Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

SAP Influencer Summit 2010 Report on Enterprise Mobility

SAP Mentors John Appleby
and Jon Reed

Last week I attended the SAP Influencer Summit in Santa Clara, California. About 220 people were in attendance at the Santa Clara Marriott on Mission College Blvd. The purpose of the summit was for SAP to provide an update to industry analysts, bloggers and other people with loud voices in the market place, on the progress they have made on the goals that were shared earlier in the year. A consolidated view of my real time tweets from the event last week can be found in a blog article here.

This is a long article, so if you have limited time here is the executive overview. At TechEd in October 2010 SAP was not prepared to talk about any roadmaps or details on the integration of SAP and Sybase. However, at the SAP Influencer Summit 2010, they brought the right people that were prepared to answer detailed questions. I was impressed that smart people are in charge and taking SAP enterprise mobility in the right direction. That direction should result in product releases by Sapphire 2011 (May 2011).

Mobile Retail Applications a Transformational Trend

I read an interesting article today in Bloomberg about mobile shopping and mobile retailing applications. Here are a few excerpts.

Almost 60 percent of mobile consumers expect to use their phones to help with shopping plans and holiday celebrations this season, according to the Mobile Marketing Association.
Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm recently stated, “The phone is going to be the payment mechanism of the future. You’ll probably just scan whatever thing it was that you’re buying. It will cause the checkout to happen. It will cause the security to happen, so that when you walk out of the door it won’t ring the bell.”
About eight percent of consumers in the U.S. have bought something with a phone. That compares with 32 percent in Taiwan, which tops the list of major industrialized countries, according to IE Market Research Corp. Finland was No. 1 in Europe, at 13 percent.

The article highlights the fact that Best Buy, Home Depot and Amazon.com all have mobile retailing applications now. I have had many discussions with the mobile retailing experts at Smartsoft Mobile Solutions, and I find this market very interesting. It combines the following:

Kevin's Mobility News Weekly - December 9, 2010

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 numbers and trends.

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SAP AG has unveiled new innovations for the SAP StreamWork application that provide business and IT with valuable new choices.

http://www.sap.com/about/newsroom/press.epx?pressid=14474

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Best Buy, Home Depot and Amazon are among the retailers ramping up efforts to let shoppers scan bar codes, get discounts and find product information on their phones.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-02/best-buy-amazon-com-use-phones-to-reach-shoppers-swipe-sales-from-rivals.html

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Research firms have ramped up forecasts for 2010 smartphone sales and now expect the market to double from a year ago. The fast sales growth is causing shortages of components, with manufacturers scrambling for parts such as phone screens.

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly – December 8, 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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EBay sees growth in mobile payments, pushing its PayPal service toward the offline world.

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10941154/1/ebay-sees-mobile-payment-growth-offline.html?cm_ven=GOOGLEN

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Mobile shopping grew a massive 310 percent from last year as shoppers choose to dial up deals rather than deal with the crowds and traffic.

http://www.bizreport.com/2010/12/paypal-black-friday-mobile-shopping-grew-310.html

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Dueling mobile money deployments have already racked up some impressive numbers in the Fiji Islands, a country of 800,000 people and over 300 islands. After only four months of service, nearly a quarter of all Fijians now have mobile wallets allowing them not only to transfer money to each other, but also to pay utility bills as well as top up their mobile phone airtime.

What I Learned about Mobility at the SAP Influencer Summit 2010

I have compiled my tweets (join me on Twitter @krbenedict) that I published over the past few days here at the SAP Influencer Summit in Santa Clara, CA. I focus on enterprise mobility so this is the topic of most of these tweets.

1. Prashant Chatterjee said 100% of customers add customized features to their mobile apps today.

2. We got solid mobile roadmap answers at the SAP Influencer summit.

3. The 365, Mobiliser Service Platform and SUP will start to converge around the tools in the mobile SDK.

4. Sybase Mobiliser Service Platform consists of communications, apps and commerce functions (365).

5. Mobile developers may have a revenue opportunity developing add-ons to the mobile SDK and selling on SAP EcoHub.

Prashant Chatterjee, John Appleby

This is the list of questions concerning SAP's mobile strategy that readers have submitted to me over the past three days. I am attending the SAP Influencer Summit this week and have shared these questions from the mobility teams at SAP/Sybase. I have some answers already and will write these up in a separate article later this week. If you would like to add a question to this list please email them to me and put SAP Influencer Summit Questions in the subject line.

