Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

Kevin’s Field Mobility News Weekly – Week of January 17, 2011

Kevin’s 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 Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly

IMPORTANT! In the upcoming webinar, Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies-Ten Lessons Learned (January 25 and 27), Smartsoft Mobile will share the top ten lessons learned from implementing SAP enterprise mobility solutions in Fortune 500 Companies. If you are a systems integrator or an end user, you will value from learning what works and what doesn't work in deploying mobility solutions. This webinar will also include an overview of the enterprise mobility industry in 2011 by SAP Mentor Kevin Benedict.

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A unique battery-operated, submersible device for automatic meter reading is now being used in the UK. The device simply clips on to the existing water meter in seconds and requires no modifications or costly re-engineering of the water meter.

http://news.thomasnet.com/companystory/Novel-Clip-on-Submersible-Device-Enables-Low-Cost-Automatic-Meter-Reading-841180

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The Nevada Highway Patrol, a division of the Nevada Department of Public Safety, has chosen Janam's XM66 for use by all officers in the Patrol's thirty-seven statewide duty locations.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nevada-highway-patrol-selects-janam-114119564.html

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Jason Urso, CTO at Honeywell Process Solutions has identified four interrelated themes of innovation over the past few years. First, is mobility of devices and sensors. Second, is wireless technology as an enabler. Third, is the challenge for operators and personnel to convert data to useful knowledge. The fourth is the integration of various control layers—closing the gaps from distributed control systems to advanced control to safety to fire and gas systems.

What Would a Mobile Expert Do?

If you are a regular reader of this blog you know that I routinely publish interviews with enterprise mobility experts. You also know that I often ask them about the mobile device(s) they carry. In this report, I have gone back over 17 recent interviews and collected the data on my interviewees' mobile device ownership and use.

Mobile Device Ownership Data:

82% own iPhones
53% own BlackBerrys
24% own Androids
8% own Windows 7
82% own iPads

Primary Work Phone:

59% use iPhones for work
35% use BlackBerrys for work
0% use Androids for primary work phone
8% use Windows 7 for primary work phone

Primary Personal Use:

71% use iPhones as a personal or dual purpose phone
24% use BlackBerrys as a personal or dual purpose phone
0% use Androids as a personal or dual purpose phone
8% use Windows 7 as a personal or dual purpose phone

Interesting Statistics:

100% of Mobile Experts that use BlackBerrys at work own iPads
80% of Mobile Experts that use iPhones at work own iPads
50% of Mobile Experts that use BlackBerrys at work, use an iPhone for personal use
90% of Mobile Experts that use iPhones at work, use an iPhone for personal use
24% of Mobile Experts own Android devices, but nobody (0%) use them as their primary work or personal phone - they are demo phones or back-up phones only.

I realize this report consists of data gathered from only 17 mobility experts, but it is interesting data nonetheless.

Notice of Whitepapers:

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst

Phone +1 208-991-4410

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin:

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 Mobility News Weekly – Week of January 17, 2011

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

Also read Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly

IMPORTANT! In the upcoming webinar, Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies-Ten Lessons Learned (January 25 and 27), Smartsoft Mobile will share the top ten lessons learned from implementing SAP enterprise mobility solutions in Fortune 500 Companies. If you are a systems integrator or an end user, you will value from learning what works and what doesn't work in deploying mobility solutions. This webinar will also include an overview of the enterprise mobility industry in 2011 by SAP Mentor Kevin Benedict.

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According to global telecom equipment provider Ericsson, the number of mobile broadband subscribers reached a remarkable 500 million in 2010, and that number is about to double in 2011, bringing the total to an even billion.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mobile_broadband_users_hit_1_billion_in_2011.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29

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Over 40 percent of all Twitter posts are made via a mobile phone. This figure is up from 25 percent 12 months ago.

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/3022093.article

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Sybase's Eric Lai

I have read many articles related to enterprise mobility over the past few months from Sybase's Eric Lai. This is interesting for a number of reasons, 1) Sybase traditionally has not chosen to participate in the social media space, 2) Sybase has not traditionally had full time writers helping educate the public, 3) Sybase has rarely let employees share thoughts and insights publicly as Eric does, and 4) Eric Lai was a writer at Computer World for over five years and is a very good writer.

Sybase's Senior Writer
Eric Lai

For the above reasons, I thought it would be interesting to interview Eric.

Note: These are not Eric's exact words, but rather my notes from our discussion.

Kevin: Eric tell me about yourself.

Eric: I lived in Washington state (Everett area) for many years. Worked for Computer World for five years. We have two young boys. Moved to California nine months ago, where I am now Senior Writer for Sybase.

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you carry?

Eric: iPhone 4 (he left his iPhone 3 on the roof of his car in San Francisco), old company issued Dell laptop and a NetBook. I was a BlackBerry user for many years, but love the iPhone now. I want an iPad.

