| The "future is mobile" thought isn't saying that mobile experiences are superior to desktop experiences. In fact it's almost a tacit acknowledgment of the opposite. Think about it this way: Google Maps on desktop is IMO much, much more useful than Google Maps on my phone. I can fit a lot more search results, things are much easier to see at a glance, I don't have to zoom in so far to see important map features, etc etc. But ultimately I still use Maps on my phone a lot more than I do on desktop, because I need maps a lot more while I'm out and about than when I'm sitting still. Ditto shopping. Surfing Amazon on a desktop is probably always going to be a superior experience to doing it on mobile, but as smartphones get better and connectivity improves, more and more people are going to want to quickly buy something (e.g., notice you need a pack of razors as you're heading out the door - use your phone instead of sitting down at your desktop). And what we're seeing - at least from the few companies I've had the opportunity to watch this from - is that even traditionally "desktop" use cases are increasingly mobile. Looking for something to do with your significant other this weekend? That used to be a desktop use case, but it's increasingly mobile as well, even though it is of course not an intrinsically or obviously mobile thing to do. "The future is mobile" means "people want to use this on mobiles, even though it's going to be strictly worse than the desktop experience, so you can either try to close the desktop-mobile UX gap as much as possible or watch your users bleed off to your competitors". The corollary to that is also "you should try to find actual mobile-centric use cases for your product so that your mobile product isn't just a slightly crappier clone of your desktop product". |