Mobile Expert Video Series: Graham Robinson

I always love catching up with SAP Mentor and Founder of Yelcho Systems Consulting, Graham Robinson.  This time I catch him in Brisbane, Australia at the Mastering Enterprise Mobility with SAP event where I am speaking on mobile strategies.  In this interview he shares his thoughts and advice on mobile application development.

Video Link: http://youtu.be/vHfin3FlBxU

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Video Series: Corey Adams

I was able to catch up with a new SAP Mentor, Corey Adams this week in Brisbane, Australia at the Mastering Enterprise Mobility with SAP conference.  Corey is a BI Team Leader for Frucor Inc, a non-alcoholic beverage and energy drink company.  In this interview he shares how using mobile BI solutions on iPads have provided Frucor with competitive advantages.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz5xm0RTcxM

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Field Mobility News Weekly – Week of November 4, 2012

The Field Mobility News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to field mobility that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

SuperGeo Technologies has announced plans to launch mobile survey GIS SuperSurv 3.1 at the end of 2012.  SuperSurv integrates GIS and GPS technologies to enable Android users to collect spatial data.  Read Original Content

Honeywell Scanning & Mobility has unveiled the Dolphin 70e Black, a rugged hybrid device designed for fieldwork.  Read Original Content

Arlington Cemetery has released a new geospatial interactive map available as a free smartphone app and on the Arlington Cemetery website.  Read Original Content

Antenna Software provides a complete cloud-based enterprise mobility suite that enables both IT pros and business executives alike to create and manage mobile apps, websites and content across the entire business.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Antenna Software.

Community Transit in Washington State is planning an upgrade to its bus system, equipping its buses with a GPS system that will provide information for riders and help buses run more efficiently.  Read Original Content

According to reports, the new iPad Mini device’s Wi-Fi version does not include built-in GPS.  Read Original Content

Motion Computing will host a series of webinars during the month of November discussing field mobility and point-of-service trends.  Read Original Content

The commercial geospatial market is delivering technologies to mobile users in numerous industries quicker and more efficiently.  The Frost & Sullivan report “Analysis of the U.S. Defense Geospatial Market - Focus Shifts from Products to Tools and Services” explores the U.S. defense geospatial market from 2011 to 2017.  Read Original Content

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has implemented a new GIS data integration solution that will automatically integrate and update data from multiple sources and produce interactive, portable and intelligent maps and imagery.  Read Original Content

Cummings Engineering Consultants and Ascent Rugged Mobile have developed the SAIFE Defender, a rugged mobile Android device with interoperable secure communications capabilities.  Read Original Content

Mobile Expert Video Series: SAP's Manik Saha

I had the honor of meeting with SAP's Head of Global IT Processes, Manik Saha.  I spent time with him in both Aukland, New Zealand and in Brisbane, Australia over the past few days.  In fact we will both be speaking in Sydney and in Melbourne this week before he returns to Singapore and I return to Boise, Idaho.  Manik  is speaking on the subject of SAP Runs SAP Mobility.  In this interview he shares his thoughts on development trends and methodologies for mobile solutions.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWGXaPK6A5o

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Video Series: Mike Hopkins

I had the privilege of speaking on mobile strategies in Brisbane, Australia today at the Mastering Enterprise Mobility with SAP conference.  While attending the conference, I met Mike Hopkins, with Mobile Asset Management at the Department of Conservation in New Zealand.  He has been involved in a number of mobile application projects and was kind enough to share the lessons he learned with us.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN9xpmwaw90

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Gartner's New 2012 Magic Quadrant for Field Services

Have you seen the new 2012 magic quadrant on field services from Gartner?  It is quite strange.  SAP is listed in the bottom left even after the Syclo acquisition?  I thought Syclo was all about mobile enterprise asset management which is very closely aligned with field services (think preventative maintenance and repairs).

ClickSoftware, however, is listed far above everyone else in the top right quadrant.  The strange part is that SAP resells ClickSoftware's solutions as the SAP Workforce Scheduling and Optimization solution and it utilizes the SAP Mobility Platform.  What a small world we all live in.  It seems the Gartner analysis is less about the technology, and more about how it is positioned in the market.  I say that because you can get the same solution from both companies yet they are far apart on the MQ.

My analysis is that field services is much more than just a mobile app platform.  It includes dynamic scheduling, rostering, forecasting, time sheets, planning, etc.   Mobility is simply extending and enhancing the power of those solutions.  Without those connected back-office solutions, mobility loses much of its value.  That is how I interpret the MQ.  What about you?

