And a thousand markets bloom.
Well done to Bank of America for seizing the opportunity enabled by advancing mobile tele-computing appliances. Of course I’m talking about the iPhone, and when I predicted back in January that the possibilities created by such mobile and user friendly (at least for those who don’t have giant digits) hardware would lead to an opening up of a whole new frontier in mobile markets and commerce, I have to admit I was too cynical to think that a giant like Bank of America would be leading the way:
In a move sure to set a precedent, Bank of America is the first banking application featured on Apple’s iPhone App directory.
Here’s their intro:
Bank of America Mobile Banking is available to all Online Banking customers. With Mobile Banking you can use your iPhone or iPod touch to easily and securely check your balance, pay your bills, transfer funds, or find a nearby ATM or banking center. It’s easy, fast, and convenient — just use the Safari browser on your iPhone or iPod touch to go to www.bofa.mobi and you can get started.
Although other banks have mobile banking Websites that work equally well on the iPhone, they’re the first to proactively promote it as an iPhone app. It’s a smart move given that many sites still need to tweak their interface code to be optimized on the iPhone screen. As a result, iPhone users are often frustrated with their experience on sites that are not optimized.
In time I think any service – certainly any financial service – that is time sensitive (all trading services and many others) will need to be offered conveniently (!) on and optimized for mobile devices. This is certainly true of ‘retail’ services but I’ll go out on a limb and say that it will be equally important for institutional (wholesale) financial services as well. As people get a taste of not being tied to their desks or workstation, they will come to demand this functionality (just as once they got a taste of mobile email via the blackberry, they would no longer live without it.)
Secondly (and in my view much more important and interesting), the very existence of the possibility of easily ‘trading’ in any market anywhere is both a sine qua non and will be a driver of (in a virtuous circle) the development of traded markets in anything and everything (that is worth trading) – in particular anywhere there is a need to allocate a scarce resource or a need to assign a probability to any given outcome. The Age of Markets will be made possible by the very low barrier to market participation that comes as a result of: (1) the ability to trade electronically (either the informational goods themselves or derivatives of real physical goods and services), (2) massive and cheap computing power driving marginal transaction costs to zero, (3) abundant wireless data bandwidth, and (4) powerful and intuitive mobile computing devices (combining state-of-the-art hardware with innovative and easy-to-use user interfaces.) The ability for billions of people to express their preferences through a market as easily as they can state their opinions aloud will allow these thousands of markets to bloom.
I know I’m skating over a lot of the details, but I think many regular readers will be able to fill in the blanks and get my meaning. And for those that don’t, you’ll just have to trust me – check back in 20 years and we’ll see if I’m right. 
