It seems like only a few years ago, a camera phone was the newest, “hippest” addition to the mobile phone. A low quality camera built into your phone could cost fifty to one-hundred dollars more than regular phones. Just a few years later, however, smart phones were introduced and the cell phone industry has never been the same since.
Today, it almost seems like everyone and their mother has a smart phone. Unlike mobile phones of the past, smart phones give you the capability to do more than just make phone calls or even text message. Smart phones give the users the ability to do pretty much anything they could ever need to do-and more through applications.
Third party applications, or “apps”, are software that a phone owner can download to their device, which installs a small program in which they can use immediately. Similar to cloud computing, apps are available through online markets. Though you must pay for some of them, many are available to users for free. There are apps for more than anything you could have ever imagined, and even more that you would never have been able to think of. Anyone can create an application and sell or distribute it, as long as they pay for application hosting, which is like paying for a domain for a typical website.
Because smart phone usage is so prevalent in today’s society, many companies have created versions of their websites that are formatted to be viewed on a smaller, condensed smart phone screen. Such an idea is smart for a business or organization, because it makes it much easier and clearer for the user. When someone on a smart phone or mobile device tries looking at a regular website on a smaller, non-computer screen, all of the text is jammed, small, and nearly impossible to read. Creating a version of the normal website may take some time and money, but will be worth the investment because smart phones and mobile devices are never going to disappear.