Does this fit on your smartphone?

henry tapper

11 years ago

iphone6

For a really well crafted blog , it’s hard to beat this little beauty

Benedict Evans explains how in going for separate parts of the market, Apple and Samsung have carved up the global smartphone market and knocking out mighty names like Nokia and Blackberry in a few short years.

Which leaves us with a very simple choice; chavvy Samsung, aspirant I-phone. I-phone makes lots of profit and Galaxy grabs lots of market share.

All very interesting for the techno-nut but what does this mean for workplace pensions (such an obvious question)?

It means ladies and gentlemen that we shouldn’t have a lot to worry about. People will , for the foreseeable future, want to see information either on a Microsoft or Apple system delivered on a reasonably small or slightly bigger screen. Two operating systems going head to head -sounds familiar? – so there’s a little duplication but hardly “version proliferation”.

You’d have thought that pension communicators would have two things on their minds – getting their stuff onto iPhones and getting their stuff onto Galaxies.

This does not appear to be the case

Despite the fact that nobody gets papers out of briefcases, the pensions industry continues to regard the A4 page as the ideal medium for transmitting its message. Sod the fact that our customers have no interest in what flops through the letterbox unless the bill’s gone red, we will continue to send out statements and information packs and advertisements by surface mail as if it was still 2003.

L&G and other mass market pension providers are now reporting that despite the absence of “pension apps”, insistent smartphoners (eg most people but especially the young) are opting in and out and transacting WITH THEIR THUMBS!

If it does not fit on an iPhone or galaxy screen it isn’t worth a f*#k. That is the simple message to the communicators of our accumulating pension wealth.

I say this with a chuckle , because I type on a chunky old lap-top. I’m old and have poor eyes and really can’t manage those small keys. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

So what’s yours?