Announcing Field Mobility News Weekly

I have been writing several weekly newsletters over the past year and have come to realize that many of the articles and reports I read are of interest, but do not fit into my existing newsletter categories which are:

Mobility News Weekly (general interest enterprise mobility numbers and news)
Mobile Retailing News Weekly (mobile retail applications, mobile marketing, location-based services, etc.)
Mobile Money News Weekly (mobile money, e-wallets, mobile payments, mobile security, mobile banking, etc.)
M2M News Monthly (machine-to-machine, smart machines, smart grid and embedded wireless solutions news)

Many news stories and articles related to geo-tagging assets, geo-spatially aware mobile applications, RFID, rugged devices, CMMS (computer managed maintenance systems), FM (facility management), rugged tablets, field service automation, barcode scanners, utility applications, GPS vehicle, asset and fleet tracking, etc., are not adequately covered in my existing newsletters. As a result, beginning this week I will be publishing a new weekly newsletter called Field Mobility News Weekly.

If you have news, stories, case studies, research, analysis, etc., relevant to this newsletter, please feel free to email it to me.

Download Whitepaper Here

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin:
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 Money News Weekly – Week of January 17, 2011

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile payments, mobile money, e-wallets, mobile banking and mobile security that I run across each week. I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

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IMPORTANT! In the upcoming webinar, Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies-Ten Lessons Learned (January 25 and 27), Smartsoft Mobile will share the top ten lessons learned from implementing SAP enterprise mobility solutions in Fortune 500 Companies. If you are a systems integrator or an end user, you will value from learning what works and what doesn't work in deploying mobility solutions. This webinar will also include an overview of the enterprise mobility industry in 2011 by SAP Mentor Kevin Benedict.

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Mobile banking and mobile payments were pegged as two of Bank Systems & Technology's ten game changing tech trends for 2011. Consumers everywhere are flocking to banking services on smartphones, over text messages or through mobile browsers.

http://www.banktech.com/blog/229000115

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Mobile banking use is expected to soar by nearly 55 percent un 2011. While 17.8 million consumers used mobile banking last year, 27.4 million are expected to use it in 2011, and 53.1 million consumers are forecast to adopt it by 2013.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/12/pf/saving/smartphone_dangers/

SAP Workforce Scheduling
and Optimization

I have been reading recently about how the U.S. military is consolidating data centers around the world. They want to reduce costs, but also have quicker and faster access to data in a unified view. This morning I read with interest a case study on how Pacific Gas and Electric had similar goals and ambitions and what they did to accomplish them.

In the past PG&E coordinated crew schedules within the SAP project management application, and had dispatcher teams at each of their 67 local PG&E offices. However, to improve on the efficiency of the scheduling, PG&E decided to consolidate the dispatching teams to work out of two regional remote management centers in Concord and Fresno, California.

Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly - Week of January 17, 2011

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

IMPORTANT! In the upcoming webinar, Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies-Ten Lessons Learned (January 25 and 27), Smartsoft Mobile will share the top ten lessons learned from implementing SAP enterprise mobility solutions in Fortune 500 Companies. If you are a systems integrator or an end user, you will value from learning what works and what doesn't work in deploying mobility solutions. This webinar will also include an overview of the enterprise mobility industry in 2011 by SAP Mentor Kevin Benedict.

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The results of a new report on U.S. consumers suggest retailers may want to focus advertising dollars on mobile shoppers, as more Americans are turning to their mobile devices and the mobile web to make purchases.

http://www.creativedepartment.com/news/advertising/mobile-shopping-exploding-us-new-report-finds-173900

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While 2010 saw the emergence and popularization of a number of novel marketing techniques and devices, 2011 is expected to be the year businesses both large and small begin to grasp and make full use of these trends.

http://www.nebsmarketingstore.ca/news/business-marketing/marketing_projections_and_predictions_for_2011$1062.html

Massive Real Time Data Feeds

Last February American helicopters were involved in a deadly attack that resulted in many Afghan civilian deaths. Investigators have pointed to data overload as the cause. The drone operators were simultaneously receiving dozens of secure text messages from the troops, radio exchanges with analysts and live video feeds from drones. All of this information was coming in real time at such volume that the operators were not able to process it quickly enough and bad decisions were made and executed upon.

Military officials are trying to determine what they can do to fix or improve the weak link in the data processing chain, which is the human link. In earlier blog articles I have shared that there were similar findings in the Gulf of Mexico accident and resultant oil spill this past summer. Hundreds of sensors on the oil rig were reporting data in real time, predicting trouble. The problem was that the data was coming in at such volume that humans were not able to process and understand the full meaning of it in time to prevent the tragedy.

Syclo's
Jon Schmidt

Between flights around the world (172,000 United air miles in 2010), 4 children ranging from 2 months (baby Finn) to 23 years, and a record breaking sales year at Syclo, it has been hard to catch up with Jon for an interview. However, where there is a will there is a way and we got it done earlier this week.

For inclusion in this article, I asked Jon for a photo and I think he sent me one from 1993. This photo does not appear to be from a person with a 23 year old child and 2.7 million total United air miles.

Note: These are not Jon's exact words, rather my notes from our interview.

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you regularly carry?
Jon: iPhone (work), BlackBerry Pearl (personal), laptop for power points, iPad for mobile everything. I like the iPad because it can be up in 2 seconds. Immediacy is critical.

