Kevin's Mobility News Weekly - Week of January 31, 2011

Kevin's Mobility News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to enterprise mobility that I run across each week. I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.
During the third quarter of 2010 — the first complete quarter with Apple's iPad on sale the entire time — manufacturers shipped 4.8 million tablets worldwide, up 45 percent from 3.3 million in the same period last year.
********
According to IT provider Softchoice’s recent survey of more than 1,400 people from over 1,200 companies, mobile is quickly becoming a preferred method for researching IT purchases.  The survey found that 60 percent of respondents that carried smartphones used them to research IT.
********
According to its annual report, Forrester Research indicates that Technologies like 4G and LTE, Near Field Communication, barcodes and augmented reality will see increasing amounts of hype in 2011, and the use of mobile/social/location combinations will soar.

Chetan Sharma's The Promise of Mobile Advertising

Chetan Sharma
I have been following with interest analyst Chetan Sharma and his work in the mobile and voice communication industry sectors for some time now.  He produces very good industry reports, and he participates in many industry conferences.  His website is http://chetansharma.com/.

Mr. Sharma has just completed a new report, The Promise of Mobile Advertising.  Here is an excerpt that I found of particular interest, "Mobile is having a significant impact on local advertising. The attributes of immediacy, location, always-on connectivity, user profile and segmentation, and the viral nature of the medium make mobile the best channel for local advertisers to engage potential customers."

Executive Summary

The world of advertising is changing at a dizzying pace.  New media are transforming advertising, and consumer expectations have changed accordingly.  In this dynamic environment, no communications platform holds more promise than the mobile device.

Kevin's Mobile Money News Weekly - Week of January 31, 2011

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile payments, mobile money, e-wallets, mobile banking and mobile security that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.
Ericsson will launch mobile phone banking services, hoping to capture a big chunk of a market it estimates will be worth an annual $27.7 billion by 2015.
********
Driven by wider smartphone adoption and regular mobile Web use, the number of Americans banking by mobile phone will jump from 10 million today to more than 50 million by 2015.

********
Facebook, flush with cash, is making mobile a priority and planning to snap up mobile start-ups to beef up its arsenal to compete with rival Google.
********
Visa Europe has launched the first commercial deployment of its own iPhone payments App. Visa introduced an NFC certification program in December.  In the UK, Visa continues to test NFC based payment systems at its London offices.

Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly – Week of January 31, 2011

Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly is an online newsletter that is made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile retailing applications and mobile marketing applications that I run across each week. I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

In 2010 small businesses adopted a number of new technologies such as mobile, group purchasing and location-based marketing as part of their business advertising strategies.  However, social media has quickly risen to the top.  According to the recent Ad-ology 2011 Small Business Marketing Forecast, 46 percent of small businesses plan to increase their marketing spend in 2011, up from 29 percent last year.
********
In a new report market research firm Gartner forecasts that global mobile app store revenues will triple from $5.2 billion last year to $15 billion in 2011, and keep growing to an astounding $58 billion by 2014.
********
Groupon recently acquired a small online coupon startup in India called SoSasta (which means “very cheap”).  However, the real leader in India’s digital coupon space is actually SnapDeal, which currently boasts over 1 million subscribers, holding roughly 70 percent of the market share.

Weird, Odd and Strange Mobility Series: Suicide Bomber Receives Wrong Text

Early WWI Drones
Killer Text: A Russian suicide bomber blows up by accident. 

In an article by Daniel Kennedy for ZDNet he writes about a suicide bomber that was set to detonate a belt of explosives in Russia's Red Square on New Years, when instead the explosives went off early inside the safe house.  It seems the explosives were set to be triggered by a mobile phone call.  However, an automated "Happy News Years!" text message sent by the mobile network operator detonated the bomb early to the good fortune of New Years revelers. 

The rapid pace of the mobility revolution is having impacts on society in ways we could not have imaged a few years ago.  Mobile technology is helping replace governments, turning industries upside down (book stores, video stores, newspapers, TV and films, music, etc.) and changing the way we all communicate with each other.  How very strange indeed.

Silicon Valley's Google and Twitter Enable Egyptians to Tweet via Voice

Using Google's speech-to-text recognition technology, Twitter's hashtagging and massive distribution list, Egyptian citizens can still report their experiences to the world despite an Internet blackout.  Callers dial special numbers and their words are transcribed into a Tweet that is auto-tagged with #egypt.

Perhaps we can all learn to use hands free texting...or isn't that the same thing as calling?  How strange.

Whitepapers of Note:


***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin:

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Featured Post

Leadership Advice from a Futurist - A Reading

Leadership is hard.  So for all the leaders and want-to-be leaders out there, here is some advice that I hope you will find useful. ***...