More pondering... This must present a real dilemma for SAP sales folks selling into field services opportunities.  Should they sell their prospects the SAP Workforce Scheduling and Optimization solution by ClickSoftware, which is on their price list and listed in the very top right Gartner MQ for Field Services and sits on top of the SAP Mobility Platform, or should they sell their prospects just SAP Mobility Platform which is listed in the bottom left.  Yikes!  That is going to require some strategy.

In a timely but coincidental note, I will be joining Stewart Hill from ClickSoftware at 11 AM EST on November 13th to present a webinar titled, "Using Mobile Technology to Drive Business Visibility and Real-time Decision Making."  What a fun subject!!!  I invite you to join the discussion by registering here.
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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobility News Weekly – Week of October 28, 2012

The 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.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly

Apple could double the number of iPads it has sold to date in 2013 alone, with close to 200 million iPhones sold in the same upcoming 12 month period, according to Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley.  Read Original Content

Global mobile phone vendors shipped a total of 445.7 million units in the third quarter of 2012, compared to 434.1 million units in the third quarter of 2011, according to latest statistics from International Data Corporation.  Read Original Content

Japan's Panasonic has said it will end its brief return to the European smartphone market, pulling out less than a year after launching its first handset outside of Japan since 2005.  Read Original Content

Founded in 1979, DSI is a global provider of Enterprise Mobility Solutions®, helping companies worldwide increase productivity and profitability regardless of data source, device type, operating system or network connectivity.  DSI serves clients globally through its offices in Australia, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by DSI.

Microsoft has unveiled its two official Windows smartphones from Nokia and HTC, plus a third from Samsung at its Windows Phone 8 launch event. It also unveiled a host of never-before-seen features that it hopes will pull people away from their iPhones and Android devices and towards Microsoft.  Read Original Content

Last week ZTE told analysts after it reported weak third-quarter earnings that it expects to sell 25 million smartphones in 2012, 10 million fewer than it had initially forecast. ZTE sold around 15 million smartphones in 2011.  Read Original Content

According to the India Mobile Handsets Market Review report released by research firm CyberMedia Research, the smartphone market has grown to 5.50 million units in the first half of 2012.  Read Original Content

ERICSSON, the Swedish telecoms company, is calling on software developers living in sub-Saharan Africa to write applications targeting urban areas in Africa.  Read Original Content

Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman said that while she does not expect her company to release a smartphone until 2014 at the earliest, HP will be a major force in the tablet and mobile PC markets.  Read Original Content

According to a report from Korea Investment & Securities, Samsung is expected to sell 284 million units globally, giving the company a 37 percent share of the worldwide smartphone market in 2013, over Apple's 20.4 percent to 157 million units.  Read Original Content

Mobile Expert Video Series: Andrew Fox

Today I taught two sessions in Aukland, New Zealand on mobile strategies, plus I had the opportunity to interview SAP's Andrew Fox, Head of Mobile Business Solutions for SAP in ANZ.  Andrew is a great SAP mobility spokesman.  He is very concise, and shares his opinions on how to determine the best mobile platform options for each occasion.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfBnuiwynbY

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Video Series: Dr. Ahmed El Adl

I have interviewed Dr. Ahmed El Adl many times over the years, and he is always willing to share his experiences and knowledge with us.  There are many new developments at SAP around the convergence of M2M, enterprise mobility, Hana, analytics, and much more that he shares in this video interview.  Enjoy!

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly – Week of October 28, 2012

Welcome to Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly, an online newsletter that consists of the most interesting news and articles related to enterprise mobility in Asia.  Asia is predicted to be the fastest area of growth for enterprise mobility between now and 2016.

Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

According to a recent study by Citrix, 91 percent of Hong Kong organizations will use BYOD initiatives and 76 percent of local businesses in Hong Kong either already provide mobile work styles to staff or plan to do so in the next 12 months.  Read Original Content

Citing a dim market outlook for devices using the Windows OS in the country, Samsung has decided not to introduce Ativ S smartphones using Microsoft’s Windows Mobile as its main operating platform in Korea.  Read Original Content

In a preliminary results announcement on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Chinese mobile phone and telecoms equipment maker ZTE Corp stated it will report a loss of as much as 1.75 billion yuan ($279.2 million) in the first nine months of 2012.  Read Original Content

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.

