What does mobile-first mean? It’s a term coined to refer a company’s strategy towards designing products for mobile devices before making correlate designs for traditional desktop and laptops.
Although the future is mobile, the desktop use is here to stay
There are lots of companies out there embracing this strategy, just take a look at brands like Snapchat, Uber, Square, Path, Flipboard and Instagram. What we’ve got is a mobile-first strategy, sometimes even a mobile-only strategy as the growth of mobile is a huge opportunity to reach more people than ever. They make mobile a priority.
Is it sustainable? Only time will tell but still it’s worth a debate as there’s an increasing number of mobile-only apps launched everyday as well as many apps turning from mobile-only to mobile-first.
How fast are people moving away from the traditional desktop or laptop? If we look at any global data surrounding mobile, it might seem like nobody is using a computer anymore. The whole world is in the palms of our hands, isn’t it?
Users turn to mobile devices for web browsing and Facebook access; the number of e-commerce site visits from a smartphone or tablet is constantly increasing; the mobile users are more active and engaged with brands, twitter says. Today mobile is the most pervasive mass medium.
Still, there are many industry voices claiming desktop/laptop use is here to stay, for good. The personal computer is still relevant, we found ourselves in need of one quite frequently, especially when it comes to work related issues.
At this point, smartphones and tablets are not that good for writing, creating presentations, designing & co. Users still love their big screens, keyboards and touchpad/mice, both at the office and at home, many times using them while employing their mobile devices too.
We think people are not ready to give up their personal computer and that’s why mobile success is much more than a happy end, maybe it’s a new start towards other digital destinations. Bigger screens are extremely important and likely to remain so, even if everybody who uses them also owns a tablet or smartphone.
Flipboard & Instagram – from mobile-only to mobile-first
Flipboard recently went from mobile-only to mobile-first. The popular news reader application is now available via web, questioning the long-term sustainability of what we call mobile-only. This move-to-web strategy also challenges the idea that mobile-only apps will end up killing the desktop browser.
Instagram is another interesting example of mobile-only app turning mobile-first. For the first two years of its existence, Instagram was available only via mobile. Then it was bought by Facebook and evolved into both a mobile and web app. The recent updates show an effort to unify these two parts of the app, that no matter whether users look at a smartphone or sit in front of a computer, they access the same Instagram experience.
What’s the lesson to be learned? Don’t stop with mobile success, because there’s much more to explore. When mobile use is going really well, adding big screen functionality might make it even better.
Of course, there are many mobile-only apps that would make no sense on the desktop – those created only because the smartphone has been invented, and we are not talking about these.
We’re talking about Flipboard and Instagram alikes, mobile apps that make lot of sense on a big screen too. For those, there’s much more potential than just making a killing on mobile. There’s plenty of room for remarkable work, better than just about anyone else’s.
Maybe it’s time to make some friends among users who prefer web over mobile. Wouldn’t they like to use your mobile app functionality on their big screen?
