Monday, Gil Grosvenor of National Geographic cited statistics showing that half a billion Chinese citizens carry a mobile device (yep...billion with a 'b'), reinforcing the fact that the use of mobile devices is globally more important than it is in the US when compared to the use of a standard web browser. Moving GIS into the mobile space at full speed suddenly becomes a very big deal.

You can reach more users/consumers via wireless/mobile technologies than you can with a standard web app accessed via internet on desktop or notebook. A little elementary math tells us that going beyond a traditional web implementation to a mobile platform (either in a mobile browser or a native app) gets you a few more eyeballs.  Based on US population statistics and the current market penetration rates I cited earlier...it gets you 58,000,000 more eyeballs.

The Mobile GIS Dance
It is clear from this morning's plenary, from the recent release of an ArcGIS iPhone app, and from lots of work being put in to the ESRI Mobile API, that ESRI has been ramping up and putting a lot of effort into GIS in the mobile space.  Clearly this is done with a keen awareness of ongoing industry trends.  I had the opportunity to chat this week with Jeff Shaner and Dave Cardella of ESRI; Jeff heads up the mobile group and Dave leads the iPhone effort at ESRI.  They are both very proud and excited, and deservedly so, about the mobile products and API coming out of ESRI at ArcGIS 10.

What does this mean to us as architects, developers, and users in the ESRI space? 

It means we should care very deeply about the mobile space. Does the average municipal GIS office or commercial GIS entity care about 58,000,000 eyeballs? Only insofar as we hope like hell they don't all show up at once and flame our infrastructure. In other words, no.  But folks like Microsoft, Google and ESRI care very deeply about that number.  The reason they care, and you should too, is that we are experiencing a paradigm shift in the daily workflow of our users.  We have reached a point where a smartphone user or iPad jockey expects to be able to quickly and easily consume and leverage the information we provide on their mobile device with a minimum of friction. Examples?  Just look at the social networking space: Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla are all social networking apps that include a spatial component and the primary means of interacting with these services is via a mobile device.

We've gone from making our todo list in the morning and going about the tasks of the day, to being in the middle of doing a task and thinking “hey, I need information now”.  Whether that's getting driving directions on your phone or using the ESRI mobile API on your tablet or handheld, changes in perception and expectations of the user community are definitely afoot. It used to be that the last thing I did before I left the house on a business trip was to go out to google maps and print out all the maps I’d need for the trip.  How to get from airport to hotel, how to get from hotel to client.  I don’t even bother anymore.  And why is that?  Because I have a phone. And if you can't deliver information to me on a mobile device, I'll leave your service or app and go find one that can give me what I want.

In a time of open data standards and federated data, and with targeting of mobile devices from phones to field use handhelds to tablets to create a whole mobile workforce of users and consumers out there milling about, things really get interesting.  More on that later...but for now, mobile IS the new black.