Kevin: What industries do you see adopting mobility today?
Jon: Two years ago it was mostly utilities and oil and gas companies. Today, all industries seem to be buying including; Telco, CPG (consumer packaged goods), electronics, shipping companies, mining, etc. New and young employees will expect to have company supported smartphones and connectivity with business applications.

Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – Week of January 10, 2011

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

Also read Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly

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IMPORTANT! In the upcoming webinar Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies-Ten Lessons Learned, Smartsoft Mobile will share the top ten lessons learned from implementing SAP enterprise mobility solutions in Fortune 500 Companies. If you are a systems integrator or an end user, you will value from learning what works and what doesn't work in deploying mobility solutions. This webinar will also include an overview of the enterprise mobility industry in 2011 by SAP Mentor Kevin Benedict.

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Juniper Research's latest report claims mobile advertising revenues for mobile games will increase tenfold between 2010 and 2015. Juniper estimates that ad-spend in mobile games was $87 million last year, but will rise to $894 million by 2015.

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/39983/Juniper-predicts-894m-of-mobile-games-ad-revenues-by-2015

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Forty-six percent of iPad users indicate they are more productive and use their iPad daily. In fact, 13 percent of these users say the iPad is mission critical for their job.

http://community.citrix.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=158564368

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RIM recently provided the first hands on demonstration of the PlayBook, a seven inch touchscreen tablet that will go head to head with Apple's iPad when the Wi-Fi only version ships, likely in March.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7050VJ20110106

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Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC Corp. saw its fourth quarter unaudited net profit more than double from a year earlier, driven by strong growth in handset shipments.

Mobile Retailing Applications

On January 25th and 27th I will be the opening act for two webinars on the subject of Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies - Ten Lessons Learned. I would invite you to join me and the development and implementation experts from Smartsoft Mobile who will be sharing experiences and lessons learned from their deployments. There are two dates for this webinar, so you can register for the one that works best for your schedule. You can register here.

The folks who will be joining me on this webinar from Smartsoft Mobile were actually involved in the design, development, deployment and support of these mobile enterprise applications. Smartsoft is an SAP Services Partner and they have developed mobile solutions for a number of large SAP customers now. They have also developed multiple versions of mobile retailing applications and can share what they learned in version 1.0 and implemented in version 2.0.

I hope you will join us and bring your questions!

***************************************************

Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst

Phone +1 208-991-4410

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin:

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 Money News Weekly – Week of January 10, 2011

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile payments, mobile money, e-wallets, mobile banking and mobile security that I run across each week. I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

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Square, the mobile payment start up from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, announced today that it has raised a new round of funding that values the company at about $240 million.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/01/square-keith-rabois-mobile-payments.html

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Mopay Inc., a payment service provider for online merchants, forecasts considerable momentum and movement in the global mobile payments industry in 2011. The massive growth of the market in North America, increased consolidation and lower transaction costs are the top trends that will have a significant impact on the blossoming mobile payments industry in 2011

http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/mobile-payments-industry-to-experience-monumental-growth-in-2011-mopay/

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Last year, only 4.1 percent of mobile phones shipped had near field communications capabilities. That number is expected triple to 13 percent in 2014, according to ISuppli.

Twitter Conversion

It's true. I am but a recent convert to Twitter. Since I typically write obnoxiously long articles, I had a difficult time understanding the value of a technology that limits itself to 140 characters. I have now, however, seen the light and the light is an iPad app.

I use the iPad application Flipboard. Flipboard and Paper.li are two applications that convert RSS feeds, tweets, Facebook and other content into online newspapers or magazines that are easy to read. I am very impressed with Flipboard's ability to show the original tweet, and automatically open up the tiny URL link and display the content in the online newspaper format.

I was simply too impatient to read through a list of tweets with enticing titles about world changing mobile technology, and not be able to see the content without waiting for the link to open in a browser and display the content. In Flipboard it is a one step process. All the tweet links are automatically opened and displayed in the newspaper. BEAUTIFUL!

Leapfactor's Lionel Carrasco
and Luis Cabrera

I had the opportunity to spend some time on the phone with Leapfactor's founder and CEO, Lionel Carrasco, recently. For readers not familiar with Leapfactor, they are an SAP partner that provides mobile solutions for the enterprise market. Here are some short descriptions of their solutions:

LeapApps, a set of cross-industry micro apps that deliver actionable information to white-collar workers in the field, including everything from approvals, alerts and business indicators to mobile intranets and collaboration tools.
LeapShell, a proprietary Software Development Kit (SDK) that allows the platform to be wholly adopted by developers, partners and IT departments.
LeapCentral, the cornerstone of Leapfactor’s infrastructure. Leapcentral is the device, user and application-management cloud-based infrastructure that enables Leapfactor to deliver a cost-effective and scalable mobile platform.
LeapAgent, the interface with enterprise systems that acts as a Chinese wall separating IT systems from the services and content that Leapcentral accesses.

Lionel updated me on events at Leapfactor since I last saw them in May at Sapphire. Here are my notes from our conversation:

Kevin: Lionel, what is new at Leapfactor since May?
Lionel: We formally opened operations in Brazil this summer. We hired an experienced SAP veteran to be our country manager. Although 90 percent of our focus is in the USA, Brazil is an amazing market and has a big economy. We also set up operations in Mexico. We hired the former President of SAP Mexico to be our country manager.

