The technologies of today are growing by leaps and bounds. And with the changing technology the ways of business is also shifting. For data, voice and image communications, the world has come together at one place in a form of smartphones. With the advent of “Smartphones” including tablets are becoming increasingly powerful in terms of accessibility of information in e-business. The proliferation of such devices has diverse impacts on various dimensions of IT, business practices and consumer behavior. The reach of smartphone has penetrated to a large extent that information is available to the users at their fingertips. Mobile devices are becoming closer to digital wallets. The mobile phones are no more considered as future technology, it is in fact very much utilized in present context.

According to the figures, in 2012, the use of smartphones went over 1 billion and it is projected that by 2016, one in three phones to be sold will be smartphones, thus approximately amounting to 40% of the revenue. Also, it has been recorded that in 2013, 15% of all online retail sales, around $39 billion, happened on a mobile phone. The number went up by 11% from 2012 and it is predicted that by 2017. The percentage will increase to 25%.

One aspect of e-business is convenience and easy to use. And smartphones are coming up with the applications which is making easy for consumers to browse and shop online. The main driving factors in his case are mobile shopping apps and barcode scanners. Smartphone cameras will scan the barcode to get the price, and then it can search the internet to find comparable prices at other retailers. During the holidays or festive season, e-commerce website picks up sales through these applications and earns revenue. For example, Amazon has introduced Amazon Mobile Shopping App for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone. This will likely to impact the stock prices of Amazon in positive manner.

With better information sharing facility, e-business is able to increase their promotion and advertising scale through e-mails and SMS. Such devices can handle large size of the attachment in the mail leading to faster communication in B2C and B2B area. As, “always-on” internet service is always there in the smartphones of youth and businessmen, the faster mode of communication is advantage in terms of business. It helps in expanding geographical reach and increase in visibility through search engine marketing.

Smartphones has increased the reach of users to social network sites, thereby making easy for e-commerce companies to expand and go global. Brick-and-mortar businesses are more shifting online due to the increase in the usage of social media. Around 98% of brands created its presence through social media in 2012. In such cases, smartphones act as networked multimedia computers which leverage many e-business sites to go mobile. Not only the usage of sites like Facebook and Twitter has increased, also the word-of-mouth and spoken web has created an impact on the purchase behavior of electronic items.

So what needs to be seen is in the very near distant future, how will this trend affect our business? will this be a kind of disruptive technology?

• Technology