NO DEVICE CONCERSES SO MUCH OF POWER AND INFORMATION LIKE THE MOBILE.
Five or six years ago, when the smartphone was an exclusive club and instant messaging applications were still walking in diapers Whatsapp debuted in 2010, Telegram in 2013, Google Allo this same season), the most advanced economies on the planet already showed in Its bars and its parks a strange transformation, because people, so addicted to social contact, had suddenly changed habits. A dinner in the Union Pool of Brooklyn, for example, became a sort of absence in the presence, that is to say, in an event where the colleagues were lost in the shrews.
The blame was on the latest generation phones, especially the pioneering iPhone family, 115 millimeters long where timid but inexorably accumulated great profits, first the alarm clock and the camera, then the agenda and the notebook at the end ( And until today) absolutely everything. If the Internet is the king of the party, and it is to the point of justifying the existence of the largest technological emporium (Silicon Valley), the mobile has become the ideal catalyst, a field of play where competing hardware manufacturers, inventors Software, teleoperators and countless players in the leisure industry.
The wave has spilled to Spain, where the number of smartphones has doubled in only five years. Only accounting for adults, today there are around 23 million devices in the country. Although the data vary, all studies attribute a preeminent role to us from the consumer's perspective: there is no other place with more mobile ready per inhabitant (86% have one, according to We Are Social, Back Market raises that percentage to 92% , Ahead of Singapore, Japan, Italy and Germany), and that certainty has several consequences.
THERE'S NO DIFFERENCE
The Information Society 2015 dossier, drawn up by Telefónica, slips a crucial clue to understand the dimension of the phenomenon: "Technologies in general and the internet in particular have ceased to be considered by users as simple tools useful for carrying out certain Activities ... For years, these users have clearly differentiated between their off-line life (to which they gave greater weight and, in a way, more authenticity), and their online life. Today, however, this differentiation tends to be diluted and technology begins to be a central part of people's lives. "
That's exactly what statistics say. Until 2014, the computer was the gateway to the network, but the tables changed last year, when the smartphone for the first time outnumbered (and by 10 points) the world wide web (88.2% versus 78.2% ). Most of the 34 times we use the mobile phone every day we do it to submerge ourselves in the absorbing yoke of WhatsApp (93.6%), tweet our latest philosophical thinking (86.2%), siesta in social networks (81, 2%), consult the email (66.2%) and execute banking operations (46.8%).
CELL PHONE TRACKER
Perhaps more worrying that 42.9% of Spaniards consider that the use of technology "makes us more attractive" (what was Paul Newman and the old school?). Or that a third admit that it relies too much on telephone and chats, although 56.8% already take measures to avoid being a distraction, many (59.7%) silence groups and people and not a few (44 , 1%) leave these groups or block the plasta of shift. In addition, 11.2% openly raise the possibility of living without WhatsApp or substitutes.
PREHISTORY
A review of the history of the mobile is a walk full of findings. Ricardo Pérez, professor of Digital Innovation at IE Business School, is our guide and brings us back to the Nokia era, those crazy Finns who turned this into a mass business, "because the phones were initially for privileged and experimenters [and weighed a Couple of kilos] ". The battle was fought in two areas, "design and good cover," and later added, paradox in the kingdom of six inches, the requirement to reduce to ridicule the size. "Nokia was the champion, so in many European countries it had market shares of up to 90%, and then allowed itself to do odd things like putting a camera on the camera, something that no one understood what it was for."
Shortly after, the telemarketers invited us to consume data from the mobile. Later, Blackberry changed the habits of the corporate world by introducing email. It was obvious that these devices were becoming more powerful: video games, GPS or synchronization with the computer. And then Apple broke in, an outsider, even To nail what Motorola tried with its model Rokr and the sector shouted: in Perez's words, "a little piece that added everything that was out there." "With the iPhone there was a huge transformation in the business of mobile phones And the content.Technology platforms began to be the key, that is, to sell a service and around to offer additional services, which is what Apple did and did with the music, iCloud or Apple TV Apple taught the way to others integrating Many branches in a single tree, and that platform has given rise to other digital services that are already above, because almost all live on the mobile and feed on the internet.It is what happens with Airbnb or Uber, "he synthesizes.
Stop at the application shuttle described by Perez because there clash two visions and two titans. Franc Carreras, professor of Digital Marketing in Esade explains. "For Apple, the customer is the buyer of hardware products - for Google they are the brands, because they mainly live advertising - the Apple Store is a more airtight preserve than Google Play - Apple charges a 30% commission on all Transactions and also acts as arbiter and determines when a proposal is solid and when it does not fit in its niche of excellence.Google, however, knows that the free product generates traffic and attracts the advertiser, so everything is facilities in exchange for staying with The data. "Since 90% of smartphones use one of these two platforms (by the way, as of January 1, 2016 there were 3.790 million units circulating between humans more or less stressed), the customer becomes little less than In a hostage.
TRACK PHONE
Carreras defends the value of the guild app not only because there are thousands of startups with disruptive ideas, but because "truly is an activity that produces value, since the smartphone is a laptop that uses a technology more advanced than that available when we travel To the Moon.It is much cheaper to download an app than to buy a notebook and a pen, to cite a case study.No, these companies do not want to become slaves but enrich their platforms.
We are talking about universalization, because to get one is cheap and to use it simple.The phone also injects to life a speed that it did not have before, and that implies disadvantages. "One of them is the prolongation of the workflow: That cascade of emails that you must answer, those calls from the boss out of time, that assumption that you live hooked to the screen. "We will have to redefine the rules, respect certain slots and assume certain social behaviors [the mobile away from the table while having lunch or going off while sleeping.] The perversity of the smartphone is observed especially in people who do not come from predigital socialization Social networks are a minefield No one is aware of the hole that is thrown in. It is not a field of futbs, but a world stage where something written in your youthful years can cost you your professional (or political) trajectory. An issue that should be addressed in schools, "warns Corominas.