Here is the latest compilation of questions submitted by readers of the blog http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/.

Mobile Applications and Location Context

The other day a group of us mobile technology consultants met at the Chicago airport before driving out to a client's location. Having missed lunch, we decided to search for a quick bite to eat.

We found a Subway Sandwich location right off a freeway exit. However, once we arrived we found that the restaurant had one-inch thick bullet proof glass separating the customers from the restaurant staff, and a group of men were guarding the entrances to the parking lot and making non-stop transactions through the windows of a long line of cars.

Our mobile applications and mobile maps helped us quickly find a restaurant, but our mobile apps did nothing to help us know if the locations were healthy or safe. I want a mobile application that will show me more than simply data points. I don't just want to know where food is sold, but where it is safe to consume it. Who wants to find an unsafe restaurant in which to eat?

This experience, has made me really appreciate the value of mobile applications that include contextual features and capabilities. I want to know the following:

When Mobility Is Not About Mobility

Where is the value in a mobile application? Today, at the SAP Influencer Summit, Prashant Chatterjee with Sybase, an SAP company, hinted at an answer. He said the value mobile software developers need to bring to the SAP mobile ecosystem is vertical industry knowledge. The value of a mobile application is found in its ability to support very specific business and industry processes.

The ability to integrate and automate best practices and rich content into mobile applications is powerful. No one is looking for vendors that can simply build screens on a mobile device. They want intelligent mobile applications, with deep industry expertise architected into it and integration into core business software systems and database content.

Prashant gave an example of an oil refinery environment. He said there are very unique requirements for enterprise asset management in an oil refinery and in the management of pipelines. These unique requirements, supported by a mobile application, would be a great vertical niche market.

An example of a mobility solution vendor is Syclo, a co-innovation partner of SAP. They have tightly integrated their mobile applications with the SAP enterprise asset management solutions to provide this industry support.

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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 7, 2010

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On Cyber Monday mobile commerce sales from eBay shoppers in the United States increased 146 percent year over year, with California, Nevada, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Florida leading the way as the top mobile shopping states.

http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/ebay-us-mobile-commerce-sales-soar-146pc-on-cyber-monday/

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IBM announced that the Bon-Ton Stores, Inc. website has experienced a double digit increase in sales using IBM software to advance its online and mobile commerce initiatives. Bon-Ton Stores, Inc. sells leading brands in apparel, cosmetics and home furnishings.

HTML 5 and Sybase Unwired Platform

Sybase, an SAP company, has made a lot of money over the years selling mobile client databases. These databases (SQL Anywhere Database Client) reside on the mobile device and are synchronized with a technology called SQL Anywhere Mobilink. I wonder how this revenue stream will be impacted by the emergence and adoption of HTML 5.

Does anyone dare share an opinion?

HTML 5 has a database built into it. Every mobile client that uses this HTML 5 database means one less potential SQL Anywhere Database Client license for Sybase.

I read this week on Gil Bouhnick's blog MobileFever, that ClickSoftware is releasing their first HTML 5 version of their ClickMobile solution. Last month I saw a demo of their iPad version running HTML 5 and it was a great looking application.

I look forward to your thoughts and comments regarding the impact you believe HTML 5 will have on the enterprise mobility market.

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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 Mobility News Weekly – December 2, 2010

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 numbers and trends.

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Analysts predict the mobile application market will be worth $4 billion by next year.

http://green.tmcnet.com/news/2010/11/25/5158630.htm

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Google's Android OS has successfully managed to dethrone Symbian as the most popular smartphone OS in Asia for the third quarter of 2010.

http://www.pcworld.in/news/android-most-popular-smartphone-platform-asia-41562010

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The iPhone's popularity in Japan is cracking open an industry long thought inaccessible to outsiders.

Facebook, Mobility and Field Services Applications

I have been watching with keen interest the convergence of social networking and enterprise mobility. Recently, SAP mobility partner, ClickSoftware announced a social media extension to their SAP Workforce Scheduling and Optimization solution that is very interesting and worth highlighting.

