Shar Music Blog

We take a look at possible connections between the smart phone phenomenon and zombies. And we plug our mobile site.

What's the point of shopping on your smart phone? And what would be the point of using SHAR's mobile site on your smart phone? I admit that I didn't understand the attraction before I finally took the plunge and bought an iPhone 4. Now I'm looking for any excuse to use my shiny new device.

Smart phones can by annoying, certainly. We all know the half-engaged look of someone texting, but now that smart phones are more common, we also know the glazed-over look of Googlers, Facebookers, and YouTubers.


I'm going to make a strange claim here. Though I'm sometimes guilty of zombieish smart phone distraction (is it any coincidence that The Walking Dead is one of the most popular cable shows of the smart phone era?), I also think that using my smart phone while at home makes me more engaged with my surroundings.

Instead of being totally sucked into my computer screen, the world around me is more present. It's like watching a movie on small screen instead of watching it with surround sound and on plasma. The home-theater set-up can engage all your senses to the point that you forget the pot roast in the oven.

So, if I'm going to be attached to an electronic device, I only want to be partially attached.

Of course, there's also the utter ease of checking product availability and price on a retailer's website when you're in a brick-and-mortar store. (Though if you've been following the news recently, we certainly don't want you scanning bar codes and sending them to us like Amazon.com does.)

And although an April 17th New York Times article doubted whether mobile sites would really take off, more and more folks may be changing their shopping and web browsing habits. At first, few customers felt safe using their phones to order their stuff and the sites were clunky on a mobile phone anyways.

Now things are changing. In a recent article on mobile sites, the NY Times quoted a study that tracked ten percent of online purchases to a mobile device in the month of October That's up three percent from last year, and it looks like more and more shoppers are using their phones to place orders.

We're trying out the mobile thing, so check out our mobile site at http://m.sharmusic.com/ on your smart phone. You can update customer information, browse for products, and even purchase products. We know most of you probably won't buy a $2,000 violin with your smart phone, but feel free to look around and order small gifts for your friends and family this holiday season!