From my August CAMagazine column….
You might have been to a conference recently that involved polling technology. You’re handed a little clicker that has four buttons, and on the screen at the front of the room you see a multiple-choice question. Everyone sends in a response and the results appear instantly on screen.
This instant polling technology is quite fun. Too bad this particular technology, which has been around just a few years, is already obsolete. That’s because of the impact of mobile technology, which is set to cause many other day-to-day activities to become out of date.
I often do live polling of my audience while onstage, but there’s no complicated set-up for me. I simply design a multiple-choice poll using the Poll Everywhere website. Then I ask those in attendance to take out their smartphones, iPhones andBlackBerrys and respond by sending a text message. (They can also vote by visiting a website on their smartphone, or even tweet their response.)
Of course, the number of votes that come in varies. I was onstage in front of 800 bankers in Texas and the average age must have been 60-plus. Out of that group, three managed to figure out how to send a text. Maybe they didn’t know how to send a text to someone outside their contact list. This was fascinating, because there are already new types of banks, such as South Africa-based Wizzit, in which all transactions occur via text message.
Contrast the ability of the bankers to participate in a live text-message poll to my experience when I was invited to talk to 250 students for my son’s Grade 12 class. When I ran the first text-message poll, I had about 247 responses within 60 seconds. For members of this generation, texting is like oxygen; their mobile smartphone is their view into the world. They’ll look at something like text-message-based banking and think it is a great idea.
This speaks to a huge trend: significant business model change as a result of the impact of mobile or smartphone technology. The pace of innovation in the banking sector will shift from what was once a nice, leisurely state of affairs to the hyperspeed, frenetic pace of innovation that emanates from Silicon Valley and smartphone makers. Even the credit cards in our pockets are likely to disappear because near-field communications technology will allow us to instantly pay for a purchase by simply authorizing the transaction on our smartphones. Some magic will happen that will cause the authorization to be sent to the store, gas station or other payment acceptance system.
And the trend isn’t limited to financial services — it’s happening in virtually every industry. For example, British insurance company Insure The Box will set your car up with a special type of GPS device. It will measure your acceleration, the G-force of your turns, whether you are stopping fully at traffic lights and whether you are keeping to the speed limit. If you do, you’ll get a rebate on the insurance you paid. Call it performance-based insurance. Several major North American insurance carriers plan to roll out similar technology within the year.
What happens in the world of banking, insurance and other industries when Apple and other smartphone developers determine their destiny?
Read more about that experience here: “What happens when high school students are told to text!” 
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