Why is mobile computing so important to these three firms Ev

Why is mobile computing so important to these three firms? Evaluate the mobile strategies of each firm (apple, google and facebook).

Solution

Mobile Computing is a technology that allows transmission of data, voice and video via a computer or any other wireless enabled device without having to be connected to a fixed physical link. The main concept involves mobile communication and mobile hardware.

Mobile computing is very important to Apple, Google and Facebook because it has saved Apple, made Facebook and may upend Google. It has the following advantages:

(a) Location Flexibility: This has enabled users to work from anywhere as long as there is a connection established. A user can work without being in a fixed position.

(b) Saves Time: The time consumed or wasted while travelling from different locations or to the office and back, has been slashed. One can now access all the important documents and files over a secure channel or portal and work as if they were on their computer.

(c) Enhanced Productivity: Users can work efficiently and effectively from whichever location they find comfortable. This in turn enhances their productivity level.

(d) Ease of Research: Research has been made easier, since users earlier were required to go to the field and search for facts and feed them back into the system. It has also made it easier for field officers and researchers to collect and feed data from wherever they are without making unnecessary trips to and from the office to the field.

(e) Entertainment: Video and audio recordings can now be streamed on-the-go using mobile computing. It\'s easy to access a wide variety of movies, educational and informative material. With the improvement and availability of high speed data connections at considerable cost, one is able to get all the entertainment they want as they browse the internet for streamed data.

(f) Streamlining of Business Processes: Business processes are now easily available through secured connections. Looking into security issues, adequate measures have been put in place to ensure authentication and authorization of the user accessing the services.

At 2014’s WWDC, Apple announced Extensions, which allow app developers to expose a bit of interface in other apps while the user is handling certain contexts.The main extensions of interest are “share” and “action” Extensions, which are used in the context of other apps (technically “Storage Provider” and “Custom Keyboard” do as well). Apple has always been concerned with data privacy on iOS, and its implementation is a bit on the extreme side. Apps are very much silos of data, and their ability to talk to one another is extremely limited. In the case of Extensions, this means that Extensions only have access to the data provided to them by the caller app.

Google made its strategy clear at I/O: It wants to be able to search app content and provide results alongside the Web, and direct users into apps if they offer the most relevant experience. The goal is to blur the line between Web and apps and seamlessly interact between them. And as Google Now evolves into an important discovery mechanism, it will provide contextual-based results for both Web and apps.

Facebook aims to be a discovery platform of its own and leverage that to sell ads both on and off Facebook itself. It wants users to follow articles, take actions, engage with apps from Facebook seamlessly and then be able to return after they are finished. If Facebook is able to map deep links across mobile platforms, it could create effective mobile re-engagement campaigns both on Facebook and throughout the Facebook Audience Network.