Mobile Apps are The New Website – Or At Least They Will Be.

When email first became widely available, businesses people were skeptical. Why would anyone need email when you can pick up the phone or send a fax? Around that same time, websites started popping up and we met with a similar resistance.  Many could understand how large companies might want a website but what good is it to the small business especially when they had their yellow pages ad.

Flash forward to 2009 and the break out of social media tools for business like Twitter and Facebook.  There are still a great deal of companies who aren’t quite sure how to fit these into their plan but at least at this point they are starting to understand that they need to figure out how to manage their social media and online presence.

Now, I want to take you one step further. I’m going to make a little prediction here and I think you may see it come true in the next 5 years.  With the impeding delivery date on the iPad being April 3 and considering all of the companies that are working on their own version of a tablet like computer, not to mention the fact that non business users are flocking to stores to upgrade their cells phones to smart phones……I think we are going to be in a situation where the app fills in the gaps that the website has left behind.

I have some ideas on this but am not going to give away the farm here. What I will say is this, take mobile phones/devices combine them with mobile apps and throw in some virtual perimeters and geo location services and you’ve got yourself some serious cross marketing going on.  The beauty of this is that businesses will be marketing to people who want to be marketed to.

My prediction is that in less than 5 years time businesses will view mobile applications in the same light that they view their website.  Developers, get on board now!