eBay Mobile Commerce - Real Time Data from Six Global Markets

Ben Lee over at Smartsoft Mobile Solutions recently directed me to the eBay Mobile Commerce site.  On this site you can see mobile purchasing data from six global markets in near real time.  Very interesting!  I watched for some time the interesting data coming across their digital ticker tape along the bottom of their chart.  Here is some of the data about eBay purchases via mobile devices:

• Australians bought the most sporting goods via mobile devices in December 2010.
• Auto parts were the top selling products via mobile devices on Cyber Monday in Germany.
• The iPhone was the leading mobile platform for mobile sales on December 12, 2010.
• Toys made up 8.6 percent of mobile sales in France on December 10-11, 2010.
• December 12 was the busiest mobile shopping day so far in 2010.
• In the USA auto parts made up 8.3 percent of mobile purchases in 2010.
• In the USA cell phones and accessories made up 6.5 percent of mobile purchases in 2010.
• In the USA vehicle sales made up 16.5 percent of mobile purchases in 2010.

QR Codes and Mobile Retailing Applications

Home Depot iPhone App

I was sitting in my office chair today reading mail.  I received a magazine that had a QR code prominently displayed on a page.  I grabbed my iPhone 4, opened my Red Laser application and snapped a photo of the QR code.  A message instantly popped up asking if I approved - I said yes.  Immediately, my browser launched and a person was talking to me about their product.  I LOVED IT!

Think of the way companies can change their marketing and sales approach by having their very best sales and marketing spokesperson deliver key product messages to anyone with a smartphone and internet connection anywhere in the world.  No longer do you have to ask the sixteen year old sales assistant complex questions.  You can simply open a mobile application that supports QR codes, click on a sign or advertisement and learn about the product from an expert.

Which Mobile Application Company Will SAP Acquire Next?

I was speaking with an SAP executive last month about SAP's partner strategy for enterprise mobility.  The executive said that SAP ecosystem mobility partners would be well served to focus on building vertical industry specific business processes into their mobile applications, as SAP would be focusing more on horizontal business processes.  The executive went on to say that SAP would seek to partner first for vertical expertise and then consider acquiring select companies that showed success and penetration in key SAP markets.

This conversation got me thinking.  Which vertical industries would be the likely targets of mobile applications that SAP might want to acquire?  Could it be one of the following?

• Oil and Gas
• Utilities
• Retail (Location-Based Services, Coupons, Mobile Marketing)
• Plant Maintenance
• Chemicals
• Mining
• Transportation
• Facilities Management
• Enterprise asset management

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly – December 23, 2010

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.

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This holiday season consumers are beginning to shop and make purchases on their mobile phones. The shift from buying presents in front of the computer at home or work to doing it during bus commutes or while standing in line at cafes is small but noticeable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/18/technology/18mobile.html?src=busln

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PayPal has announced a whopping increase in mobile payments this festive season. In the month to December 15 the online payment processing company registered a 300 percent rise, compared to the same period last year.

http://www.bizreport.com/2010/12/more-mobile-users-shopping-via-phone.html

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A new ABI Research report calls the short term growth of mobile online shopping "nothing short of phenomenal." Purchases in the U.S. attributed to mobile online shopping, excluding travel, grew from $396.3 million in 2008 to $1.4 billion in 2009. ABI expects full year 2010 sales will more than double again, to more than $3.4 billion.

Leadership Change in SAP's Mobility Business Unit - Again

At Sapphire 2010 (May), Kevin Nix was in charge of SAP's mobile application development.  At TechEd 2010 (October), Bob Stutz was in charge of SAP's mobile applications development.  Today, (December 21, 2010), Raj Nathan is the interim EVP in charge of SAP's mobile application development. 



Is Kevin Benedict Next?



I want to volunteer myself for an interim VP role in the SAP Mobility Business Unit.  I can wear a tie again for a few months and speak the corporate line.  Really!  "On premise, on demand, on device and in memory... we want to help our customers better leverage their existing investments and make transformational changes that are game changing."  How is that?  There must be a list of names they are going down.  I have some time on my calendar before spring break.   

Here is the official word from SAP, "Bob Stutz has decided to leave SAP and we thank him for his longstanding leadership and contributions to the company. To ensure a smooth transition, John Chen, CEO and Chairman of Sybase, has appointed Raj Nathan, EVP and CMO of Sybase, to serve as interim head of the Mobile Applications Group.”

After the holidays give me a call.  Does the job come with an iPad?

***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join SAP Enterprise Mobility on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

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.

