Once again Apple did it—and the i-phone has changed everything.
A white paper sponsored by Neu Star (Jan. 2007) began with this quote:
Mobile marketing offers one of the most effective and rapidly evolving opportunities to engage with target audiences in new ways. In the developed world, the cell phone is the ubiquitous "third screen" in most people's lives and one that they are rarely without. For hundreds of millions of people in the developing world, the cell phone represents the "only screen" in their lives and makes these new audiences easily and individually reachable for the first time. Today, cell phones represent the most personal and intimate way to communicate with individuals.
Small screen is an important channel in the future of communications. The trend for many years has been to complicate, enlarge, and illustrate. Much of that will remain, again in the channel of large group experience of communication, but much person to person communication is moving to the small screen, specifically to the screens of mobile phones.