Mobile Lifestyle: What is it?

I’ve been trying to find a standard definition for the phrase “Mobile Lifestyle” without luck. Not even Wikipedia has a page for mobile lifestyle. However, googling the phrase brings up multiple companies using this phrase in one form or another.

GoLife Mobile is all about mobile lifestyle. And as mobile lifestyle doesn’t have a standard definition, I decided that this first blog entry would be about mobile lifestyle definition. Quite often you will find a mobile application described by the developer as a mobile lifestyle application. This could be anything from music player to social networking.

I will argue that mobile lifestyle isn’t a simple application. The Free Dictionary defines lifestyle as “In sociology, a lifestyle is the way a person lives. This includes patterns of social relations, consumption, entertainment, and dress. A lifestyle typically also reflects an individual’s attitudes, values or worldview”

Using the above definition as a starting point, mobile lifestyle to me is the use of mobile technology to enhance a person’s life experience (or lifestyle).True mobile lifestyle needs to incorporate life and that is the hurdle. Life is all about an individual, their view of the world, their preferences, their context, their social network, and much more. These are issues that cannot be solved in a single mobile application. The most complex technical and business issue is the interaction with your local and remote surroundings. This requires that mobile lifestyle technology not only encompasses the individual, but also the society.

So if it is not a mobile application, what is it? My answer: A mash-up of multiple technologies working in sync to allow anyone in a society to participate in on their own technical, financial, and individual terms. This means you (as the individual), large businesses, small businesses, governments, educational institutions, non-profit organizations, sports teams, and anyone else you can think of.

At GoLife we say that tomorrow’s mobile devices needs to have the same perception of life as the user. Only then can the mobile devices become the ubiquitous device we all want.

Mounir