Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – July 29, 2010

Kevin's Mobility News Weekly is an online newsletter that is 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 numbers and trends.

You can read archived versions of the newsletter here - http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/p/kevins-mobility-news-weekly.html.

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Are you going to SAP’s TechEd Las Vegas in October? I will be teaching a session entitled The Future of Enterprise Mobility. For the current buzz on SCN (SAP Community Network), check out the SAP TechEd blog topic. Also, follow SAP TechEd on Twitter and Facebook!

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Palm’s CEO Jon Rubinstein affirmed that Web OS 2.0 will become available for download later this year.

http://www.softsailor.com/news/34126-jon-rubinstein-webos-2-0-to-be-released-for-download-by-end-of-2010-new-hardware-coming-too.html

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AT&T has been rumored to have put their name down for 8 million Windows Phone 7 devices.

http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/07/22/att-put-their-name-down-for-8-million-windows-phone-7-devices/

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Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO announced this week that they are seeing rapid growth in Kindle, Amazon web services, third-party sales and retail. He added, "In the last 12 months, customers around the world have ordered more than $1 billion of products from Amazon using a mobile device."

http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/2010/07/amazons-ceo-jeff-bezos-announces-1.html

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Ericsson reported second quarter sales of SEK 48 billion, down 8 percent from a year earlier. The market conditions were similar to the second half of 2009, with mixed operator investment behavior, Ericsson said.

http://www.telecompaper.com/news/article.aspx?cid=747228

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ClickSoftware is an SAP mobility partner and the leading provider of automated workforce management and optimization solutions for every size of service business. This newsletter is sponsored in part by ClickSoftware - http://www.clicksoftware.com/.

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Verizon said it lost $198 million in the second quarter of 2010, compared to earnings of $1.48 billion a year ago. Revenue dipped to $26.8 billion, down from $26.9 billion a year ago. The telecom giant's Verizon Wireless unit increased total revenues 3.4 percent year over year, buoyed by 5.2 percent growth in service revenues and a 23.8 percent jump in data revenues.

http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/story/verizon-wireless-data-revenues-jump-23-8-percent-q2/2010-07-23?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal

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See a pothole that needs to be filled? There's an app for that. Wish the city would fix that traffic signal around the corner? There's an app for that, too -- if you're in Alpharetta, Georgia. The city has launched a new system for reporting minor hazards using a free application for smartphones.

http://www.ajc.com/news/north-fulton/fix-a-pothole-in-576562.html

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Adding digital mailroom solutions in the mailroom, and mobile enterprise applications for invoice approvals on the backend extends the invoice approval process two directions.

http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/2010/07/extending-business-processes-two.html

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Nokia remains by far the world’s biggest producer of mobile phones but has struggled to come up with a product to compete with the Apple iPhone and other high end devices. Since Apple released the iPhone in June 2007, Nokia’s shares have fallen 66 percent, and 55.6 billion Euros have been wiped off its market capitalization.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aee7ffa8-95c2-11df-b5ad-00144feab49a.html

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Perhaps the biggest change in the SAP mobility space is the shift from talk of “point solutions” to the need for an Enterprise Mobility strategy that gives structure and central management of the surge in point solutions for different focused applications like field service or e-procurement.

http://www.feedingthesapecosystem.com/2010/07/what-sap-trends-should-it-services.html

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As the world celebrates this month’s signing up of the five billionth mobile phone subscriber, Africa is stepping forward to claim credit as one of the regions that have driven the phenomenal growth over the past decade. From only 16 million subscribers in 2000, the continent now boasts about half a billion subscribers, according to telecommunications firm Ericsson.

