Kevin Benedict's What's New in HTML5 - Week of August 12, 2012

In my 2012 Mid-Year Enterprise Mobility Survey last month, I asked the question, "How important is HTML5 or HTML5 hybrid apps to your company's enterprise mobility plans?"  Mobility consultants rated it 2.6 out of a 4 - with 1 being "Not Important" and 4 being "Critical." The 2.6 weighted average is between "Somewhat Important" and "Very Important" on the scale.

Now for the news...

HTML5 WebSockets have been identified as a potential security risk.  One key issue is that since WebSocket technology is still relatively new, most firewall and IPS network security devices are not aware of them; therefore, WebSocket traffic is not inspected or secured by the same mechanism as other web traffic.  Read Original Content

The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions is developing a suite of tools “to give device manufacturers and HTML5-enabled application developers access to core network capacities”.  The toolkit release is targeted for late 2012.  Read Original Content

With the adoption of HTML5 rising at a steady pace worldwide, there are performance challenges with on mobile devices that must be overcome.  Read Original Content

Web-based task manager Todoist has announced a major update incorporating HTML5 features.  The company founder believes that HTML5’s offline support and web storage are key features; however, he also believes that “HTML5 introduces a lot of new technical challenges and is probably the main reason why few web applications use it”.  Read Original Content

Web developer Burke Holland created a Kendo UI Mobile Bootstrap to provide developers with a basic mobile layout with which to jumpstart HTML5 projects.  He provides instruction in this article “Improving Your HTML5 Mobile Development Experience”.  Read Original Content

Two good examples of what HTML5 brings to the table are its video capabilities and the ability to offload data onto mobile devices so that applications can operate locally.  ReadOriginal Content

This article from Safari Books Online provides details for development of an HTML5 canvas-based mobile web game, including tips and tricks for a full screen web app that “feels like a native game or app, right in the browser”.  Read Original Content

Vice president and general manager of mobile for Black Entertainment Television says the network is definitely interested in HTML5 for mobile, and is currently weighing options to improve its “touch-optimized experience for mobile Web”.  Read Original Content

Targeting mobile web developers interested in HTML5 and JavaScript, JSCamp Asia will be held in Singapore on November 29 and 30, 2012.  (http://jscamp.asia/) ReadOriginal Content

Freshdesk has released an HTML5-based mobile version of its online customer support service.  ReadOriginal Content

According to Forrester, from the second quarter of 2011 to the second quarter of 2012, HTML5 browser penetration jumped from 57 percent to 75 percent.  Forrester states it’s time for companies to embrace the latest Web standards and start building richer Web experiences that take advantage of the capabilities that are supported by modern Web browsers.  Read Original Content

An article in Dark Reading, “Top 3 HTML5 Vulnerability Risk Categories”, states that “developers need to think carefully about the vulnerabilities that their new code may introduce into their organizations' Web infrastructure”.  Read Original Content

Apple’s decision to drop YouTube from new versions of iOS may be a boost for HTML5 if millions of users suddenly realize how easy it is to load HTML5 apps in the Safari browser it could be “a major turning point for HTML5 – after all, it can do most of what iOS apps need to do”.   Read Original Content

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

Mobility News Weekly – Week of August 12, 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 and M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly

Smartphone sales to end-users grew year-on-year by 42.7 percent in the second quarter to 153.7 million units, and accounted for 36.7 percent of total sales. Read Original Content

Gartner reports the mobile phone market saw weakened demand in the second quarter of 2012, as “the challenging economic environment and users postponing upgrades to take advantage of high-profile device launches and promotions available later in the year slowed demand across markets”.  Read Original Content

AnyPresence, a leading cloud-based mobile platform provider, has announced it has raised $5.5 million in Series B funding to further accelerate the company’s growth and customer success.  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.

