Portability and Mobility

Mobile devices are permeating more and more areas of our lives, strongly shaping the consumption and communication behaviors of society, changing how we interact with location and each other.

A table showing the different numbers of internet enabled devices throughout the years of 2008 - 2013

Worldwide forecasts show Internet-ready mobile and portable devices continue to increase penetration for the foreseeable future, with the exception of portable gaming, which is being overtaken by smartphones and other multipurpose devices.

Since the emergence of the first mass market portable computers, demand has driven increasing levels of miniaturization, new form factors, greater power and new functionality into mobile computing devices, resulting in the slim smartphones, postage-stamp sized media players, tablets, pads and folding devices we have today. The advent of location-based services and social media have further accelerated the value of mobility as they provide context-based functionality and a social dimension to personal technology.

Signals:

There are more than 5 billion mobile phone subscriptions active in the world today, with the most recent billion being added in just last 18 months. This puts global mobile penetration at approximately 74%, according to the GSMA.
The functionality of mobile devices has expanded phenomenally in the past five years as the devices have become more powerful and Internet-connected. As a sign of this convergence, the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer, Nokia, is also the largest maker of MP3 players, digital cameras and GPS devices, as all of these functions have become tightly integrated with the mobile phone.
As of the end of 2008, laptop sales surpassed desktop PC sales worldwide, with netbooks rapidly encroaching on laptop sales soon after. Now tablet and slate devices are eating into a significant portion of portable computing sales, showing a dynamic, accelerating evolution of demand.

Implications:

Media consumption and communications can no longer be considered primarily stationary activities, as they were until relatively recently. Portability and mobility are among the foremost design concerns for not only computing and media devices, but the applications, services, content and data that they carry as well.
Place-shifting, or moving content, activity or behavior from its traditional geographic base to another is also becoming commonplace. Media is being acquired and consumed on the move, with outside of the traditional framework of retail and home.
Interaction with media that is traditionally print, such as books and magazines, has been radically altered by the digital form factor, which designers are still struggling with. Delivery into interactive formats that portable devices enable requires wholly different user experience and injection of video, audio and other interactive components to best use the capabilities most mobile platforms

Countertrends:

There are in effect no evident countertrends that could stall or reverse the movement toward portability and mobility in the near future. Even failure of traditional media to cope with new requirements just leaves the door open to new innovators, who will step into the gap and provide compelling experiences to continue to drive the trend.

Extrapolations:

Physical form factor continues to be the area of greatest change, with devices becoming thinner and smaller while more powerful. Ultrathin, small and flexible devices will continue to shape innovations in content and media design to fit the form and novel capabilities of the technology, including innovations such as body-based displays, fabric-like folding interfaces and even smaller storage and playback forms that exist today.