Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – December 30, 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 data and trends.

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

Mobile Applications recently surveyed more than 2,400 business and IT professionals, of whom 37 percent worked at companies with annual revenue of $1 billion or more. The results indicate an impressive uptick in enterprise adoption of mobile applications.

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/22787

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Apple has been hit by a lawsuit that alleges the company and its partners are surreptitiously collecting personal information from the users of iPhones and iPads.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/215041/apple_hit_with_privacy_class_action_lawsuit.html

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CEOs running VC backed companies are optimistic about the opportunities next year, with 58 percent predicting an increase in investing and 64 percent planning to raise VC capital in 2011. The results mark a turnaround for the VC market, which experienced a big slump in 2009 as the economic recession hit.

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.

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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 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’s Mobile Money News Weekly – December 28, 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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2010 was a turning point for mobile shopping with 44 percent of smartphone users downloading shopping apps and m-commerce sales increasing to $3.4 billion from $1.4 billion in 2009.

http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/12/23/best-of-2010-mobile-commerce/

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To thrive in today's ultracompetitive and economically uncertain market, Wall Street firms need to adapt to the desires of bankers, traders, advisers and clients to always be connected while on the go.

http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/it-infrastructure/228900082

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The Royal Bank of Canada has become that country’s first bank to launch a mobile banking application for select smartphones — namely, BlackBerry devices and iPhones, iPod Touch and iPad.

http://www.mobile-financial.com/node/13311/Apple,-BlackBerry-Smartphones-Get-Mobile-Banking-Apps

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Research published recently by Forrester shows that mobile banking provision in Europe is gathering pace. This refers to all three of the main mobile banking services – mobile web, mobile app and text-based services.

http://www.finextra.com/community/fullblog.aspx?id=4832

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In an era of busy work days and short weekends, getting all the errands done has become more and more challenging. To help keep that to do list short, banks have begun launching applications that allow customers to deposit checks from their smart phones.

http://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/article_1c864842-b945-502e-9716-57da1cf95468.html

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Ebay sees growth in mobile payments pushing its PayPal service toward the offline world, as merchants begin to allow consumers to pay for physical goods with a wave of their smartphone at the cash register.

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

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Visa is in a position to make a large profit from the payment processing of mobile transactions as this sector continues to grow in popularity.

http://www.pivotalpayments.com/ca/industry-news/visa-set-to-benefit-from-growing-mobile-payment-processing-800311152/

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Last month, an unlikely partnership of Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile announced a new initiative called Isis that will create an NFC contactless payment network for the three companies’ combined 230 million customers.

http://mashable.com/2010/12/15/smartphone-wallet/

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For many people, smartphones are almost as indispensable as wallets, and your smartphone could soon replace your wallet. A collection of the biggest wireless carriers, handset makers and software developers are putting their weight behind a technology called near field communication.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/122310dnbusdigitalwallet.3044eaf.html

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Of the top 100 financial institutions, nearly 40 percent offer access via mobile web, while 32 percent offer SMS banking and/or alerts and 32 percent offer apps.

http://www.firstannapolis.com/2010-Mobile-Banking-and-Payments-Study

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PayPal is announcing that its payments business is flourishing throughout the holiday shopping season, with a 300 percent increase in mobile payments from November 15 through December 15 compared to the same period last year.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/17/paypal-holiday-mobile-payments-up-300-percent/

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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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Google Android operating system 2.3, nicknamed Gingerbread, enables near-field communication as promised, but the final release only allows consumers to receive NFC transmissions, not send them. That makes it impossible for consumers to load payment data onto the handset and use that in lieu of credit card

http://www.creditnet.com/credit-news/latest-android-os-won-t-support-mobile-credit-card-payments-800280884.php

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Cellphones functioning as "electronic wallets," shopping carts that provide recipes and a greater ability to command electronic devices with human gestures are some of the technological trends expected to emerge in the coming year and beyond.

http://www.timescolonist.com/life/Cellphones+will+become+wallets+2011+forecast/3979201/story.html

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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.

