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Blowing Mobile

By Thomas Wailgum

July 13, 2007 — CIO — When Fidelity's Joseph Ferra imagines how U.S. customers will do business with the investment services giant in the not-so-distant future, he has no doubt that most will be doing it through a mobile device. As the company's chief wireless officer, he's naturally bullish about mobile services.

And with good reason: Worldwide research and Fidelity's own data show the number of mobile users and devices—such as cell phones, smart phones and handhelds—are exploding. Market researcher In-Stat reported more than 2.6 billion mobile subscribers worldwide in 2006; according to the 451 Group, several vendors estimate there are some 600 million global mobile office users.

Fidelity itself has more than 1 million U.S. customers wirelessly accessing Web-based tools through its Fidelity Anywhere product, allowing customers to receive market data (including real-time stock quotes or alerts), access their 401(k) accounts, make trades or check portfolio balances, among other things. "And people want to do more," Ferra says. "'I do this on Fidelity.com,' they say. 'I want to do this on my mobile device.'"

In the United States, Fidelity is at the forefront of mobile device use because it has incorporated mobile-specific design and functionality into its Web-based products since 1998. "We got in this space very early," says Ferra. Fidelity has also created a device-agnostic environment: BlackBerry 8800, Motorola cell phone, HP PDA, even the iPhone—all are welcomed by Ferra's systems.

That's not to say there haven't been speed bumps. Early on, mobile customers "were typing in Fidelity.com, and they were just getting the upper left corner on their screen," Ferra recalls. "That's not a great user experience."

That problem has been fixed, but when it comes to serving mobile users, most U.S. companies "have been able to get away with miserably designed software applications," says Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen, a principal of the Nielsen Norman Group.

In fact, when it comes to mobile devices, mobile services and the infrastructures that support them, the United States trails the rest of the world. And that may cause trouble—big trouble—for American business in the not-too-distant future.

Why We're Out of Step
BlackBerry addicts aside, corporate America's lack of enthusiasm for mobile stands in stark distinction to the rest of the developed world, particularly Japan, India, South Korea and most of Europe.

"I hesitate to call the U.S. a laggard, but it's a different cultural environment," says Bill Hughes, a principal analyst at In-Stat. In Asia, for example, companies aren't overly concerned when their employees bring mobile devices into the workplace. It's just a part of the mobile device culture, says Tony Rizzo, research director of mobile technology at the 451 Group. "There's very little enterprise control," he says, "especially not from the top down."

 

 

 

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