Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, once said:
One of the interesting estimates is that there are about 35 billion devices connected to the Internet. Soon, there will be so many that we’ll stop counting.
As much focus that is placed on designing web applications for computer users, it doesn’t even compare to the number of users who will be accessing web information via portable devices:
Close to 1.5 billion people worldwide use a computer, but that figure pales in comparison to the 4.2 billion (75% of the planet) who use or have access to a mobile phone.
In just the past few months, you can buy your coffee, fill your prescription and pay for your Girl Scout Cookies from your smartphone. China has had such an accelerated track from payphones to smartphones, it’s converting regularly maintained (but hardly used) phone booths to WiFi hotspots to keep up with their booming network.
“Technological revolutions have several interesting properties. First, we tend to overestimate the immediate impact and underestimate the long-term impact. Second, we tend to place the emphasis on the technologies themselves, when it is really the social impact and cultural change that will be most dramatic.” – Don Norman
What do you think the long term social impact and cultural change will be?
[via UX BOOTH]
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