The speed of life. Consumer intelligence series

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The consumer-led mobile smartphone transformation

Smartphones have recently transformed the way consumers connect with businesses and each other. From downloading videos to buying coffee, checking bank balances to updating Facebook, consumers now rely on their phones for an astonishing range of activities—and their enthusiasm for those devices is only going to intensify in the next two years, particularly as apps become more creative and convenient.

For businesses, this transformation represents a wealth of opportunities. Consumers have an appetite for useful, intuitive apps that make their lives easier, such as location-based apps, and many prefer apps over browser-based access because they’re often easier to use.

The challenge for companies is to determine how to use mobility to capture growth and uncover new forms of competitive advantage. To help our clients address this, PwC used a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches to gain consumer insights on three critical questions:

• How will consumer preferences and behaviors continue to evolve around popular smartphone-based activities?
• What business challenges will shape and influence the rate of growth for smartphone-based activities over the next one to two years?
• Which early-stage activities seem best positioned for growth over the next one to two years?