Is Google making us stupid? Probably not, but assuming that Google is the universe, and hence what isn’t there does not exist, that’s pretty stupid alright.

There are still people who are not on the internet. People with dumb enough phone* they won’t use a third of the features their mobile tariff includes. People relying on the physical channels in their day-to-day lives.

Says James Gardner of the BankerVision fame about the iPhone hype:

[I]f people aren’t going to do the Internet, what chance have we got of getting them onto apps on mobile phones? And last time I looked, no traditional bank has 100% adoption of the Internet channel (and though I don’t have numbers in front of me right now, I’d bet that direct banks also have this problem, though to a lesser degree).

But it not the hype over the mobile channel that fascinates me, because there is always some fashionable channel in the news. It is the fact that everyone has fixated so heavily on one particular device.

You could argue how the iPhone is revolutionizing this and that, but no matter how breath-taking it might be, revolutions in the internet age tend to be short-lived. Who knows what Android can do in a year or two?

The point is, there is always going to be low-tech, simply because the high-tech is advancing so rapidly, and the businesses will need to support the low-tech (or no-tech for that matter) for as long as there are late adopters and people without advanced gadgetry.

Is that something marketing / product managers at banks and telcos are actively thinking about? Or are they primarily focused on launching the next big thing that will push the envelope further still?

*no offense, I got one of those as my personal phone