The days of being inaccessible while on the road are behind us, as is the era of mobile phone contraptions as large and heavy as brick-filled suitcases. Today, 77% of the world’s population carry ultra-light smartphones in their pockets or bags, and trends such as mobile commerce are only expected to increase.

If you don’t already own a smartphone (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Palm) here’s why you should consider one, along with other mobile tools you can incorporate into your own successful business practices.

The Case For Mobile

According to a 2011 worldwide mobile statistics compendium at mobiThinking.com, a half billion people accessed the Internet in 2009 via their smartphones; the site mentions that mobile usage is expected to double by 2014, eventually overtaking the PC as the preferred method for web access.

The 77% cited above equates to roughly 5.3 billion mobile subscriptions, a number estimated in late 2010 by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and a significant increase over the 4.6 billion mobile subscriptions in place at the end of 2009. Those numbers show how quickly mobile is growing as a social and economic force, and contributing to that growth in mobile access is the popularity of other devices, such as tablets.

In ITU’s recently released “Measuring the Information Society 2011” report, they point to a 20% growth in mobile subscriptions in 2011 alone, with no signs of slowing. ITU has declared that mobile devices are “ubiquitous” around the world.

24/7 Everywhere Access

Another factor in the rise of…