Customers can book and change service appointments directly on a service organization’s Facebook page. Customers can receive reminders and notifications on the expected arrival time of the field service engineer to minimize wait times. With this extension, Facebook becomes yet another interaction channel for ClickContact, which can also integrate two-way communication with company web pages, automated voice calls, e-mail and SMS. Customers may select their preferred channels of communication at any time.

Right now, Facebook does not support this application extension on the Facebook mobile application, but this is expected in the near future. So today the customer accesses Facebook from their browser and books or reschedules their appointment. How does this relate to mobility? Customers can configure the Facebook application to send notifications to their smartphones via email, voice message, Facebook notification or text.

Mobile Enterprise Management Platform

Is another mobile acronym on your Christmas list? Great! I have one for you, MEMP (mobile enterprise management platform). A MEMP is designed to help you keep mobile systems, mobile networks, mobile devices and your mobile workforce working and productive. This is not easy if you have several thousand mobile devices being used in mission critical roles across a wide geographic area.

When my family and I are traveling on trains in Europe, all of the rail staff that check your tickets and sell you snacks are carrying mobile devices. Airports and airport gates are increasingly being operated by people with mobile devices. Public safety and emergency responders are nearly all carrying mobile devices today.

If you have the good fortune of being the person responsible for keeping mission critical mobile applications and mobile devices operating, then you would appreciate the value of a MEMP.

Global Economic Development, Prosperity and Enterprise Mobility

In the book The Birth of Plenty, the author William J. Bernstein proposes that prosperity is based on the following four tenets:

1. Property Rights – Creators must have proper incentives to create.

2. Scientific Rationalism – Innovators must possess the proper intellectual tools in order to innovate and must be able to do so without fear of retribution.

3. Capital Markets – Entrepreneurs must have access to sufficient capital to pursue their visions.

4. Transportation/Communications – Society must be able to rapidly and efficiently move information and finished products.

Bernstein says that the presence of, or lack of, these four items determines the level of prosperity of a people or country.

When I read item four on the list I thought about enterprise mobility. I have worked on, seen and heard about many mobile enterprise applications that have enabled economic development and a higher quality of life. Let me share a few of them.

Click for Information

In an article re-published in The Wall Street Journal last year, The Secrets of Intangible Wealth, author Ronald Bailey writes the following, “A Mexican migrant to the US is 5 times more productive than one who stays home.” Did your interest peak like mine when you read that line? The data comes from research done by the World Bank. Here is the reason why according to Bailey. The average American has access to over $418,000 in intangible wealth, while the stay-at-home Mexican’s intangible wealth is just $34,000.

What is intangible wealth? The World Bank’s environmental economics department describes it as, “trust among people in a society, an efficient judicial system, clear property rights and effective governments.” The value of these intangibles according to the World Bank is significant. Who wants to invest in property if it can be taken away any time? Who wants to develop a large manufacturing plant in a location where these intangibles are hard to come by?

Picture this - a service technician, Frank, opens his mobile application and sees that he is ranked sixth out of 18 service technicians in products and services sold. He also sees that he is the fastest service technician at completing work on a particular piece of equipment. Overall he can see that he is ranked number three when all of the figures are added up and weighed. Now let me ask you, "Is this a good thing?"

Is it useful to develop KPIs (key performance indicators) and then measure and share them? Will it motivate positive performance? One of the key challenges managers have is effectively managing a remote and mobile workforce. Will KPIs that are measured and shared on mobile devices help?

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly – December 1, 2010

This weekend I read an article written by Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, called Africa Needs Aid Not Flawed Theories in the November 27-28 edition of the Wall Street Journal. In it he criticizes author Matt Ridley’s ideas (found in the book The Rational Optimist) by saying, “He seems to think that innovation involves simply coming up with a new idea, when in fact the execution of the idea is critical.”

This got me thinking. If the execution of the idea is what is critical, how does this relate to enterprise mobility vendors?

I receive calls and emails from mobile start-ups weekly. Many are convinced they have a better mobile application, a better strategy and a better team. However, they have no money, only three people in the company, no brand recognition, and no global sales, delivery or support infrastructure. I usually ask a few additional questions to learn if there is anything at all that might hint at their ability to execute. Too often there is not.

I have had several opportunities to visit with large enterprises about their mobility strategies lately. It is interesting watching and learning how large companies go about mobilizing business processes. As a result of these discussions and experiences, I propose that there are at least six phases of this evolutionary process. Let me know your thoughts as well!

