Anyone who knows me knows I have very specific go-to hardware resources. The idea of hunting through the inventory at some strip-mall store is laughable at best. A few weekends back, however, for reasons rooted in a combination of errand running and time-killing, I found myself at a Best Buy.
It had been perhaps two years since I’d stepped into those blue-and-yellow confines. As the automatic doors parted, I expected the old-school experience: a sea of big-screen TVs, rows of floor speakers and subwoofers, slouchy kids at the video-game system demos, a big section of appliances. Maybe I’d pick up a Dust Buster.
What I saw blew my mind.
Best Buy was about mobile. All about mobile. It was like walking into a bazaar of mobile devices, platforms and service providers. Everything screamed “Welcome to consumer device paradise!” There was a super-slick Apple/iPhone section, a Microsoft area with a dozen Surfaces on display, a gazillion Android devices fronted by the Droids and Galaxies of Motorola and Samsung respectively. There was even a bit of real estate for the Amazon Kindles and B&N Nooks.
For an off-the-street consumer, it might have verged on insanity. But for someone in the mobile sector, it was an incredible confirmation that we are in today’s definitive technology marketplace. Desktops? Dead (or, at least hidden way in the back room, available on request). Laptops and notebooks? There, but you’d have to hunt around a bit — hidden in the corner where those Dust Busters used to be.
Today, the retail outlet that might best represent the consumer’s technological tastes was so overwhelmingly devoted to mobile that every other tech aspect was all but eclipsed.
I spent a solid two hours at that Best Buy, checking out the devices, taking in the demos — but mostly I just watched the consumers. The cool kids gravitated toward Apple. The tech-heads (you know who I’m talking about) went for the Windows.
The lasting realization for me was that the mobile space is really the technology space itself. Tech is no longer about categorizing “television” or “gaming” or “communication”. Mobile devices — whether tablet or smartphone, from the iPad Mini to the Samsung Galaxy to the Microsoft Surface — are the means of accessing all this content and connectivity. Today, mobile means television, gaming, communication, education, navigation . . . for the consumer, name it!
And the enterprise is obviously on board as well. All that from an accidental trip to Best Buy.
And I still need a Dust Buster.
