Smartphones and Mobile Banking

By Mark Brousseau

Smartphones will have a tremendous impact on mobile banking, Alain DeSouza, senior manager, Market Development, Solutions Marketing, at Blackberry, told attendees at the Third Annual Mobile Commerce Summit at The M Resort in Las Vegas yesterday.

DeSouza noted that, depending on the analyst numbers you believe, smartphones represent 20 to 26 percent of the mobile phones in the United States, and 12 to 14 percent of the mobile phones globally. When you consider that 4 billion people worldwide have mobile phones (with 1.3 billion mobile phones purchased annually) there is a lot of opportunity for smartphone mobile banking applications.

“Mobile banking will be one of the top seven applications people will have,” DeSouza said. He predicts the mass market adoption of mobile banking applications and that more companies will leverage mobile applications in general as a means of entering and exploiting new demographic segments.

And while iPhone has been getting a lot of the smartphone buzz, “the gorilla in the smartphone industry globally is Nokia, even though Blackberry leads the U.S. market,” DeSouza said.

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