Recent Articles by Kevin Benedict

MeLLmo the Maker of the RoamBI Mobile Application Closes More Funding
Leadership Change in SAP's Mobility Business Unit - Again
Which Mobile Application Company Will SAP Acquire Next?
QR Codes and Mobile Retailing Applications
eBay Mobile Commerce - Real Time Data from Six Global Markets
Changing Attitudes of Mobile Shoppers
Tablets, Mobile Applications and the Enterprise
Wall Street Analyst and SAP Enterprise Mobility
The Global Market for M2M Devices is HUGE!

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

Also available are Kevin’s Mobile Retailing 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.

The Global Market for M2M Devices is HUGE!

The global market for machine-to-machine (M2M) device connections will grow from 62 million devices in 2010 to 2.1 billion devices in 2020, according to a new report from Analysys Mason (London, UK). With a year-on-year growth rate of between 36 percent and 52 percent. M2M is predicted to be one of the fastest growing wireless connectivity sectors in the next decade.

Wireless M2M Sensors

Some of the biggest enterprise M2M markets are the following:

energy and utilities
security and surveillance
health care and acute disease tracking
in vehicle GPS and entertainment systems

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that the above-listed markets are huge! M2M is another category of enterprise mobility that takes advantage of mobile technologies and miniaturized sensors and monitoring equipment to send and receive data wirelessly to and from a centralized server. On the server is management software that allows the human to understand what is going on in remote locations.

Happy Holidays
from Kevin Benedict!

I received an interesting call yesterday from a Wall Street analyst. He wanted my opinion on SAP's acquisition of Sybase. His premise was that there was not $5.8 billion worth of value in Sybase. I responded that I had no expertise in valuation so could not help him in that determination. However, I did have more than enough opinions on enterprise mobility to share.

I provided him the following list for his consideration during his valuation exercise:

1) Had he looked into the potential value of Sybase's 365? I said much of the world, and the fastest growing segments of the mobile market (LDC - less developed countries), are increasingly using SMS for mobile banking, money transfers, mobile payments, and many enterprise applications like field services, inventory, database queries, sales reports, etc. He had not considered this.

Mobile Shopping

Cameron Franks, area vice president of sales for the Americas at Sybase 365, an SAP Company, recently spoke about a survey they conducted with 1,000 consumers on mobile holiday shopping. The key finding of the survey was that 32 percent of consumers, if offered mobile-based deals, coupons or alerts, could be persuaded to make a purchase on their mobile device.

Another recent survey by mobile marketing agency Briabe Media and mobile-social networking company MocoSpace, they found that 30 percent of survey respondents said they expected to use mobile coupons during this holiday season. Also in the survey, 62 percent said they planned to use mobile phones as a shopping tool prior to entering a store; and 46 percent stated they would use their phones for store or product research.

Tablets, Mobile Applications and the Enterprise

I have been reading several articles lately that talk about how popular tablets are predicted to become in the enterprise market. Here is an excerpt from one article that I read this morning:

More than one in five Americans will own a tablet by 2014, and 37 percent of them will own them for business use, according to a recent survey.

Current business use of tablets:

Business correspondence (58%)
Online meetings/Web conferences (37%)
Marketing (34%)
Training (33%)
Finance/accounting (32%)
Sales (27%)
Graphic design (27%)
Inventory management (27%)
Customer support (24%)

Another article stated, "Apple could sell 21 million units of its iPad tablet next year as half of the largest and most prominent companies in the world begin testing or deploying the iPad for corporate use, according to an analyst with Wall Street firm Piper Jaffray."

Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – December 23, 2010

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

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

Home Depot iPhone App

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leadership Change in SAP's Mobility Business Unit - Again

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

Is Kevin Benedict Next?

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

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

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

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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.

Mobile Applications and Device Governance

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

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

MeLLmo the Maker of the RoamBI Mobile Application Closes More Funding

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

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

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

Click to Download

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

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Santa Goes Mobile this Holiday Season

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

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

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

What are Your Predictions for Enterprise Mobility in 2011?

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

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

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

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

I look forward to your thoughts!

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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.

Syclo and the SAP Unwired Platform

I listened to the pre-recorded SAP/Syclo webinar Mobility for Utilities Webcast today. At the end of the webcast there was a question and answer segment. The first question asked if Syclo was going to support SAP's SUP (SAP/Sybase Unwired Platform). First, Dan Mahowald, Vice President, North America Enterprise Mobility, SAP Americas answered. He said, "I am encouraged by discussions with the Syclo R&D team. This is a new area that both parties are exploring. Syclo says they intend to support SUP. SAP utility customers want many mobile applications, so SAP wants to help by providing them with a mobility platform (SUP) that can support them."