Mobile Applications and Device Governance

My friend Puneet Suppal who works in in the Premier Customer Network at SAP, published an interesting article on SAP's Community Network last week, entitled Enterprise Mobility:  What did we learn this year?  In this article Puneet highlights the fact that with the increasing popularity of enterprise mobility there will be "... a lot of data moving dynamically between a lot of systems and devices."  This data is often confidential and important, data that companies do not want to fall into the hands of competitors.

Puneet says companies must step back and develop an enterprise mobility strategy, and one of the most important parts of that strategy is, "the governance model; a model that takes into account the organization’s sensibilities and addresses the management of these remote devices and what sits on them – and the related security aspects."

MeLLmo the Maker of the RoamBI Mobile Application Closes More Funding

MeLLmo, the SAP ecosystem mobile application's company that specializes in visualization software for displaying business intelligence on mobile devices, has closed its third and biggest round of funding for $10 million from private investors. The company has now raised total funding of $20 million since MeLLmo was founded in January 2008.  Read more here...

MeLLmo has a way of displaying business intelligence data on mobile devices that is very compelling.  I recorded a video interview with Santiago Becerra, the founder of MeLLmo, earlier this year.  During that interview Santiago said they recruit developers from the electronic game industry because of their ability to make compelling GUI (graphical user interfaces).

I have heard that one weakness in MeLLmo's strategy is the need to download business intelligence data to the mobile device and store it there.  This may concern many executives that don't like the idea of allowing confidential business data to reside on mobile devices.  Other vendors in the mobile business intelligence field do not store this data on the device.  Rather, they simply hold it in memory and display it during the session.  Perhaps this doesn't allow for as compelling a presentation, but the data may be safer.


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***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join SAP Enterprise Mobility on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

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.

Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly - December 21, 2010

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.

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New research from Berg Insight shows the total value of the global mobile marketing and advertising market will grow from $2.25 billion in 2009 at a CAGR of 41 percent to $17.9 billion in 2015. This will then correspond to 15.7 percent of the total digital advertising market or 3.4 percent of the total global ad spend for all media.

http://www.von.com/news/2010/12/global-mobile-ad-market-growing-fast.aspx

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Thirty percent of respondents to a recent survey said they expected to use mobile coupons during this holiday season. Interestingly, only 14 percent said they normally use mobile coupons.

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/1932818/holidays-report-mobile-shoppers-coupons

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Mobile marketing is certainly getting plenty of attention these days and for good reason. Targeted mobile campaigns, both B2B and B2C, are finding traction. It appears that today’s leading marketers realize we are only beginning to scratch the surface of mobile’s enormous potential.

Santa Goes Mobile this Holiday Season

Holiday shopping reports show that sales are going mobile like never before.  When comparing the number of mobile transactions between 2009 and 2010, we find there is a rapid increase in shopping from mobile devices.  Retail is just one of many markets being revolutionized by mobile applications.

PayPal reported a 300 percent increase in online sales this holiday season compared to 2009, and a 27 percent increase in mobile transactions on Black Friday alone.  Total mobile sales are expected to double to $3.4 billion from $1.4 billion in 2009.  There is still time for more mobile shopping before Christmas that will make these numbers even more impressive.

The continued popularity and record sales of iPhones and iPads, plus the explosive growth of Android powered devices this year has added fuel to the growth in mobile shopping.

What are Your Predictions for Enterprise Mobility in 2011?

I was pondering 2011 predictions for enterprise mobility while on a flight the other day, so was interested this morning to see a great write up on this subject by Ben Lee of Smartsoft Mobile Solutions. 

1. 2011 will be the year that the laptop dies.
2. iPads will trump iPhones in the enterprise.
3. Business applications reign supreme.
4. Mobile Middleware will be increasingly flexible for the enterprise.

Ben does a good job backing up his predictions in the article.  Do you agree?  What predictions would you add?  Here are some I would add:

• SAP's Mobile SDK launch at Sapphire 2011 is a great start.  Systems integrators and IT organizations get very excited about building a massive number of new mobile applications.  The demand for training on the Mobile SDK and SUP overwhelms SAP and creates major headaches for them.
• SAP's Mobile SDK allows many more systems integrators to enter the mobility market and to compete with established enterprise mobility vendors and SAP's Mobile Business Unit.  This new competition forces established mobility vendors to emphasize the content and business logic that they have developed over many years.
• SAP's acquisition of Sybase causes unanticipated changes in the enterprise mobility marketplace.  More mobility vendors will choose to use SUP, because it is the entry into the world of SAP, plus it supports all the other major markets and ERPs that mobility vendors must address.  This creates an upsurge in demand for non-SAP support in SUP.  SAP must decide if they should prioritize this interest or focus on SAP specific interests.

I look forward to your thoughts!

***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join SAP Enterprise Mobility on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

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.