Chase's mobile application for Android

Google will be “all about mobile” in 2011. Soon-to-be-former CEO Eric Schmidt says so in the most recent Harvard Business Review:

Google needs to do some serious spade­work on three fronts. First, we must focus on developing the under­lying fast networks (generally called LTE). These will be 8-to-10- mega­bit networks, roughly 10 times what we have today, which will usher in new and creative applications, mostly entertainment and social, for these phone platforms.

Second, we must attend to the development of mobile money. Phones, as we know, are used as banks in many poorer parts of the world—and modern technology means that their use as financial tools can go much further than that …

Third, we want to increase the availability of inexpensive smartphones in the poorest parts of the world. We envision literally a billion people getting inexpensive, browser-based touchscreen phones over the next few years.

Google’s already hard at work on the third item – Android-based smartphones are available now from several suppliers at $100 or less – and the first item is only a matter of time. Most of the major carriers are developing LTE networks to support much-faster mobile transmission protocols to sate the public’s ravening hunger for faster interaction by cellphone, whether it’s consumption of rich media, gaming or social networking.

But Schmidt/Google’s second goal is the meat of the news here, and could prove to be as significant a pivot point as Google’s ranked search was more than a decade ago.

Because mobile devices are fast overtaking conventional computers as the life-management workstation of choice, people will need easy, secure ways to manage their money by smartphone.

Financial institutions are at the vanguard: Bank of America and many others already make their secure web sites available in mobile-friendly formats, and firms like USAA and Chase let you cash checks immediately by simply snapping photos of them with your phone’s camera.

But the long tail will take shape as Google (and others emulating Google) develop mobile payment systems. As Schmidt suggested at a conference in November, this would allow consumers to walk up to any point of purchase, “bump” their phone to the cash register and walk away with whatever they’ve bought.

Mobile money is coming, one way or another – whether by a big-footprint Google API, or broader adoption of transaction conduits such as PayPal Mobile. Security concerns will work themselves out in the tech marketplace (losing your purchase-enables smartphone could be twice as ugly as losing your wallet!) as will the features, functionality and user experiences that make mobile money succeed.

The only question to ask yourself is “How can we make our business ready for it?”

(hat-tip: ReadWriteWeb)

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Tags: android, ecommerce, google, iPhone, mobile, mobile banking, mobile commerce, mobile money

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 20th, 2011 at 1:36 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.