Yesterday Ian Thain from Sybase reported these findings from a recent Kelton Research survey:

Ninety percent of IT Managers surveyed are planning to implement new mobile applications.
Nearly one in two believe that successfully managing mobile applications will top their priority list.
Twenty-one percent are looking to introduce 20+ mobile applications into their organizations.

This is BIG news! Earlier this week in an interview with T.L. Neff from Pyxis Mobile, T.L. also reported that customers are planning multiple mobile application deployments. What does this mean? It means good news for companies that are in the EMM (enterprise mobility management) and MDM (mobile device management) market. This information also matches up with the opinions and predictions that Bryan Whitmarsh from Sybase made in his recent interview.

Products like Sybase's Afaria, Syclo's Agentry Analytics (see short video) and B2M's mProdigy are set to play more important roles in 2011 than in any previous year.

Remember to follow me on Twitter @krbenedict! I am using Twitter more and more to share interesting articles that I find on enterprise mobility.

***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, 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 – Week of January 10, 2011

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

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A flood of innovation involving smartphones, social media and local search will soon have a massive impact on what travelers do and how they spend their money while on vacation.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/smart-phones-social-media-and-local-search-create-marketing-mojo-in-the-travel-industry-new-report-says-113262519.html

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Google's AdMob in-application ad network is seeing two billion ad requests each day, great growth for a platform Google had to fight the FTC to get. Thank Android and iPhone owners.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Google-AdMob-Serves-2B-Ads-Daily-on-Android-iPhone-399008/?kc=rss

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In November, 35 percent of smartphone users used their devices to access the mobile Internet, proving once again that marketers should advertise on the mobile Web. A whopping 61.5 million consumers in the United States owned a smartphone in November, illustrating the reach that marketers can achieve with a targeted mobile advertising campaign.

TL Neff

T.L. Neff, is an EVP at Pyxis Mobile in charge of customer services. We met last year when we both spoke at the same conference. T.L. lives in the Boston area and is an expert in mobility. Last week we were able to schedule some time together for an interview.

Note: These are not T.L.'s exact words, rather my notes from our interview.

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you use and carry?

TL: BlackBerry Torch, iPhone 4, iPad and laptop.

Kevin: What are your favorite mobile applications?
TL: Mobile CRM from Pyxis, Movela Netflix Queue Manager (a Pyxis app), TagIn (GPS tracking - our kids use it a lot to tell us where they are located), FaceBook (I use it for both family and business. Some customers respond faster on FaceBook than on email) and Skype Mobile.

Kevin: What industries do you see adopting mobility today?
TL: Everybody is implementing now. Even personal friends tell me their companies are looking at mobility.

Kevin: Where are you seeing sales opportunities?
TL: A lot of our big sales opportunities come from analyst referrals. Oracle World was also great for us. We also did well at the BlackBerry Developer conference. Both Oracle World and the BlackBerry Developer conference used our solutions for their mobile conference app which gave us a lot of exposure.

B2C Mobile App

Kevin: What business processes are you seeing companies mobilize?
TL: We deployed our first mobile applications in 2002.  Back then they were sales force automation. Now, customers are coming to us with needs in their marketing departments. Some start with internal projects, and now have advanced to consumer facing apps. Interactive marketing teams are calling us today. Customers have asked for mobile HR apps. People buy from Pyxis because they need multiple apps and want to use our development platform.  They buy servers from us, but we don't have a per user fee. When companies want a lot of mobile users, our model is perfect for them. We are getting a lot of interest from medical and pharmaceutical firms.  There is a lot of interest in tablets today. However, developers must realize that iPads are shared devices and security is an issue. By shared I mean they are often used by many people so security across users is an issue.

Kevin: What are some of the most surprising developments for you in enterprise mobility over the past year?
TL: How quickly enterprises adopted iPads.  I thought companies would like them, but I thought it would take years for them to be adopted in significant numbers. Also, we sold a lot of solutions to SMEs (small to medium sized enterprises).  SME start-ups can't imagine having solutions without mobile apps. Many of these SMEs start a website at the same time as a mobile app.

Kevin: What advice do you have for companies just starting down a path to enterprise mobility?
TL: Think bigger. Mobility is not a nice to have, or a fad. It is here to stay. It will be here for the rest of your career. It is now a core component of your IT environment.

Kevin: How important is MDM (mobile device management) and security?
TL: It is critical. When personal and business mobile devices are mixed, they must be managed. Pyxis chooses to secure the mobile applications, not the device.

Kevin: Where does your company fit in the mobile enterprise solutions mix?
TL: We have a mobile development and production platform. Customers buy servers from Pyxis when they want to deploy more than one mobile application. We have companies that want to deploy dozens of different mobile applications on our platform. We provide our customers with a mobile SDK. It is a visual application development environment called Application Studio.

Mobility requires flexibility, fast change, rapid evolution of devices and apps.  We enable you to rapidly develop, edit, and grow apps. Some of our customers release new versions of mobile apps monthly.  We allow for these rapid changes. Most of our competitors require huge development projects to change apps. We take pride in developing mobile applications in eight hours.