Japan’s Softbank recently announced it will acquire a 70 percent stake in Sprint Nextel.  Read Original Content

Airtel and the Andhra Pradesh government in India have developed a service to enable customers to make payments for their electric bills through their mobile phones.  Read Original Content

Industry experts believe three big new technologies will add value to the existing mobile marketing solutions in India – location-based services, voice-based interactions and interactive applications.  Read Original Content

Company officials and market analysts forecast that Korean mobile carriers SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus will see a sharp drop in earnings in the third quarter of this year because of rising market costs and increased expenditure to promote faster and more advanced network technology.  Read Original Content

ZTE has been awarded the contract for China Mobile’s TD-LTE rollout in five major Chinese cities.  Read Original Content

Mobility News Weekly – Week of October 21, 2012

The 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.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly

Scientists tested 13,500 Android apps and found almost 8 percent failed to protect bank account and social media logins.  Read Original Content

Gartner believes mobile device manufacturers, led by Apple and devices running Google’s Android operating system, will increasingly fight for market share in 2013, while Microsoft’s Windows 8 devices placed a distant third.  Read Original Content

According to a new PriceGrabber survey, 31 percent of consumers already have shopping-related apps on their smartphone, and 82 percent of those consumers plan to use those apps to help save money when purchasing holidays gifts.  Read Original Content

Founded in 1979, DSI is a global provider of Enterprise Mobility Solutions®, helping companies worldwide increase productivity and profitability regardless of data source, device type, operating system or network connectivity.  DSI serves clients globally through its offices in Australia, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by DSI.

A Dell executive at the Mobile Shopping Fall Summit has revealed that the company will launch an application for Windows 8 tablets this week, showing how important it is for marketers to have a presence on every platform.  Read Original Content

South Korean consumer electronics maker LG Electronics Inc. reported a third straight quarterly profit on Wednesday as sales of smartphones designed for faster wireless networks helped end losses at its mobile phone business.  Read Original Content

Samsung Electronics has announced its plan to push smartphone penetration in Africa and to further expand its share of the smart phone/devices market across Africa as this is in line with its strategy to bridge the continent’s digital divide.  Read Original Content

The revenues from mobile application testing tools will exceed $200 million in 2012, finds a new study from ABI Research.  Read Original Content

Apple has finally officially unveiled its iPad Mini and it is, indeed, extremely light. The iPad Mini sports a 7.9-inch screen and it feels as airy as the iPhone 5, though maybe a tad wide for some jacket pockets.  Read Original Content

Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud - SMAC

I am speaking at a Cognizant user conference this week in Scottsdale, AZ where social, mobile, analytics and cloud are the central themes.  Cognizant uses the acronym SMAC to refer to these four technologies integrated into one grouping. This event follows the Oracle Open World and SAP TechEd events this month where these same four technology trends were also highlighted.

This SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) grouping makes sense to me.  The SMAC acronym is also a far better marketing acronym than SCAM would be.  Can you imagine saying, "I would like to talk to you about a SCAM."  Not so good!  MACs would also not be a good acronym as it is too closely aligned with our iFriends.  MASC would just make it seem like we were hiding something, so SMAC works for me.

SMAC also makes it past my "pocket test."  I reach into my pocket, pull out my iPhone 5 and examine what I do with it.  I use SOCIAL apps (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Blogger, etc.) on my iPhone.  I use it while MOBILE as my mobile communication and mobile data device.  I use Google Search, and its ANALYTICS everyday, as well as Weather and flight status apps.  I use all kinds of CLOUD based mobile apps including news apps, banking apps, and all the social apps everyday.  So my pocket test says SMAC is relevant.

The words I keep hearing around this SMAC stack are "multiplication effect" and "force multiplier."  Here are a couple of definitions around "force multiplier":

• A factor that dramatically increases (hence "multiplies") the effectiveness of an item or group.
• A capability that, when added to and employed by a work force, significantly increases the productivity potential of that force.

I personally think of Twitter and Blogger as force multipliers in my work.  I can communicate and share information with thousands from my home office in Boise, Idaho by effectively using social networking solutions in the cloud.

I invite you to watch what SAP's CIO Oliver Bussman said to me the other day on the subject of SMAC in this video interview.  I also interviewed Ingo Piroth, SAP's VP of Mobile Services, North America, on the concept of SMAC (see video interview at minute 3:03), where he states that SMAC is probably the biggest conversation topic at SAP right now.