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/business/Africa%20in%20the%20limelight%20as%20mobile%20phones%20promise%20more%20growth/-/2560/964426/-/xpqyps/-/

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Global smartphone shipments in the second quarter of 2010 grew 43 percent to 60 million units from 42 million a year ago, accounting for 19 percent of handset volumes, according to a study by Strategy Analytics.

http://www.telecompaper.com/news/article.aspx?cid=747305

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Android's share of the UK mobile market grew by more than 10 percent in a single quarter, International market research firm GfK's Retail and Technology division announced today. Smartphones reached nearly 67 percent penetration in the contract mobile device market in the second quarter, and by June had already grown to 73.5 percent.

http://www.betanews.com/article/Android-grew-350-in-UK-last-quarter-says-research/1280159596

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Sanjay Jha, co-CEO of Motorola, said Saturday morning that he was convinced that the vast majority of volume in mobile devices over the next five years would be with Android devices.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2366966,00.asp

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Looking to the future, Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg stated that the infrastructure industry will likely never see a return to the 20 percent to 30 percent yearly growth rates of the late 1990s, when equipment vendors installed hundreds of completely new networks worldwide.

http://www.fiercewireless.com/europe/story/ericsson-ceo-future-revenue-growth-mobile-broadband/2010-07-23?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal

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ParkWhiz is a service that enables hundreds of independent parking owners to offer reserved, guaranteed parking spaces near top destinations like airports, stadiums, and theaters via a newly launched mobile HTML5 website. ParkWhiz partners with parking lot owners, which range from people who own a single space to large parking management companies, across the country to list their inventory on ParkWhiz.

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/video?id=6833412

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The number of internet users in China increased to an estimated 420 million at the end of June 2010, according to industry association China Internet Network Information Center. The number of users was up by 9.4 percent compared to the start of the year. Of the total, 363.81 million (or 86.6 percent) used broadband fixed line access modes, while 276.78 million (65.9 percent) used mobile handsets.

http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=33805

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A new study finds that retailers and marketers are not taking full advantage of the opportunities that exist for integrating mobile and social. The eROI study surveyed 500 business to consumer and business-to-business companies. The majority cited lack of resources and education as the primary reasons why they are not putting more of a priority on mobile or social.

http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/mobile-still-not-a-priority-among-marketing-decision-makers-study/

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Britons are not getting the broadband services they are being sold, research by the regulator Ofcom suggests. Its analysis of broadband speeds in the UK shows that, for some services, 97 percent of consumers do not get the advertised speed. It also shows a growing gap between the claims ISPs make for broadband and the speed being delivered. To fix the problem, Ofcom is revamping the code of conduct for ISPs and asking for changes to how broadband is sold.

http://fluentnews.com/s/25576644

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Vodafone will look to entice handset vendors to preload 360 services on their devices. 360 services include mobile back-ups and other cloud services.

http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2010/07/27/vodafone-reverses-360-strategy-cloud-devices.htm

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HP will make webOS, which it acquired with Palm, its primary software platform, and though it will still release a Windows 7 tablet, it does not plan to use WP7 or Android for smartphones or other mobile devices.

http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2010/07/26/microsoft-backtracks-wp7-supporters.htm

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VGMarket and PlaySpan collaborated on the 2010 Digital Goods Report that reveals consumer behavior patterns. “The most surprising finding of the report is that 59 percent of respondents have purchased digital goods from third party sources,” Mr. Gluck said. The report also found that while males are the primary drivers of total digital goods sales, North American women 25 and older spend significantly more per person. When looking at the median spent on first party purchases within social network games, the average female spent $55 dollars, compared to only $30 for males.

http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/59pc-of-survey-respondents-have-bought-digital-goods-from-a-third-party/

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According to a recent study by the Aberdeen Group, organizations that adopt a scheduling solution see on average a 12 percent improvement in workforce utilization. While many field service organizations are slow to adopt a scheduling solution, those considered “Best-in-Class” are 50 percent more likely to adopt and implement resource planning tools that harmonize the execution capabilities of their scheduling applications.

http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/2010/07/field-service-automation-rois-and.html

