Online Applications and Digital Strategies; where does mobile fit in?

A consolidated digital strategy is a critical part of any business if they are serious about an online initiative. It has become more frequent for businesses to start getting their online strategies in a better shape. I still speak to businesses that have a mixed level of maturity in understanding  on how to extract value from online from their business, but more businesses are starting to think ‘consolidated’ strategies.

IP convergence was a term that was thrown around last year, usually in reference to communication (in a traditional sense), but I always battled with this, because I believed that it was more about Digital Consolidation than IP convergence. Sure they refer to different subjects, and mean different things. Nonetheless, related as they refer to your methods of inbound and outbound communication.

In a recent twitter conversation with @JerryBroughton where we discussed the use of mobile in digital strategies. This conversation motivated me to write about this.

Mobile phones are undoubtedly popular. The market penetration if phenomenal. It is estimated that there is over 3.3 Billion handsets in circulation as of November 2007, which is the equivalent of half of the world’s population! 80% of the world’s population have access to mobile phone coverage and this is estimated to increase to 90% by 2010.

And yet, this seems to be an under-utilised platform when thinking about an organisation’s digital strategy. Over the years, there has been an ever increasing focus on new and emerging mobile technologies. From MMS, WAP, Online Web, Video, Online advertising; nobody has found a sweet spot in this domain. But what has undoubtedly been popular is the simple 160 character SMS (Short Message Service) Message.

SMS has been recognised as the most widely used data application on the planet, with 2.4 Billion active SMS users. In 2004 approximately 500 Billion SMS messages were sent, at an average of US10c per message, this equates to USD$50 Billion in revenue for telcos.

Very little organisations are taking advantage of this. Advertising in SMS has been considered ‘bad manners’ and has been proven that most users will elect to opt-out of such plans, but SMS is a very good simple  and short communication medium. A great way for customers to request a price or availability of a product, request more information after seeing an ad, register to join a mailing list, submit information to a service. SMS provides 160 character for expression, which at first seems inefficient, but many services have thrived from this. Twitter has built a whole business model around it.

Many phones theses days have smart sensing in the text messages, being able to detect a telephone number for instant phone calls, email addresses and web addresses so that messages or web pages can be viewed without being retyped. Some devices are even able to sense an address so that it can be plotted on a map.

I would like to see more innovative use of SMS and Short Messages in applications and Digital Strategies in general. What are your thoughts?