Apple’s share of all tablet sales jumped 44 percent in the second quarter over the previous three-month stretch, said IHS iSuppli. Apple's iPad accounted for 70 percent of the 24.4 million tablets sold in the period ending June 30. Read Original Content

According to Gartner, within the last quarter, Android outsold iOS devices nearly three to one while capturing 64 percent of the worldwide market share. Samsung was the top dog accounting for 90 million handset sales.  Read Original Content

Apple's share of the smartphone market dominated at AT&T and Verizon, but Samsung's share was growing, records show. In the fourth quarter of 2011, Apple's share of the market had grown by 3 percent from the first quarter of 2010, while Samsung's had more than quadrupled to 12 percent during the same period.  Read Original Content

iMore, the first blog to publish reports that Apple plans to unveil its latest iteration of the smartphone on September 12, is now saying that pre-orders will begin that day and that the phone will be released nine days later, on September 21.  Read Original Content

What Do Mobility Consultants Really Think?

Earlier this week I wrote an article titled, "What Do Mobile Technology Vendors Really Think?", which covered technology vendors' responses to my "2012 Mid-Year Enterprise Mobility Survey."  This article is reviewing the answers from enterprise mobility consultants and comparing and contrasting them with the mobile software vendors' answers.

Q: What are your biggest challenges to implementing enterprise mobility today?
A: #1 answer - Developing an enterprise-wide mobile strategy, #2 - Determining anticipated ROIs, and #3 - Finding qualified mobility experts to assist with implementations.

The first two rankings were the same between mobile technology vendors and mobile consultants, but finding qualified mobility experts was a bigger problem for mobility consultants.

Q: Where do you expect to find the biggest ROIs as a result of implementing mobile solutions?
A: #1 answer - Increased productivity of mobile workers, #2 - Real-time data collection and reporting from mobile workers, #3 - Improve decision making by receiving real-time data.

Mobility consultants share the same answer #1 as mobile technology vendors, but consultants placed "Real-time data collection and reporting from mobile workers" as their 2nd highest ROI and it was #4 for mobile technology vendors.  Improved customer service was #3 with mobile technology vendors, but ranked #5 for mobility consultants.

Q: How important is it to select a standard MADP (mobile application development platform) before developing mobile solutions for your company?
A: Mobility consultants ranked it #3 - Very Important

Mobility consultants ranked it 3 - very important, and mobile technology vendors ranked it similar at 2.9.

Q: How important is mobile security to your company's mobile strategy?
A: Mobility consultants gave it a 2.7 score which is between "Somewhat Important" and "Very Important"

Mobility consultants and mobile technology vendors rated it nearly the same.  Mobile technology vendors gave it a 2.8.

Q: How important is HTML5 or HTML5 hybrid apps to your company's enterprise mobility plans?
A: The answer was 2.6 out of a 4 - with 1 being "Not Important" and 4 being "Critical." The 2.6 weighted average is between "Somewhat Important" and "Very Important" on the scale.

Mobile technology vendors gave it a 2.8 rating, slightly higher in importance than mobility consultants.

Q: How difficult is it to find third-party consulting talent with the right expertise in enterprise mobility?
A: The answer was a weighted average of 2.3 out of 3 - with 1 being "Not difficult" and 3 being "Very difficult."

Mobility consultants rated it slightly higher (2.3) in difficulty that did mobile technology vendors (2.2).

Q: How important do you believe tablets will be to your enterprise mobility plans?
A: The weighted answer was 2.8 out of 3 - with 1 being "Not important" and 3 being "Very important."

Mobility consultants rated it slightly lower than mobile technology vendors (2.9).

Q: How important is enterprise mobility to your company's future success?
A: The answer was a weighted average of 3.2 out of 4 - with 1 being "Not Important" and 4 being "Critical."

Mobile technology vendors rated it higher in importance at 3.5, than did the mobility consultants.

In summary, the answers were very close between mobility consultants and mobile technology vendors with the exception of where they anticipated finding the biggest ROIs.