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Global Mobile Payments Users are set to exceed 1 billion by 2014 with over $1 trillion in Transactions taking place in that year, according to New M-Commerce Report by IE Market Research Corporation. “In 2010 alone, we are forecasting that mobile payment users will exceed 500 million. And this number is set to grow at a CAGR of 20.5 percent to reach over 1 billion users in 2014.”

http://pymnts.com/global-mobile-payments-users-to-exceed-one-billion-by-2014-with-over-1-trillion-in-transactions-taking-place-in-that-year-according-to-new-m-commerce-report-by-ie-market-research-corporation-20100720005580/?l&goback=%2Egde_71598_member_25483254

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Technology Business Research, Inc. believes that the addition of Sybase to the SAP business, and the subscription revenue from its mobility business, will increase growth even more rapidly for SAP and will ultimately change the cyclicality of the business going forward.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/216738-an-in-depth-look-at-sap-s-2q10-earnings-and-strategies

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I had the opportunity recently to video record an interview with Ed Krufka, EVP at Smartsoft Mobile about their company and strategies.

http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/2010/07/mobile-expert-video-series-smartsoft.html

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According to research by comScore, the number of online retail mobile applications accessed by users has increased 91 percent in the last year. Additionally, mobile Web use for the same purpose has increased 47 percent.

http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/why-social-shopping-is-the-next-big-thing-for-mobile/

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Research In Motion’s future looks bleak. R.I.M., which makes the popular BlackBerry devices, has had a stronghold in sales to American companies, but that has been cracked open. Apple said last week that more than 80 percent of Fortune 100 companies were testing or deploying its iPhone. Meanwhile, phones using Google’s Android operating system appear to be making inroads, too. That spells trouble for R.I.M.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/business/26views.html?_r=1&src=busln

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Google has announced Google Maps for mobile 4.4. Google is introducing an even easier way to find places around you. With updated Place Pages, you should be able to find all you need to know about a place, whether you’re wandering into a new restaurant or deciding from your couch. In addition to photos and reviews, Place Pages now have a bunch of new details, such as prices, parking and menu links to inform your quest for the perfect steak.

http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http:/feeds.feedburner.com/OfficialGoogleMobileBlog?source=ignitionfork

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In this article we take a more in-depth look at ROIs that can be achieved by mobilizing and automating field services. We start out by reviewing some of the ROI points we discussed in an earlier article and then adding to the list.

http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/2010/07/29-areas-to-find-roi-by-mobilizing.html

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Two telecom operator backed software groups are merging to counter increasing competition from new rivals Google and Apple for mobile phone applications. Uniting the two groups -- smaller, more established JIL and wider application alliance WAC -- will let software developers reach a larger share of their telecom operator members' 3 billion customers with just one version of software.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66Q1N220100727

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With the increased prevalence of smartphones and other mobile devices within the enterprise, SAP sees developing for those platforms as key to its future growth. "In the past 18 months, what we've been noticing is that device specific experiences are the ones getting huge amounts of adoption," George Mathew, SAP's general vice president and general manager for Business Intelligence & In-Memory Analytics, said during a July 22 interview with eWEEK. SAP said its acquisition of mobile software company Sybase should boost its software and software related service revenue for 2010 between 9 percent and 11 percent.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Applications/SAP-Revenues-Rise-On-Increased-Business-IT-Spending-809619/

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If your developers are inexperienced with mobile development, they probably have a few assumptions about how things should work, when in fact, their only assumption should be that those assumptions are wrong.

http://clicksoftware-mobilefever.blogspot.com/2010/07/mobile-enterprise-applications-don-try.html

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• Read the latest Mobile Expert Interviews at: http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/p/mobile-expert-interview-series.html

• Watch the latest Video Comments from Kevin Benedict on enterprise mobility and M2M subjects at: http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/p/kevins-video-comments.html

• Watch the latest Mobile Expert Videos at: http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/p/mobile-expert-video-series.html

• I would invite those interested in enterprise mobility to join the Linkedin Group SAP Enterprise Mobility at: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry
Analyst CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC
Phone +1 208-991-4410
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.

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