Is ‘Mobile’ the Wave of the Future?

We’ve been hearing it for several years…

• Mobile Search
• Mobile Media
• Mobile Video
• Mobile Ads… delivered based on proximity…

Mobile has been hot.  As real estate professionals we get calls from vendors all of the time offering the opportunity to be an early adopter.  The problem is that we have been able to be early adopters for three years. And there are predictions that THIS will be the year the Mobile Apps move into the mainstream.

Sure, now there are more phones capable of managing these applications.  Blackberries and iPhones and Droids and the new Nexus One.  But the problem there is that we… as real estate professionals… assume that everyone else is where we are.  I hardly know an agent that doesn’t have a high end smartphone.  But yesterday, MediaPost released its data showing that in 2009, only 17% of mobile phones in the US are “smartphones”.  That would include phones operating on Symbian (Nokia), iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, PalmOS, Android and Linux.

That is a GIANT leap from 2008, and I would expect to see another leap for 2010.  In 2008, smartphones had an 11% market share.  We might see a 25% market share for 2010…

2010 could be the year of the mobile application in real estate… but I think we have another year to wait.  A lot of these phones may not be the machines we are thinking of as smartphones.  They have web surfing capability, but not on the level of the iPhone, Blackberry or Android.  about 50% of the smartphones are on Symbian and are Nokias and Samsungs that are more tuned for music and photos…  Of course, some of those phones ARE web optimized, so it is difficult for me to say exactly how many are really web surfing optimized.  But it is less than 17%…

Do you think 2010 is the year that will turn the tide for real estate specific apps on mobile phones?

from Lane’s Active Rain Blog