I believe that phase one of an enterprise mobility strategy is to recognize the need to mobilize enterprise solutions. Enterprise mobility is not a fad. It is strategic and mission critical. Mobile browsing is predicted to surpass all other forms of internet connectivity within the next year or two. I have seen reports that over 40 percent of the workforce is mobile. Giving them access to the right information, at the right time and at the right place to do their job is critical. Everyone has a smartphone these days. They are indepensable tools for the mobile workforce.

Phase two of your mobile strategy is to start mobilizing basic items like business process notifications, approvals and alerts. These simple mobile "instant value" applications are a good first step to mobilizing your workforce and showing immediate value. My mobile ESPN application sends me the scores of my favorite teams. This is an example of a simple notification solution. This phase helps your mobile workforce to ease into using their mobile devices for business purposes and ERP interactions. Study the results, understand the challenges and use this information to prepare for more complex mobile solutions.

Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly - November 30, 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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As location-based services report impressive user growth and big brand partnerships, and major players like Facebook and Google enter the space, marketers are ramping up their location-based efforts for the holiday season.

http://mashable.com/2010/11/17/location-based-services-holidays/

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Bargain hunters can print out paper coupons or can go paperless. You can download mobile coupon apps to your smartphone and you'll be sent limited time offers at stores right near you. Just click on the coupon, show it to the cashier and ring up the savings.

The True Value in Enterprise Mobility

Have you ever really thought about where the true value is in enterprise mobility? Is it replacing paper documents with electronic forms and data? Is it replacing manual processes with automated? Is it receiving more accurate data from the field? Is it all about speed and efficiencies? What is it? I think the answer is YES. It is all of the above, but there is much more.

Mobile and real-time communications - Just think about how you text friends and family today. In seconds you can learn where your friends and family members are and what they are doing. This is a relatively new development for humanity. We are compressing time by receiving more information at a faster pace that allows us to act on the information quicker.

I read recently that people no longer are asking for detailed location information when meeting people. They simply say, "I will call or text you when I am close. We can figure out where to meet at that time." This is the result of instant and real time communications.

What Happens When the Novelty of Enterprise Mobility Wears Off?

What happens when wireless connectivity and mobile applications are no longer a novelty? What will enterprise mobility companies talk about? Already SAP's acquisition of Sybase has made the discussion of MEAPs (mobile enterprise application platforms) passé. Enterprise mobility vendors will announce their support for leading MEAPs, much like announcing their support for various OSs, and the discussion will move on to more interesting topics.

What is the value that enterprise mobility vendors will bring to the market in 2011? I propose that the value will come in the following areas:

I believe it is useful to not only study current enterprise mobility trends, but also to look at future trends when planning an enterprise mobility strategy. One of the places to keep an eye on for future trends is the US military. Why? The US military must plan years ahead for each new generation of fighter jet or weapons platform, as the technology takes many years to develop and perfect.

Recently US Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that the Department of Defense will begin planning for the next generation (6th generation) of fighter jets. One of the most interesting requirements is that it will be capable of being flown pilotless.

Kevin's Mobility News Weekly - November 24, 2010 ** Special Edition

This is a special edition of Kevin's Mobility News Weekly. In this edition I have collected the best market and trend numbers from the past few months and aggregated them into one edition. You can save this edition and use these numbers in your own business plans and presentations.

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Nokia released its results for second quarter, 2010. They reveal a 40 percent slump in profits to €227 million, compared to €380 million a year ago. On a slightly brighter note, the company increased its share of the smartphone market by one percent to 41 percent in the quarter, having sold 24 million smartphones.

http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/nokia-profits-slump-while-smartphone-share-rises

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Of the four key Motorola business segments, only the company's enterprise mobility segment experienced growth, with sales of $1.9 billion, up ten percent compared to a year ago.

Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly - November 23, 2010 ** Special Edition

This is a special edition of Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly. In this edition I have collected the best market and trend numbers from the past few months and aggregated them into one edition. You can save this edition and use these numbers in your own business plans and presentations.