It appears that you will be hearing more SMAC talk from me in the future.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC (Social, MOBILE, Analytics and Cloud), Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Strategic Enterprise Mobility Linkedin Group

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Video Series: Jens Koerner

In this segment of Mobile Expert Video Series, I had the opportunity to interview SAP's Product Manager for the Mobility Platform, Jens Koerner.  We discuss mobile middleware both on-premise and in the cloud.  We also talk about Afaria (MDM) in the cloud.  If your head is in the clouds, this is the episode for you.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mSvFFRpCXs

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC (Social, MOBILE, Analytics and Cloud), Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Strategic Enterprise Mobility Linkedin Group

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Video Series: Mico Yuk

This week I am in Las Vegas attending SAP's TechEd.  Yesterday, I was able to meet up and have a great conversation with Mico Yuk, SAP Mentor and business analytics expert.  In this interview Mico describes how she sees enterprise mobility and business analytics working together.

You can read more from Mico Yuk at her blog - http://EverythingXcelsius.com.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC (Social, MOBILE, Analytics and Cloud), Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Strategic Enterprise Mobility Linkedin Group

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Kevin Benedict's What's New in HTML5 - Week of October 7th, 2012

I conducted a workshop via webex yesterday with a mining company in Australia.  It was interesting that they had a strong preference for HTML5 apps running on a cloud based mobile platform.  Their thinking was that they want mobile solutions now, but they see no need to sink a lot of money into on-premise solutions and mobile platforms yet.  They felt that HTML5 would give them the most flexibility and easiest implementations and deployments at this time as they mature their own mobile strategies and infrastructure and wait to see who the winners will be in the mobile platform market.

Now for the news...

Intel has continued to survey developers to find out where things are going with HTML5, and 40 percent of those surveyed said that they are already using HTML5 in some way in their development, and the other 40 percent of the survey developers said they planned to use it.  Read Original Content

In this video interview, Adam ‘HTML5 Guru’ Stanley Tells How RIM is Using HTML5 in BlackBerry 10.  (Click here to see the video on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy4fOzQeCY8)  Read Original Content

A new video game, Brainworth, teaches its users about the principles of computer science and skills required to create HTML5 online games.  Read Original Content

Education technology firm Desmos, Inc. has developed a graphing calculator with an interactive HTML5 graphing platform that works across all modern browsers. Read Original Content

A recent webcast on the subject of using HTML5 for web-based trading applications is available.  The webcast discussion is based on the question:  “Is it feasible to adopt HTML5 as an enterprise development technology now, what are the issues, and how can they be addressed?”  Read Original Content

A new report by mobility analyst Kevin Benedict documents the plans and insights of over 120 people involved in enterprise mobility.  When asked how important HTML5 and HTML5 hybrid apps were to their company's enterprise mobility plans, 45% answered it was "very important," and 14% said it was "critical."  Download the entire Mid-Year Enterprise Mobility 2012 Survey report for free here.

A recent study by adtech company Kontera based on data from 15,000 U.S. publisher partners revealed that mobile web traffic is up 430 percent between January and July this year and mobile Web browsing now accounts for 22 percent of web traffic.  Read Original Content

Apple iOS users who have upgraded to iOS 6 or bought an iPhone 5 may be missing Google Maps features, but it is still available as Google is actively maintaining the HTML5-based mobile Web version of Google Maps.  Google Street View will be soon available on the mobile Web version. Read Original Content

A new report from BI Intelligence explains why Facebook abandoned HTML5 for now including topics such as:  HTML5 app functionality still leaves much to be desired; HTML5 has a fragmentation problem; and The promise of HTML5 remains.  Read Original Content

A research report from Strategy Analytics forecasts that the HTML5-focused Firefox OS will capture only 1 percent of the market in 2013.  Read Original Content

An article in PCQuest demonstrates how to remotely debug a mobile HTML5 app with a remote inspector.  Read Original Content

Eyepartner has released Channel Manager HTML5 V1.0, enabling users to publish video and audio into playlists by dragging and dropping content in a channel lineup, and to build unlimited scheduled programming for playback on Roku set-top boxes and HTML5 5-compatible players including iPad and iPhone.  Read Original Content

Google uses HTML5 animations to illustrate its economic impact for each state in the U.S. on its Economic Impact page (http://www.google.com/economicimpact/)   Read Original Content

Oracle has added three new PeopleSoft mobile applications which utilize HTML5 and CSS3 and do not require download.  Read Original Content