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

Mobile Marketing News Weekly – Week of August 12, 2012

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

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

A report from eMarketer suggests that spending on mobile advertising will reach $6.43 billion in 2012, driven by 97 percent growth in the United States, which will account for some $2.3 billion of the total. Read Original Content

Mobile advertising influences 48 percent of consumers – putting in on par with desktop advertising and only slightly behind TV advertising (55 percent), research by InMobi has found. Read Original Content

According to Yankee Group global mobile advertising revenue will expand by three and a half times its present level by 2016. Read Original Content

Sky Technologies has been making SAP mobility easy since 1998. With Sky, you can mobilize your business and empower your team with solutions that are quick to install, easy to use, highly secure, and already proven in hundreds of SAP mobility projects across the globe. For more information, visit www.skytechnologies.com

The Interactive Advertising Bureau has reported online advertising for the 2011-2012 financial year reached $3.14 billion, eclipsing the previous record by more than $549 million. Read Original Content

Facebook is testing a new ad system for mobile apps intended to boost downloads from stores like Google Play and Apple's App Store. Read Original Content

According to research by PricewaterhouseCoopers, mobile advertising in Australia has increased 212 percent since in the past twelve months. Read Original Content

According to a survey from Hipcricket some 46 percent of surveyed smartphone owners have viewed a mobile ad; among them, 64 percent have completed at least one purchase as a result of doing so. Read Original Content

Mobile Expert Podcast: Unvired's Srinivasan Subramanian

In this 18 minute audio podcast, Srinivasan Subramanian from Unvired and I discuss all kinds of issues related to enterprise mobility, mobile strategies and cloud mobility.  The audio is not perfect, but the content is good.  Grab some popcorn, or jump on the treadmill and I hope you enjoy!

Here is the link in case the audio player does not appear in your browser:  https://www.box.com/shared/aa55e7e5adf5c521504c

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

Mobile Commerce News Weekly – Week of August 12, 2012

The Mobile Commerce 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.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility and M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

eBay’s stock experienced sharp growth last week after  releasing new information on it’s successful mobile business. Read Original Content

According to IDC Financial Insights, the number of consumers using their smartphones to complete online or offline transactions has doubled as of May 2012. Read Original Content.

Worldwide mobile payment transactions will total $171.5 billion in 2012, a 62 percent increase from $105.9 billion last year, and could reach $617 billion by 2016, according to research firm Gartner. Read Original Content

Verivo is a leading provider of enterprise mobility software. Verivo helps companies accelerate their business results. Its unique technology empowers teams to build, deploy, manage and update their mobile apps -- rapidly and securely. Verivo’s mobility platform is used by hundreds of companies in numerous industries, worldwide. This newsletter is sponsored in part by Verivo.  To learn more, visit www.verivo.com

A study by RichRelevance has found that 68 percent of all mobile shopping in 2011 came from iPad users. Read Original Content

Google unveiled changes to its mobile payment system last week. The revamp allows a consumer to load any existing credit or debit card number into a software application, which then can be used to make purchases using smartphones equipped with a special computer chip. The changes aim to eliminate barriers to enrolling in the service. Read Original Content

Mobile banking adoption has tripled in the past two years, according to research from SWACHA. According to the Consumer Insights Survey 20 percent of respondents said they currently bank on their phones, compared to 7 percent in 2009. Read Original Content

Sales figures for online shopping conducted through mobile devices is predicted to reach $730 billion (£468 billion) within the next five years, new research suggests. Read Original Content

According to Nielsen 47 percent of U.S. smartphone owners used shopping apps in June 2012. Out of those apps used, eBay and Amazon topped the list of shopping apps, attracting 13 million and 12 million unique users, respectively. Read Original Content

Enterprise Mobility and ClickConnect 2012 - San Diego

Rancho Bernardo Inn

I was just reviewing my upcoming itineraries and read through the details of ClickConnect 2012.  ClickConnect 2012 is ClickSoftware's annual conference.  This year the North American ClickConnect is being held in warm and beautiful Rancho Bernardo Inn in San Diego, September 10th-12th.

I noted that this year the conference is being sponsored by SAP, Accenture and others.  SAP and ClickSoftware are close partners, and SAP resells some of ClickSoftware's solutions as SAP Workforce Scheduling and Optimization.  Scheduling, forecasting and workforce optimization are some of the areas where mobility can have the greatest impact and even revolutionize how service companies operate.  I will be leading two sessions on mobile strategies and the latest trends in enterprise mobility at this event.

If you are interested in attending, you can contact them about it here - http://www.clicksoftware.com/clickconnect-na-2012-registration.htm.