Kevin: What industries are you focusing on in 2011?
TL: That is a hard question since we have customers in all kinds of different industries. Probably the best way to describe it is we target Fortune 2,500 and OEM partners. Our partners purchase a development license and build mobile applications for their customers.

Kevin: Where do you see mobility going in 2011?
TL: Mobility is growing so broad. Companies will be looking not for one mobile application, but for platforms that can support ten different ones. Companies are looking to mobilize everything.

Kevin: Tell me about your business model.
TL: We are a mobile platform company with servers and a mobile SDK. We don't sell by the number of mobile users. We sell by the number of servers a customer needs. The number of servers is dependent on the kind of mobile applications they want.

I want to thank T.L. for sharing his thoughts and experiences with us.

To read more in the Mobile Expert Interview Series click here.

***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, 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.

Click to Download

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Sybase's Bryan Whitmarsh

Boise, Idaho

This morning I was able to catch up with SAP Mentor Bryan Whitmarsh for an interview. I conducted a video interview with Bryan last year at Sapphire which you can watch here. Bryan works for Sybase's product management team and reports to Tony Kueh, who I interviewed last week. Bryan lives in Boise, Idaho (also my fair city), which he has called home since 1992, when he moved here from the Seattle area.

Note: These are not Bryan's exact words, rather my notes from our interview.

Kevin: What is your role and area of responsibility at Sybase?
Bryan: My title is Mobility Product Management. Last year I was focused on mobile email, but this year I am working with the platform team on SUP (Sybase Unwired Platform). It is my job to interpret the market, meet with customers, communicate the road map, both internally and externally, define product requirements and help marketing communicate information about the products.

Sybase's Tony Kueh

I met Tony Kueh (pronounced Koo-ay) from Sybase's product management team at TechEd in Las Vegas this year. He is a long time Seattle native, now residing in California. This week he accepted my invitation to be interviewed.

Note: These are not Tony's exact words, rather my notes from the interview.

Kevin: Tony, what is your role and areas of responsibilities at Sybase?
Tony: I am the product manager for enterprise mobility which includes SUP and Afaria. I report to Raj Nathan, who is the interim head of the mobile applications group and EVP and CMO at Sybase.

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you have and carry?
Tony: An iPhone, an iPad, a Droid and a MacBook Pro.

Kevin: A Droid?
Tony: Yes, for those occasions when I really don't want to be disconnected.

Kevin: Is that all?

Mobile Banking Apps

In the past couple of years, mobile banking has grown rapidly among smartphone users, and 2011 promises even faster growth. During 2010, roughly 10 percent of households in the United States used mobile banking features on their smartphones. Expect to see significant increases in those numbers in 2011.

During 2007 there were 10 million global users of smartphone banking. By next year 150 million people will be checking their bank accounts on mobile devices, and by 2013 that number will increase to nearly 400 million. These figures are truly impressive.

With the rapid increase of mobile banking, financial institutions are realizing that customer satisfaction lies in mobile apps. Approximately 1,000 U.S. banks now offer some type of mobile app for account management, but 29,000 more banks are expected to develop mobile banking applications within the next year.

John Chen
CEO Sybase, an SAP company

John Chen, CEO of Sybase Inc., an SAP company, wrote an interesting article that I read last week. Here are three excerpts:

Until recently application platforms dominated the enterprise mobility story. Vendors like Sybase sold them and corporations bought them — to build mobile apps in-house.
Packaged mobile apps will soon replace custom-built ones as the predominant deployment model inside the enterprise. This will not only slash the cost and time needed for organizations to roll out mobile apps, but will also kick-start a new phase of rapid growth for enterprise mobility.
Sybase is out in front of this trend as it revolutionizes the mobile space.

I understand that John was making general comments, but as a veteran of the mobile industry I started pondering the challenges he will face. I wondered how packaged mobile apps would be configured to work with customized SAP environments. If I remember right, about 70 percent of SAP customers customize their systems. Packaged mobile applications would need to be able to be customized quickly to "slash" the costs and time needed for organizations to roll out mobile apps. This means someone must be trained to customize mobile apps. Who is that someone? What do they need to know? What SDK will they use? Who should I call?

I also wondered, since Sybase has not traditionally been a mobile application company, how they could be "out in front" on this trend. Many of us have been developing and deploying mobile applications for the past decade and have never recognized Sybase as a major player in that space. Yet, a reader pointed out that most companies are barely starting their mobility projects, so packaged mobile apps would be a great start.

It also occured to me that many "outside-the-four-walls" business processes are not commonly supported by SAP today. There are many field services, project management, inspections, asset tracking and other kinds of business processes that fall outside of SAP's umbrella. Will Sybase try to support these, or just those processes supported by SAP?

SAP resells ClickSoftware's Workforce Scheduling and Optimization solution. ClickSoftware has already developed mobile applications for the SAP Workforce Scheduling and Optimization solution. This solution supports "intra-day dynamic mobile workforce scheduling." This is not an area that SAP supports themselves. Will Sybase develop mobile apps for SAP's partner solutions, or leave this up to the partner?