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According to Forrester, 47 percent of consumers expect to wait no more than two seconds for a Web page to load; 58 percent of mobile phone users expect websites to load as quickly on their mobile phone as on their PC according to Gomez research.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/compuware-gomez-presents-webinar-on-the-top-e-commerce-strategies-for-turning-web-traffic-into-sales-2010-09-08?reflink=MW_news_stmp

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In a development with importance to e-commerce merchants and other marketers moving to mobile commerce, phones using Android accounted for one quarter of all North American mobile page views in August, up from 6.4 percent in August 2009, according to the latest numbers from Quantcast Corp. Google’s gain came mostly at the expense of iOS, the operating system used by the iPhone. That system lost 11.4 points of mobile Web share, to finish at 56 percent in August.

http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=2631

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For most retailers, the fourth quarter is relied upon to generate a substantial portion of the company’s yearly revenue. The mobile commerce market is currently $2.5B with a projected four times annual growth rate for 2013. Businesses have made mobility a top priority for growth and view m-commerce as a new retail channel.

http://smartsoftmobile.com/wordpress/2010/09/10/fourth-quarter-2010-trends-in-mobile-retailing/

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MarketsandMarkets has released a new report predicting that the value of mobile payment transactions in the US will reach $56 billion in 2015.

http://www.nfcnews.com/2010/08/30/report-us-mobile-payments-market-to-reach-56-billion-in-2015

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According to a new report from ABI Research, location based marketing will increase from only about $43 million this year to $1.8 billion by 2015 as part of overall mobile marketing budgets.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=135110
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Forrester predicts B2B interactive marketing spending to reach $4.8 billion by 2014 - almost double that estimated for 2009 ($2.3 billion).

http://www.bizreport.com/2010/03/b2b_marketers_embracing_interactive_channels.html

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By 2014, about 12 percent of all e-commerce transactions will be made using smartphones and other mobile devices, but fraud detection tools for mobile commerce are lagging, Gartner said.

http://thecitizen.co.tz/business/-/4302-mobile-commerce-surge-outpaces-anti-fraud-tools

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Mobile online transactions are growing at a fast pace. According to market researcher ABI Research, there will be 20 times more data and 40 times more mobile transactions by 2015.

http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/16/ibm-launches-software-that-will-help-corporations-embrace-social-media-and-mobile-devices/

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Mobile Marketing has seen growth of over 600 percent in the past year. The Kelsey groups forecasts 2000 percent growth by 2013.

http://smartsoftmobile.com/wordpress/2010/10/05/mobile-marketing-trends/

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According to Gartner, almost three billion of the world's population will be able to make electronic transactions via mobile or Internet technology by 2014.

http://voicendata.ciol.com/content/news/110100404.asp

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A reported 81 percent of young consumers around the world are "interested" or "very interested" in employing wireless handsets as a "wallet" linked to bank accounts and loyalty cards.

http://www.warc.com/News/TopNews.asp?ID=27323

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The location-based services market is forecast to reach $21 billion by 2015 and will total 1.24 billion subscribers.

http://www.companiesandmarkets.com/news/gps-to-drive-21-billion-location-based-services-market-n158.aspx

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Mobile banking is expected to grow exponentially over the next 12 months, as the world's adoption of smartphones increases.

http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/articles.php?art_id=2979

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During Google’s third quarter earnings call, the company disclosed that mobile ad sales were now at a $1 billion “annualized run rate.”

http://moconews.net/article/419-google-claims-1-billion-in-annualized-mobile-ad-revenues/

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Fifty-one percent of mobile owners in the United Kingdom use mobile commerce to make payments, redeem coupons or research products and services.

http://www.utalkmarketing.com/pages/Article.aspx?ArticleID=19240&Title=_Smartphone_users_boost_m-commerce_in_the_UK

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Will Pinnell, director of mobile commerce for Sabre Holdings, told Mobile Commerce Forum attendees that global mobile shoppers will spend $119 billion by 2015 - up from $12 billion last year.

http://www.brafton.com/industry-news/mobile-shoppers-spend-119-billion-in-2015-according-experts-at-mobile-commerce-forum-$800119329.htm

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Just over half of mobile phone owners in the UK, or 23 million people, are now using their devices for mobile commerce.

http://www.businessandleadership.com/marketing/item/26174-half-of-uk-mobile-users-now/

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Approximately 49 percent of businesses are willing to pay for the convenience of mobile cash management capabilities, pointing toward the ability for banks to generate fee based revenues.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/survey-shows-high-demand-for-corporate-mobile-banking-around-the-globe-2010-10-25?reflink=MW_news_stmp

