iDiz Incorporated

With the growth in the mobile market, the home phone is rapidly becoming a relic. More and more people are deciding to avoid paying for a phone line they rarely use. Now, even mobile phone companies are starting to see a shift in the status quo. With a service such as Skype, voice service becomes a choice of data plans, which may even make phone numbers obsolete some day.

This obviously makes the established players in the market nervous. Their business, their careers, and their money have been built on a system that will become outdated. According to the Mobileman blog, the communications combination of the future will be something like an iPhone or Palm with VOIP (voice over internet) software and a social networking application, such as Facebook. You’ll call your friends on the network, and companies will advertise to be part of your “friends” network in order to make it easier to contact them.

The interesting part of any threat to the status quo is how established companies react to new developments. They could ignore the trend, like IBM infamously did with personal computers. They could sue their customers, like the recording industry tried with mp3s. They could lobby to fight fuel efficiency laws like Detroit did. Spending lots of energy defending the status quo – energy that should have been spent developing new trends.

Not every company has stood still when faced with a new threat. AT&T bought Cingular and worked exclusive deals with Apple for the iPhone. That at least bought them entry into the mobile phone and data market. Will AT&T someday make a full transition to a data company and give up phone numbers? It should certainly be worth watching if a company that size could re-invent itself completely.

While your credit union will probably not have to re-invent itself, it still needs to evolve with the times. What new developments are coming up behind you? And how will you react? Will you waste valuable energy defending the status quo, or adapt to new realities?