On one of the many mailing lists that I am a member of, I received a report of how the next generation of financial software will be built for mobile devices. I will not give a plug for the mailing list because 90% of the time it’s just a form of spam, however, once in a great while they put something in like this. I’m not sure I agree with the assessment.

The article itself wan’t informative, it stated that since the mobile market is growing like gangbusters in developing nations it will bust out in the US as well. In itself, this statement makes little sense. AK-47 assault rifles sell like gang busters in developing nations and they haven’t taken off here. What this blanket statement doesn’t take into account is the lack of options in developing nations.

I’ll go out on a limb here and say that the average person would rather spend 5% of their annual revenue on hardware than 30%. PC’s are a very costly investment especially when your income limited. So you accept an “inferior” product that can still get the job done.

Maybe I’m jaded — my brother lives on his little 5″ PDA screen. Tapping out emails, taking notes, managing his calendar, pretty much everything. I played with it, connected to my bank site and tried to get a transaction listing. (My bank site, by the way, has a mobile device front end) It was painful, I could read three transactions at a time. If I wanted a chart it took the whole screen; it just wasn’t usable.

Many advisors I know have a mobile device. They usually just synch it with their contact management system to have phone numbers and calendaring; occasionally they use it for email. I haven’t asked how many think they would connect with their PMS system if that option was available. I imagine a lot of advisors would think it would be great; until they used it.

Try to imagine rebalancing an account three lines at a time or reading a clients will on a five inch screen, ouch. I do think that mobile devices will eventually take off but first, they must approach the usability of a traditional desktop. I don’t think it will replace the PC or Laptop until they come up with some great way to do larger screens that are much lighter and more portable.