Mobile computing is a growing phenomenon in and out of the workplace with leading researchers already recognising the emergence of a ‘post PC’ era, writes Nitesh Devanand, Dell consumer product specialist at Drive Control Corporation
As more people access IT applications and content by preference using their tablets and smartphones, a whole new set of challenges and opportunities are emerging.
In South Africa, however, the majority lag the mobility hype by about two years.
While a small number of power users and high tech corporates are leveraging mobile computing to drive productivity and staff mobility, the majority are still slow to adopt mobile computing due to high bandwidth costs, a general lack of Wi-Fi access and the limitations of 3G, a lack of awareness of the potential that mobile computing presents and dearth of tech-knowledge needed to integrate and synch systems and devices.
As the mobile computing trend gathers pace and best practices and standards continue to mature, locals will catch up quickly and potentially will not have to deal with many of the early challenges businesses and individuals are facing in terms of integrating mobile computing into their daily lives and every aspect of business operations, i.e., security and privacy issues, integrating mobile into business processes, and developing for multiple mobile platforms.
The profound change mobile computing brings is clear in the ease that the characteristic use of touch and gesture interfaces, voice commands and interactive mobile assistants brings.
There is also the new dimension that social and context driven interfaces and interactions offer and as mobile becomes increasingly ubiquitous, synching across devices is helping to deliver an integrated experience.
