Is Mobile on Your Radar?

If it's not, you're missing out on a tremendous potential market. Also consider that 40% of this huge market will be digital goods. Colleges don't really think of themselves as selling digital goods, but online courses are our digital assets. What does digital mean? No buildings, no warehouses, no printing, distribution that scales easily from 200 to 200,000.

As a college or university, are you positioned to take advantage of this shift from bricks-and-mortar to mobile and digital? Some questions you should be asking at your institutions:

• Do we have the mobile infrastructure (apps, mobile web, network, mobile e-commerce) in place to support mobile?
  
• Do we have expertise in mobile?
  
• Do we have a critical mass of digital assets (modules, courses, programs, special events) that can be monetized?
  
• Do we have a plan?
  

To really embrace digital and mobile you might need to abandon your current business model. Like Cortez, you might need to burn the boats. Unfortunately, for most in education, this is like the story of the boiling frog - you won't realize the old model is dying until it's too late. The music, movie, and publishing industries are compelling examples of what happens if you hold on too long to old world business models.

As reported by Leena Rao Mobile Payments To Triple To $670B By 2015; Digital Goods Will Represent 40% Of Transactions:

Juniper Research is releasing a new study today that reports that the transaction value of mobile payments for digital and physical goods, money transfers and NFC (Near Field Communications) transactions will reach $670 billion by 2015, up from $240 billion this year.

The top 3 regions for mobile payments (East Asia and China, Western Europe and North America) will represent 75% of the global mobile payment gross transaction value by 2015. Digital goods payments will account for nearly 40% of the market in 2015.