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

What do Mobile Technology Vendors Really Think?

I am writing an analyst report based upon the survey data from last month's 2012 Mid-Year Enterprise Mobility Survey.  Thanks again for everyone that took it!  I filtered the data to learn the opinions of those that identified themselves as mobility vendors.  I find these answers very interesting because mobility vendors talk to a lot of people, as a result, their opinions are often a reflection of what they hear in the market.

Q: What are your biggest challenges to implementing enterprise mobility today?
A: The number 1 answer was, "Developing an enterprise-wide mobile strategy."  There was a tie for the next 2 between, "Determining anticipated ROIs" and, "Educating stakeholders on the potential impact of enterprise mobility on the business."

Q: Where do you expect to find the biggest ROIs as a result of implementing mobile solutions?
A: The number 1 answer was, "Increased productivity of mobile workers."  The number 2 answer was, "Improved decision making due to real-time data."  The number 3 answer was, "Improved customer service."

Q: How important is it to select a standard MADP (mobile application development platform) before developing mobile solutions for your company?
A: This answer surprised me.  The ranking was from 1 to 4, with 1 = Not important and 4 = Critical.  The weighted average answer was 2.9.  It seems there are a lot of mobile app developers that are developing apps without a MADP involved.

Q: How important is mobile security to your company's mobile strategy?
A: The answer (a weighted average) was 2.8 out of a 3 - very important.  As these are mobility vendors answering, you would expect them to believe in the importance of mobile security.

Q: How important is HTML5 or HTML5 hybrid apps to your company's enterprise mobility plans?
A: The answer was 2.8 out of a 4 - with 1 being "Not Important" and 4 being "Critical." The 2.8 weighted average is between "Somewhat Important" and "Very Important" on the scale.  It seems vendors are still still hedging their bets.

Q: How difficult is it to find third-party consulting talent with the right expertise in enterprise mobility?
A: The answer was a weighted average of 2.2 out of 3 - with 1 being "Not difficult" and 3 being "Very difficult."  It seems there remains a shortage of experienced talent around enterprise mobility.

Q: How important do you believe tablets will be to your enterprise mobility plans?
A: The weighted answer was 2.9 out of 3 - with 1 being "Not important" and 3 being "Very important."

I hope you found this information useful.  Stay tuned for the full report.

Are you following me on Twitter @krbenedict?

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

SAP Enterprise Mobility Update with Sanjay Poonen

Sanjay Poonen

I had the privilege of spending time on the phone last week with SAP's President and Corporate Officer, Sanjay Poonen.   He has responsibility for several of the innovation products at SAP, and also has overall responsibility for mobility.  I must take a moment to apologize again to Sanjay for being late to the call.  Let me digress for a moment, my iPhone and MacBook Pro have never processed calendar invites reliably.  They mess up the time zone conversions.  Am I the only one with this issue?  Apple has tried a dozen times to fix it, without luck.  OK, back to my call with Sanjay.

Sanjay updated me on the record Q2 sales numbers for all aspects of SAP’s innovations – Hana, Mobile and Cloud, and then we went into more details around all things mobile.  He also shared how Syclo's Founder Rich Padula, has joined his team, and is now going to be responsible for all SAP mobile apps, including Syclo.  This is a good move as Rich is a proven mobile industry veteran.  Also, Syclo's mobile solutions are now being fully integrated with SUP.  This effort is already under way, and is targeted to be completed by Q1, 2013.

Rich Padula

Sanjay explained that SAP mobility is now organized into four areas:

• Mobile Security
• Mobile Application Platform
• Mobile Applications (B2E and B2C)
• Messaging Infrastructure (Sybase 365)

He also shared that there is a Mobility rebranding effort going on now that is expected to be announced in Q4 of this year.  SAP will be simplifying and unifying all of their different mobility brands, to centralize around SAP as the main brand for Mobility, over Sybase, which had more of a database brand associated with it.

SAP continues to charge ahead aggressively with enterprise mobility.  Sanjay shared that they are heavily recruiting mobile expertise, with some very strong talent from competitors in the MDM and MEAP space coming over to SAP.  Over the next few weeks several well-known mobile industry veterans will be joining SAP.  One of them is former Gartner Analyst, Bill Clark.