Syclo is SAP's co-innovation mobility partner for EAM (enterprise asset management). Enterprise asset management is a big and high priority market for mobile applications. In many cases Syclo's mobile clients may need to connect to both SAP and non-SAP EAM systems. Will SAP simply excuse themselves from the EAM category in favor of their partner, or compete against them?

Many other mobile markets, such as retail, require support for features and processes not always covered by SAP's systems. For example, large retailers looking to provide consumer focused mobile applications may work with retail experts like Smartsoft Mobile (an SAP services partner) to provide branded mobile applications that incorporate loyalty programs, location-based services, coupons, deals, catalogs, etc.

Even SAP partners that focus on "inside the four walls" solutions like Open Text (an enterprise content management vendor) already have mobile solutions for SAP customers. Open Text is the developer of SAP's Vendor Invoice Management systems, among other solutions. They have developed a mobile solution called Open Text Everywhere that I wrote about here.

Open Text is an example of a vendor developing their own mobile applications for their own enterprise solutions. However, in Open Text's case, some of their ECM (enterprise content management) solutions are embedded in SAP. As a result, the user must decide if they will use Open Text's packaged mobile application, build their own, or wait for Sybase to develop a mobile packaged application.

I don't think Sybase would try to mobilize SAP solutions and business processes that are provided by partners that have their own packaged mobile apps like Open Text or ClickSoftware. At least they wouldn't seem like high priorities.

It appears that Sybase will focus first on extending simple SAP business processes and workflows out to mobile devices. Second, develop mobile applications for the high priority business processes and include mobile SDK support for customizing these apps. Third, provide the mobility platform (not the mobile apps) for rich and complex mobile applications, that require deep industry knowledge, customization, support for field specific business processes, and integration with non-SAP backends, non-SAP business processes or multiple backend systems. This third area of applications will likely remain the competitive playground of the SAP enterprise mobility ecosystem vendors, not Sybase.

Do you agree or disagree? Let me know what you think!

***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, 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 Mobility News Weekly – Week of January 3, 2011

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

Also read Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s M2M News Weekly

Apple expects to ship 20 to 21 million iPhones around the world next quarter, with nearly 25 percent of them CDMA phones.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20026643-37.html

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Americans are connected at unprecedented levels — 93 percent now use cell phones or wireless devices; one-third of those are "smartphones."

http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/parenting-family/2010-12-30-1AYEAR30_CV_N.htm

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Robert Hamilton of Google predicts that, "By next year, five billion mobile phones will be in service, out of a total world population of about seven billion. By 2014, there will be more mobile internet users than desktop internet users.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2011/jan/03/google-robert-hamilton?CMP=twt_fd

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November data indicates that Apple’s iOS has captured 28.6 percent of the smartphone operating system market share. RIM’s BlackBerry operating system is second with 26.1 percent of the market share, and Google’s Android finished third with 25.8 percent of the market.

Mastering SAP Technologies
March 21-23, 2011

I will be in Australia speaking on enterprise mobility at the Mastering SAP Technologies March 21-23, 2011. I will be the keynote speaker on Monday, March 21st at 10 AM, and will lead a session on Tuesday, March 22nd at 2:10 PM. I would love to meet up with any folks interested in discussing enterprise mobility while I am there. Also, if you would like to schedule time with me either before or after the event let me know by contacting me here.

***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, 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 Money News Weekly – Week of January 3, 2011

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile payments, mobile money, e-wallets, mobile banking and mobile security that I run across each week. I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

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PayPal saw a 300 percent increase in mobile payments from the official start of the shopping season on November 15 through December 15 compared to the year ago period. PayPal is expecting to close the year with more than $700 million in total payment volume via the mobile medium.

http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/paypal-reports-300pc-growth-in-mobile-payments-over-last-holiday-season/

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A recent poll by Scanbuy on Twitter and Facebook proves the influence that mobile bar codes are having for retail outlets trying to improve the customer shopping experience. The poll revealed that there is significant interest in using mobile bar codes while shopping, with more than half of those surveyed having scanned a bar code.

http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/mobile-bar-code-scanning-became-mainstream-this-holiday-season-scanbuy/

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Google is considering building a payment and advertising service that would let users buy milk and bread by tapping or waving their mobile phones against a register at checkout. It is based on near field communication technology, which can beam and receive information wirelessly from four inches away.

Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly – Week of January 3, 2011

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

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CKE Restaurants Inc.’s Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurants are driving consumers in store via Happy Star Rewards, a GPS enabled loyalty program that rewards users for checking in at the fast food chains’ locations across the United States.

http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/carls-jr-and-hardees-mobile-loyalty-program-to-drive-in-store-traffic/

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Online retailer Buy.com has launched its new app for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. Using barcode technology and an advanced voice recognition platform from MeMeMe Inc., the Buy.com app makes mobile shopping easier and faster than ever before.

http://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/article/178376/New-Buy-com-mobile-app-features-barcode-scanning-voice-recognition

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A KPMG survey shows mobile devices are slowly gaining ground as the preferred media for e-commerce. Compared with only 18 months ago, the global percentage of respondents who have used their mobile device for banking has more than doubled from 19 percent to 46 percent, while the percentage that have used it to buy goods and services has gone from 10 percent to 28 percent.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Aberdeen Group's Andrew Borg

I was fortunate to have had the opportunity last week to interview Andrew Borg, senior research analyst for Wireless & Mobility at the Aberdeen Group (Twitter @mobileaberdeen). We discussed research they had recently conducted on the subject of enterprise mobility.

