When I look at all of the things that we have today, I like to think about and remember how we had reached this point. My recent purchase of the iPhone 6 had me doing just that. I began to think back to just how far we have come with cell phone technology. My first recollection was known as the bag phone. This phone came in a briefcase style container and was certainly not something that you could fit in your pocket. I recall my Mom having to pull over so that she could unzip the bag and connect to the phone to make a call. As I bring that memory back to the present, I look at my iPhone and laugh a little. The capabilities that the iPhone 6 has compared to the bag phone of 24 years ago is astounding! You have so much connectivity with the world and the rate in which you receive your information is almost instant.

The reason that I bring this up is because “The Times They are a Changin'”. Cell phone capabilities have allowed for a change in the market place. It is seemingly everyday that consumers are looking for more and more information prior to the purchase of a product. In doing so, they are going online more to do so. What the technological changes in phones has done is shift how these users are gaining access to the internet.

This graphic provides us with the pace in which mobile internet traffic is growing. It also show us a comparison the the “PC” boom and how the internet traffic grew during that time period. I think the continued increase comes down to two things: Ease of use and accessibility. The mobile phone internet option provides both.

This growth has not gone unnoticed. This is very evident based off of Google’s recent algorithm changes. Beginning on April 21st, 2015, Google has announced that it will give a better ranking to those sites that are “mobile-friendly”. This causes companies to effectively optimize their websites to be mobile or have them coded with responsive design. The idea is that knowing the mobile traffic has increased, Google doesn’t want to deliver users to sites in which they have to “zoom” to read the content.

Sources:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2477504,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03069TX1K0001121

http://www.statista.com/chart/1009/mobile-internet-traffic-growth/