On another topic - SAP is now investing significantly more resources into Afaria.  That is smart, because while SAP has garnered top ratings in the Mobile App Platform and Mobile Apps space, they have seemed to have fallen behind competitors in 2011, at least in mindshare. SAP has nearly tripled the development investment in Afaria this year, and has been winning some big deals that are replacing other MDM vendors.  Sanjay said that in Q2, SAP also did the largest deal in the history of the MDM industry, a high 7-figure dollar OEM deal with a large global hardware manufacturer.  He said that Afaria grew almost 500% YoY in Q2, and he is seeing a great deal of interest from customers that are seeking the scalability and dependability of SAP's solutions.

SAP has recently announced a new SAP Mobile Apps Partner program designed to give mobile app developers free access to the SAP Mobile Platform.  I am a strong believer in the concept of try-it-before-you-buy-it and this seems like a smart move to expand their developer base.  I think anything that can be done to remove friction from the system is a good idea.  Let the developer community have access to it, and let it stand on its own merits. Sanjay said the goals of the Mobile business, is to not just create a 1 billion Euro business by 2015, but to deliver a platform for tens of thousands of mobile apps to be built on, and get millions of developers successfully using their mobility platform.

Sanjay and I spent quite a bit of time talking about where mobile security is going, beyond MDM.  From MDM to Mobile App Management, to Secure Content Management, to eventually M2M (machine-to-machine) communications.  He talked about how this field will have a big impact in SAP’s plans.  In fact, Sanjay had just chaired a conference call with about 50 SAP internal people to brainstorm about M2M, and there is a great deal of excitement around SAP’s plans in this area. 

M2M is basically wireless embedded chips that can be connected to remote sensors.  These sensors can then wirelessly message whatever data they are monitoring.  For example,  the engine of a bulldozer is started in the middle of the night.  The sensor on the bulldozer messages an alert to a security person to investigate.  Just about any machine or piece of equipment on a plant floor can message its status to a central server.  A dashboard on the M2M server can be used to monitor M2M equipped devices across a large geographic area.

M2M can play a part in many different SAP business processes.  M2M communications requires security, messaging platforms, integration, analytics and much more.  Industry analyst predict that by 2025 there will be over 50 billion connected devices in the world.  This Internet of Things can message their statuses to systems all around the world.  You can easily see how M2M will be an important component of many different processes and systems.  SAP fully recognizes this and is organizing their forces now, has some big plans being baked in Research and Development, and they are hiring some key people from within the industry to lead the M2M effort within the company.  Expect to hear a lot from SAP on how the Internet of Things, aka M2M, will progress, shortly.

I want to thank Sanjay for sharing his insights and updates with us.

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

Field Mobility and M2M News Weekly – Week of August 12, 2012

The Field Mobility and M2M 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 Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

TomTom Business Solutions has announced a new program, the Software Alliance Program, which will enable fleets to integrate vehicle and driver management capabilities.  Read Original Content

Love's Travel Stops & Country Stores is utilizing RFID technology for cardless fueling at their travel stops.  The rollout is expected to be complete by the end of September 2012.  Read Original Content

Global Industry Analysts, Inc. predicts the global market for RFID technology in healthcare and pharmaceutical markets will reach $1.7 billion by 2018.  Read Original Content

Since 1995, Syclo has enabled hundreds of companies in 37 countries and industries supercharge their businesses with mobility.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Syclo.

UPS has incorporated a “wearable” scanning system for employees to speed up the loading of packages into vehicles through the use of a hands-free imager and wireless terminal.  Read Original Content

According to a research study from Frost & Sullivan, the RFID technology market in the Asia Pacific region is the fastest growing in the world, with the Americas accounting for the majority of RFID revenues.  Read Original Content

Fleet management solutions provider Cadec Global Inc. has implemented Verizon Wireless’ M2M Management Center to deploy and manage devices for its fleet customers with devices on the Verizon wireless network.  Read Original Content

Singapore’s infrastructure for mobile payments using NFC technology will be rolled out through NFC-enabled mobile phones by the end of August with three types of payment modes.  Read Original Content