Construction mobile apps and their marketplace impact The growth of the mobile device market over the last five years is based off of one
main principal: the faster you can transmit information, no matter where you are, the quicker things gets done – professionally, socially and personally. It is no surprise that estimates predict 50% of Americans to own a smartphone by the end of this year and one in five Americans will own a tablet device by 2015. By doing our own survey of construction industry professionals in our social network, from estimators to homebuilders, we found that most do not own a tablet device and most use their mobile phones for calls, texts and email but nothing more. Many are starting to hear about application capabilities and software extending services to mobile devices, but like any new trend in technology, it all looks a little complicated and maybe not worth their time to learn it. The majority of mobile device users are on one of following platforms (phones): RIM (Blackberry), Apple (iPhone), Microsoft (Windows Phone), Google (Android) and Palm (now part of HP). In 2010, the majority of users were on Blackberry and iPhone with Microsoft’s market share diminishing and Google’s share, with the introduction of the Android phones, quickly taking its place1. Since Oct 2009, all five of these platforms have a mobile application store with a combined total of over 500,000 apps available for download. Surprisingly, though, as of May 2010 only 30% of smartphone users were actually utilizing apps on their devices – but that 30% had an average of 27 applications each, accounting for the $2 billion in revenue brought in by North American mobile applications in 20102. There are a growing number of people using smartphones, but the majority of apps being used are being used by
12 | Construction Economist | www.ciqs.org | spring 2011
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