Research & Trends: Mobile Apps In Retail

By Lee Holman, IHL Group

If your background is anything like mine, you remember a time when the devices we now call cell phones were about the size and weight of a brick. Having a "car phone" was a huge deal reserved only for "important" people (wannabes were left to buy a certain type of Casio calculator that, when held to one's ear with the buttons facing out, gave the appearance of the owner having a high-end phone). And, on certain of my various government travels, my primary communications gear was, indeed, the size of a Samsonite suitcase, and it took 20 minutes to unpack, set up, synchronize, and communicate. Recently, one piece of comms gear we used sold on eBay for less than $600. This is the very same type of gear that we used to wait months for from the manufacturer, and which cost well into five figures brand new.