The problem with this is what can you actually DO on a phone?
I’ll tell you what’s going on here. I’ve been in the business and the IT world (and have worked on both sides of the fence) for a while, so it’s pretty obvious.
This guy owns a company that attempts to create and market native phone/mobile apps to businesses. But by “businesses” of course this means executives because they are the ones who make the decisions.
Most regular workers have absolutely no use for the the types of mobile apps that would interest executives and never will – can’t get any real work done on a phone.
But executives though they look busy don’t actually do work as most people think of it. Trust me, I have been one so I know very well that this is true.
Executives care about looking (mostly glancing) at other people’s work, keeping track of schedules and appointments, reviewing Powerpoints and other presentations, and perhaps glancing at a PDF. And oh yeah, being on endless conference calls. All of these things can be done on a phone. Some poorly, but they can be done.
If I’d just had an executive title only I could’ve done my entire job on a phone. So could most other execs.
But regular workers just can’t. That doesn’t matter, though, because in a company it’s the execs who make the decisions. The writer of this article – and who knows why the hell it got published in Wired – only has to convince executives that there is a new paradigm, that everyone can use phones to get all their work done, that PCs and the evil IT* department can be banished forevermore!
Of course it’s not true but the writer of the article doesn’t have to care about true. He just has to care about making the sale for his company.
So that is what’s really going on there. Why some self-interested marketing tripe like that got published in Wired, I’ll never know.
*Though IT departments can be restrictive and small-minded, most people have just no idea how much most IT departments prevent absolutely fucking harebrained schemes cooked up (in a meth lab, apparently) by MBA executives from being inflicted on the company. Just no idea.
Certainly the first users of cell phones were executives. Apparently they found it a way to turn time in the car into productive time. Back then “car phone” and “cell phone” were synonyms. Art of the deal, or whatever.
Yeah, that is true.
And it’s not that I think execs do nothing. They just don’t produce anything that requires a real work device, for the most part.
At best, executives organize effective teams and keep other managers from interfering. There are a few of those and they are a real benefit. At worst, they harm the company for which they work. And there are quite a lot of those, too.
You’re forgetting doctors, because some conditions are urgent enough that not having access to a phone could mean lives. But I can’t imagine anyone accessing an EMR on a smartphone, in large part because of HIPAA. I also doubt that anyone would want to deal with the rendering of CT scans on even the crispest smartphone screens.