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Mobile financial services are growing at a head spinning clip. The number of active users has climbed to 17.8 million from 4.9 million two years ago and will reach 53.1 million by 2013.

http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=2672

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Twenty-five percent of consumers have used a mobile phone for research while shopping -- and 55 percent of those aged 18 to 24 have.

http://www.cbc.ca/smartshift/2010/09/smart-retailers-are-tapping-in-to-phone-wielding-bargain-hunters.html

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Smartsoft Mobile empowers some of the world’s largest multi-national organizations to extend and improve business processes by providing mobile solutions to their employees and customers. Smartsoft has more than 700 experienced ERP/mobile consultants with over 5,000 man years of experience helping 400,000 plus mobile users achieve their business goals with powerful mobile B2B and B2C applications, designed and developed specifically for today’s popular consumer and industrial grade mobile devices. For more information please visit, http://www.smartsoftmobile.com/. This newsletter is sponsored in part by Smartsoft Mobile Solutions.

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Kevin Nix, presented staggering statistics about the explosive adoption of mobile devices and mobile apps at the 2010 SAP Retail Forum. Three million iPads were sold in eighty days; 1.7 million iPhone 4 devices were sold in three days; and the use of mobile apps is expected to increase to 100 million by 2013.

http://www.retailsolutionsonline.com/article.mvc/Leverage-Mobility-To-Create-Business-0001?VNETCOOKIE=NO

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There has been a rapid increase in the number of active users of location-based services in the United States, up from 12.3 million in 2009, and it is predicted to hit 33.2 million at the end of 2010.

http://fixed-mobile-convergence.tmcnet.com/topics/mobile-communications/articles/111764-smartphone-adoption-predicted-drive-lbs-services.htm

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A recent eMarketer report projects that marketers will spend in excess of $1 billion on mobile marketing in 2011.

http://www.ricg.com/marketing_articles/digital_marketing/mobile_marketing_budgets_to_surpass_1_billion_next_year_/

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Forty-three percent of mobile phone owners have purchased movies, music and games—“shrink-wrapped” physical goods, not digital products—via their phones between March and August.

http://www.internetretailer.com/2010/10/15/mobile-shoppers-are-buying-movies-clothing-and-more

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Sixty-one percent of mobile operators surveyed thought that coupons or vouchers would become the dominant form of mobile marketing by 2015.

http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/61-of-carriers-see-mobile-coupons-as-the-dominant-form-of-mobile-marketing-by-2015-11065/

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PayPal Mobile general manager Eric Duprat keynoted the final day of ARM TechCon in Santa Clara last week. He predicts that within five years the majority of $5.5 trillion in retail transactions that occur face-to-face will be handled through mobile devices.

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4210662/PayPal-exec-charts-future-of-mobile-money

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More than one million people in the UK have used PayPal to make a payment or send money from their mobile phones.

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/39301/1m-Brits-have-made-PayPal-mobile-payments

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, mobile industry analyst and experienced mobile industry executive, offers both one and two day onsite workshops designed to educate and inform executives and management teams on enterprise mobility and mobile strategies for businesses. This workshop is designed to provide a complete overview of enterprise mobility and what it means to the business. The workshop is customized based upon the needs of participants. For more details visit http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/p/workshops.html.

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Recent Articles by Kevin Benedict

Mobile Expert Interview Series: SAP's Usman Sheikh, December 2010
Vivido Labs Releases New Moible BI Application for SAP Customers
Mobile Expert Interview Series: Sybase's Willie Jow, Part 1
Mobile Expert Interview Series: Sybase's Willie Jow, Part 2
Mobile Expert Interview Series: Sybase's Willie Jow, Part 3
Update on Sybase Reorganization, Revised Edition
Mobile Expert Interview Series: Sky Technologies' Neil McHugh

Podcast: SAP Enterprise Mobility - Where Do We Go From Here?
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Archived editions of Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly are available at http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/p/mobile-retail-news-weekly.html

You can follow me on Twitter @krbenedict and read my blog, Enterprise Mobility Strategies.

Also available are Kevin’s M2M News Weekly and Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly.

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I have added a feature to my blog site that supports email subscriptions. You can now receive all blog articles directly via email. If you are interested, click here.

***************************************************
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.