Andrew Borg

Here are some of the findings from their research:

1) Mobility is a core strategic imperative for the enterprise. It is well past the point of early adopters. Less than 2% of Aberdeen’s survey respondents say they have NO intention of adopting mobility. It is now a given. There are new and increasing pressures on the corporation to accommodate mobility.

2) In 2011 enterprise mobility is not a nice to have, but a business requirement.

3) Security for mobile devices, mobile applications and mobile content is a big concern for the enterprise. As important as having secure mobile devices and apps are, it is even more important to have secure data. For this reason, Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solutions will be increasingly important for all enterprises. Managing the entire data lifecycle on the mobile device becomes critical. Enterprises cannot effectively manage data security until they have an EMM in place that they can use to build and enforce an enterprise security policy. Some of the EMM vendors Aberdeen is following are; Sybase’s Afaria, BoxTone, Zenprise, Good Technology and MobileIron.

Aberdeen studies the behaviors of the best-in-class as well as the industry average and laggards. Aberdeen found that best-in-class companies are 1.6 times more likely to have implemented EMM solutions than all other repondents. 2011 is expected to be the year of EMM, with the management of mobility becoming a core IT function in 2011.

4) The costs of a single mobile data compliance lapse, according to a recent Aberdeen survey, at the low end is estimated at $140,000, and at the high end over $1 million.

5) Today, when properly configured Apple iOS 4.2 is virtually equivalent in security to the BlackBerry system. Android remains behind, but Aberdeen believes they will catch up.

6) Aberdeen believes that SAP/Sybase’s Afaria product is a very powerful and complete EMM, but they cannot sit on their hands as there are many competitors rising up to challenge them on pricing, business models and functionality.

7) IT organizations are much more open to having third parties manage IT systems today than in the past. Systems integrators will play an increasingly important role in implementing, supporting and maintaining enterprise mobility solutions in the future.

8) Andrew believes the acquisition of Sybase by SAP was brilliant. If SAP executes it will be a market changer.

9) 62% of best in class (top performers) are deploying tablets. This is the fastest adoption of new technologies Aberdeen has seen. 2011 will be a banner year for tablets. iPads are ahead of the pack, but competition is coming on quickly and strong.

10) The secret to the iPad’s success is the large number of applications. This will help the iPad maintain its current momentum in the tablet market.

11) There is a huge security need for tablets. 76% of best-in-class companies using iPads are not securing them today. Unsecured tablets will become a big issue in 2011, as they are too oftenbeing used for business purposes without being properly secured.

Aberdeen Group conducts their research in a methodical and scientific manner. They get their information by surveying end-users directly, and focus on the business value of technology adoption. They document the best practices of best-in-class companies, as well as the processes, technologies, and services needed by the industry average and laggards. Companies are ranked based upon their overall business performance.

I want to thank Andrew for taking the time to share Aberdeen Group’s insights with us.

***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, 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.

Predicting 100 Percent Mobile Application Development?

Mobile App Development

Israel Benjaminy from ClickSoftware recently published a blog article with the following statement, "Various studies predict that 70% or more of all workers will use modern mobile devices (smartphones and tablets)." I heard additional supporting evidence of increasing popularity of mobile technologies while conducting an interview last week with Andrew Borg, senior research analyst, Wireless and Mobility, Aberdeen Group. He stated that 62% of best in class (top performing companies) were deploying tablets. This is the fastest adoption they have ever seen of new technologies.

Benjaminy predicts, "It is the desktop client which is fading into the status of exception and "special case". In this new world, there will be only one kind of client. It will treat all devices as mobile devices – whether you happen to use the software on your desktop computer with 21" display, your mobile tablet (usually 7"-10" display) or your smartphone (typically 3"-4"), you get access to the same functionality and just about the same user experience." What do you think of this prediction? Can you image a software development strategy that covers all devices including desktops?

Benjaminy continues, "This implies several more characteristics which will make the new breed of enterprise software much more useful as well as much more fun, due to the rich context available to a mobile device:

Location, movement (e.g. driving, walking, sitting down)
Status (e.g. working alone, working at customer location, in a meeting, on the phone, or off-duty)
Environment (e.g. in an office, a restaurant, a lecture room or a vehicle) etc.

The user interface will make full use of these rich cues to configure itself to our needs, infer the next steps we may wish to take, and select the right user interface action."

Benjaminy envisions a world where there is only one kind of mobile application that fits all devices and desktops. He sees ERP solutions having an application layer that utilizes the mobile device features to add value to common everyday processes. The data collection functions and feedback available in mobile devices can be integrated with content management, business intelligence and geospatially aware features to develop more intelligent applications.

I read another article last week about the economics of mobile applications. The article suggested the economics of application development would trend toward one development strategy and methodology that would reduce the amount of work needed to support a wide variety of device types and operating systems. This article supports Benjaminy's prediction.

What do you think about it?