My interpretation of Dan's last sentence is that Syclo's mobile infrastructure is Syclo specific. SAP utility customers may want mobile applications from a vareity of different mobile vendors, so a mobile infrastructure platform that is not specific to one vendor may be better.

Next, Syclo's Senior VP SAP Business Development Jon Schmidt added, "It is our intent to support the SUP strategy and architecture. It adds great value. It is our intent to migrate our existing solutions to SUP. We are working very closely with SAP on this."

SAP Unwired Platform

I read a whitepaper today, ClickSoftware's Mobility Suite and the Sybase Mobility Solutions that details how ClickSoftware intends to support SAP's mobility strategy and the reasons for doing so.

I get a lot of questions from systems integrators about how the various SAP mobility partners will be supporting SUP and SAP's mobility strategy, so this is a timely whitepaper from one vendor that does a good job of explaining their strategy.

Related links:

Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – December 16, 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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In the first three months of 2010, just 2.1 percent of smartphones shipped in Australia were based on the Android platform, but over the succeeding three months to the end of June, the percentage of Android shipments had more than trebled, reaching 7.1 percent at the end of that period. Then in the three months to the end of September, Android’s share of the smartphone market exploded again — up to 21 percent.

http://delimiter.com.au/2010/12/09/android-triples-aussie-market-share-in-3-months/

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Samsung has been in overdrive to catch up with rivals Apple, which makes the iPhone and Research in Motion's BlackBerry in the smartphone sector. In the last quarter, Samsung tripled its market share to nine percent, making it the fourth biggest player in the smartphone segment.

http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_bus/2010-12-08/696861479515.html

Mobile Expert Interview Series: ClickSoftware's Founder Dr. Moshe BenBassat

I had the opportunity to speak to Dr. Moshe BenBassat, Founder of ClickSoftware yesterday about the release of their lastest version of ClickMobile called ClickMobile Professional. He was calling from Israel where they have been having some very stormy winter weather over the past week.

Let me first give you some background on Dr. BenBassat. Following a long and successful academic career with positions at USC, Tel Aviv University and UCLA, he established himself as one of the world's leaders in the area of optimization and decision support software for a wide variety of applications. His research work was supported by DARPA (the U.S.’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency); NIH (National Institute of Health); Ballistic Missile Defense Agency (via TRW); ARI (U.S. Army Research Institute); NASA; and NSF (National Science Foundation). Now that is credibility!

*Important Note: These are not Dr. BenBassat's exact words, rather a compilation of my notes taken during our discussion.

Kevin: Tell me about the new version of ClickMobile Professional that you announced today.
Dr. BenBassat: What makes this version unique is that it uses HTML5 to become device agnostic. It has what I call a universal mobile client that can run on and support all the major mobile operating systems, plus device specific features, offline/online and data syncing capabilities.

SAP's Nick Brown on the right

I had the opportunity to catch up with SAP's Nick Brown with the Mobile Business Unit on the phone this morning. He was calling from dark and snowy Waldorf, Germany. This call was scheduled to help cover some of the questions that did not get answered at last week's SAP Infuencer Summit (see my full report from this event here).

Here are the questions that were asked by you the readers of this blog that were not answered in full at the event.

*Important Note: These are not the exact words of Nick Brown. I have often shortened the answers and revised them to be more concise for the purpose of this article. I have tried my best to keep the original meaning. Blame me for any misinterpretations.

Kevin: Will there be Android support in SUP (SAP unwired platform)?
Nick: Yes, full support will be released in the second half of 2011. However, partial support for lightweight applications will be sooner.

Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

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

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly – December 28, 2010

The Global Market for M2M Devices is HUGE!

Wall Street Analyst and SAP Enterprise Mobility

Changing Attitudes of Mobile Shoppers

Tablets, Mobile Applications and the Enterprise

Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – December 23, 2010

eBay Mobile Commerce - Real Time Data from Six Global Markets

QR Codes and Mobile Retailing Applications

Which Mobile Application Company Will SAP Acquire Next?