Let's get one thing straight... If you had told me that I would ever
write a blog post on the battery of life of phones, I would have
laughed. I'm not a geek - or for that matter someone who claims to know
a great deal about technology. (I leave that to our executive director
who is a rather passionate geek.)
But I do LOVE my gadgets. My MacBook roams the world (and my living room) with me, rarely separated by more than a few feet... my iPod shuffle is my faithful friend every time I run... and hardly a week goes by when I don't praise Nintendo for the glorious moments of squabble-free silence that a pair of DS portable game systems give me when driving with my kids in the car.
But the one gadget that is my constant companion - the one I use from sun-up to past sundown, falling asleep to the soft glow of the screen - is my mobile phone.
So you may ask yourself what does this have to do with global retail?? Well, I will tell you shortly. It all started with a simple question I asked the exhibitors and speakers at this year's CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment expo: "You are telling me I can do all these amazing things with my phone... How are you going to improve the battery life so I don't run out of juice mid-afternoon?"
When I asked this question I got a mix of puzzled stares, patronizing chortles... and a few thoughtful pauses followed by either a response that it was a good question or "if you can figure that out, you'll be a gazillionaire..."
So this week, with the debut and reviews of the new Droid phone from Verizon, the question of battery life has gone beyond the iPhone fanboy and hater debate. Tony Bradley of PCWorld reports that the Droid is "power hungry". Now, to be honest, I suspect that no matter what the device is, if you're a power user (i.e. you're on mobile Facebook), it's quite common to run out of battery in the middle of the day. Tony's point is that Droid users will have to change their entire outlook of charging their phone: if you're not using it, charge it... in the car, at your desk, on the treadmill, on your bedside table... pretty much everywhere. No more "once a day," it's "all the day."
Now for many of us, this is already a way of life: I spend a lot of time in my car and the majority of it I am recharging so that I don't go dead at an untimely moment (it's always just before the school calls with a kid-related "emergency" or a friend puts out a life changing Facebook status update), but I also want to use my phone for all of TODAY'S applications: checking a price on Amazon, getting a weather report, texting a friend... and all of that takes a ton of battery life.
So here's the connection to global retail. There are more and more applications coming onto the market promising to help shoppers: in-store information, banking and mobile payments (especially in the emerging markets), mobile coupons, augmented reality... As we become more and more dependent on our phones to shop, what happens when I'm in the middle of a purchase and my battery dies? Or, trying to preserve that last sliver of battery life just in case my kids' school calls, what if I simply skip using the mobile app because I don't want to risk losing my PHONE in favor of my mobile device?
These problems compound in emerging markets, where the mobile phone is quickly becoming bank, wallet, computer, television and shopping device combined. And while a farmer in Uganda is more interested in real-time commodity pricing on his crops than mobile marketing from Kraft, the challenges to extending the battery life of an already-stretched device remain the same.
So yes, for now, I agree with Tony: I need to change my charging ways. But it does make me wonder when the superbattery is going to arrive and return "mobility" to my mobile phone.
I will certainly fall asleep tonight to the dim fading light of my phone, pondering this question...
Stay tuned for part two of this post: an exploration of how battery life and mobile phone use is changing around the globe, and some of the innovative solutions extending battery life in rural developing countries offers intriguing opportunities for retailers looking to help shoppers in their stores.
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