***************************************************
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 M2M News Weekly – Week of January 3, 2011

Welcome to Kevin's M2M News Weekly, an online newsletter that consists of the most interesting news and articles related to M2M (machine to machine) and embedded mobile devices that I read each week. I aggregate the information, include the original links and add a synopsis of each article. I also search for the latest market numbers such as market size, growth and trends in and around the M2M market.

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The global market for M2M device connections will grow from 62 million devices in 2010 to 2.1 billion devices in 2020. With a year on year growth rate of between 36 and 52 percent, M2M seeks to be one of the fastest growing connectivity sectors in the next decade.

http://www.analysysmason.com/Research/Content/Reports/RRE02_M2M_devices_forecast/

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Recent Berg Insight research indicates that two percent of mobile network connections worldwide were used for wireless M2M communication at the end of 2010. In fact, the number of M2M subscribers increased by 46 percent year on year to an estimated 81.4 million.

http://blog.connectedplanetonline.com/unfiltered/2010/12/31/the-internet-of-things-coming-to-fruition-two-percent-of-mobile-connections-are-m2m/

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A recent report from Pike Research forecasts that, while private networks will continue to represent the majority of the smart grid communications market, the revenue opportunity for service providers will increase significantly, rising from $2.2 billion in 2009 to $4.9 billion by 2016.

Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – December 30, 2010

Click Image to Enlarge

I read several very interesting articles on the Internet of Things today. I found them on the website, http://www.readwriteweb.com/. The Internet of Things (IoT) is described as, "A term for when everyday ordinary objects are connected to the Internet via microchips. The technologies include sensors, RFID and smartphone standards like NFC. The use cases are still evolving, but over 2010 we saw large organizations like HP and IBM build out impressive platforms for the Internet of Things."

Why are HP and IBM building out Internet of Things platforms? According to Richard MacManus, "HP is building an 'Internet of Things' platform because it sees that the coming data explosion will lead to huge demand for more powerful computers and better processing of all that data."

StreamWork on a
BlackBerry

If you are not yet familiar with SAP's StreamWork solution, it is worth investigating. As an SAP Mentor, I use this solution a lot when SAP Mentors from around the world are working on a collaborative project. SAP StreamWork is a collaborative decision-making solution that brings together the people, information, and proven business approaches to drive fast, meaningful results. The mobile client is marketed with the following description, "Keep collaborating with your team and driving activities forward, even if you're not at your desk."

The mobile client enables the following:

Create an activity directly from email
Upload content and add work items
Add participants to an activity
View and comment on work items
Create and view action items

StreamWork is very intriguing to me. A group can work on making a decision together no matter where each group member is located. The group can create an activity and then all members can start sharing ideas and linking documents and other content to be shared with the group as tools for making decisions. You can comment, see the profiles of members, etc.

I believe companies have never effectively taken advantage of the talent and intelligence of their organizations. Often a person with valuable knowledge may not share it if they are not in the right geographical area, position or group. There must be ways that you can harvest more of the social intelligence of your organization. I think StreamWork is a step in the right direction.

***************************************************
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 29, 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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A recent survey by GfK Roper Poll found that three in ten Americans currently use a smartphone, such as an iPhone or BlackBerry. Among consumers with those devices, 30 percent said that, while shopping, they used their phones to try to find better deals elsewhere; and 40 percent used their phones to compare prices.

http://www.jckonline.com/2010/12/27/more-shoppers-researching-mobile-phones

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Thirty percent of respondents in a recent survey said they expected to use mobile coupons during this holiday season, according to a new study by mobile marketing agency Briabe Media and mobile social networking company MocoSpace. 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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A recent survey indicates that 79 percent of smartphone users would like to be able to download discount shopping coupons to their mobile devices and 73 percent would like to receive money off coupons on items they see while shopping in a store.

Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

Kevin’s Field Mobility News Weekly – Week of January 17, 2011

Special Report: The Mobile Devices that Mobile Experts Use

Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – Week of January 17, 2011

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Sybase's Eric Lai

Announcing Field Mobility News Weekly

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly – Week of January 17, 2011

SAP, Pacific Gas and Electric and ClickSoftware

Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly - Week of January 17, 2011

Data Overload in a Mobile and M2M World

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Syclo's Jon Schmidt

Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – Week of January 10, 2011

Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly – Week of January 10, 2011

Twitter and Tweet Convert - Kevin Benedict

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Leapfactor's Lionel Carrasco

Ninety Percent of IT Managers Planning New Mobility Applications

Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly – Week of January 10, 2011

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Pyxis Mobile's T.L. Neff

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Sybase's Bryan Whitmarsh

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Sybase's Tony Kueh

Mobile Banking is Here!

Sybase's Strategy with John Chen - Version 2

Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – Week of January 3, 2011

Enterprise Mobility in Australia

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly – Week of January 3, 2011

Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly – Week of January 3, 2011

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Aberdeen Group's Andrew Borg

Predicting 100 Percent Mobile Application Development?

Kevin’s M2M News Weekly – Week of January 3, 2011

Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – December 30, 2010

The Internet of Things (M2M)

SAP StreamWork, Social Intelligence and Mobile Devices

Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly - December 29, 2010

Interviews with Kevin Benedict

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