A panel discussion which took place on the last day of the World Summit on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Boston included topics such as the future of mobile, how the mobile interface will evolve, app stores, and HTML5.  Read Original Content

In this article in TechRepublic, “Why you’d be stupid to bet against HTML5”, author Nick Heath explains that although HTML5’s credentials as a mobile development platform have been called into question, it is still set to play a key role as the basis for mobile apps.  Read Original Content

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC (Social, MOBILE, Analytics and Cloud), Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Strategic Enterprise Mobility Linkedin Group

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobility News Weekly – Week of September 30, 2012

The 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.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly

Eighty percent of respondents to a Havas Digital study in India said a mobile or smartphone was their primary device while 13 percent stated that a laptop or desktop was their primary device and 7 percent mentioned the tablet. According to the study, the average connected Indian consumes nine hours of media daily with mobile representing 44 percent of it.  Read Original Content

According to Pew Research two percent of Americans own a tablet of some kind. How many of those run Android? A little less than half, 48 percent. One year ago that number was less than 20 percent. Read Original Content

A recent comScore study surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers and found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 25.7 percent market share. Google Android led with 52.6 percent of smartphone subscribers, while Apple accounted for 34.3 percent.  Read Original Content

Founded in 1979, DSI is a global provider of Enterprise Mobility Solutions®, helping companies worldwide increase productivity and profitability regardless of data source, device type, operating system or network connectivity.  DSI serves clients globally through its offices in Australia, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by DSI.

According to a report from Tradedoubler, 38 percent of people who research a product on their mobile phone will then go into a shop to buy it. Forty-seven percent go on to complete their purchase on a PC, 25 percent on their mobile and 7 percent on a tablet.  Read Original Content

Edinburgh-based Sofant Technologies has unveiled revolutionary miniature antenna technology that is predicted to transform the performance of smartphones and tablet PCs, making poor reception, dropped calls and short battery life things of the past.  Read Original Content

HTC has upgraded its flagship smartphone, the One X, with a faster quad-core processor, twice the integrated storage capacity, a bigger battery and LTE in the U.S. The new model is called the HTC One X+.  Read Original Content

Google said users have downloaded mobile apps from the Google Play store more than 25 billion times since it was launched in 2008. The search and Internet advertising giant also said that the number of apps available on Google Play has reached 675,000.  Read Original Content

Microsoft has received a rare bit of good news concerning its Windows Phone operating system, as Kantar Worldpanel Comtech claims the firm is now challenging Research in Motion for third place in the European smartphone market.  Read Original Content

Competing with Mobile Technologies

Tough competitive markets can be a call to improve and innovate for many services businesses. It can be that extra push, that motivation we need to conduct some introspection. It is these times that require reviewing how we are doing business today with a critical eye on how we can accomplish more with less (increasing productivity), improve customer service and reduce inefficiencies. Mobile Technologies can play a significant role in all three areas.

The following list identifies a few of the many areas where mobile technologies commonly can help a services business become more competitive.  As you read through this list, think about other areas in your unique business where mobile technologies would offer value:

1. Efficiencies in communicating information between the office and the remote service technician or jobsite
2. Efficiencies in planning and scheduling work based upon job status, location, parts and supply inventories and expertise
3. Reducing fuel costs
4. Reducing travel time
5. Reducing redundant data entry activities
6. Increasing productivity – more average service calls per service technician in a day
7. Increasing service contract sales
8. Increasing equipment upgrade sales
9. Increasing collections and reducing DSO (day sales outstanding) with electronic invoicing, and the swiping of debit/credit cards via mobile devices
10. Improving inventory control and management - visibility to parts needed, the location of inventory and parts used on each job or service ticket
11. Reducing risks by ensuring safety procedures are followed
12. Improving management visibility into work done in the field to ensure quality services

These 12 ideas, of course, are just the start.  They are just some of the most obvious. In times of rapid growth, inefficiencies are often overlooked in a rush of new sales and business growth. However, when competition increases, it is a good time to re-evaluate business processes in order to eliminate the inefficiencies, and improve productivity and customer service.

It is not a luxury to invest in enterprise mobility.  Enterprise mobility is here for the rest of your career, and the future of many companies is dependent on how they embrace and take advantage of mobile technologies.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC (Social, MOBILE, Analytics and Cloud), Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Strategic Enterprise Mobility Linkedin Group

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.