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Nokia Ignored America – Is it now ignoring its own assets?

February 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Nokia ignored America

Is it now ignoring its own assets?

Amplify’d from blogs.hbr.org

The Real Cause of Nokia’s Crisis

Nokia’s technology isn’t a root cause of its current crisis. Don’t blame its engineers and designers either. The company still knows how to innovate. There’s a simpler and more strategic explanation for why this once-perennial market leader became second-rate.

Nokia ignored America. The company simply refused to compete energetically, ingeniously and respectfully in the U.S. America was treated as an innovation afterthought. Nokia tried to get away with preserving its market dominance in Europe and growing its leadership in Asia. The richest country in the world was, literally and figuratively, a third-class priority for the Finnish giant.

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Filed Under: Daily Insights and Observations Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Mobile BI is going to big – ReadWriteWeb Recommends 10 iPad Apps

February 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment

To attract and retain great talent, enterprises are compelled to give employees the tools that empower them to be successful. Mobile Business Intelligence tools are one of those tools that need to be included in the enterprise arsenal.

Our colleague Howard Dresner over at Dresner Advisory Mobile BI Survey picked up the importance of mobile BI over a year ago. He’s got an update due out soon.

Amplify’d from www.readwriteweb.com
Gartner predicts that by 2013, 33% of business intelligence functionality will be consumed on mobile devices. And it seems that these sort of forecasts are usually over-aggressive, our commenters seem to agree that Gartner’s forecast is a bit too modest. BI going mobile quickly, and tablets are leading that movement.

Read more at www.readwriteweb.com
 
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AT&T iPhone app for wireless PBX

February 2, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Interesting cloud offering.
On the surface, seems like a cost effective, flexible solution.

Amplify’d from www.rcrwireless.com

AT&T iPhone app targets small business with wireless PBX

AT&T Mobility is introducing an iPhone application and service aimed at small businesses that turns the iPhone into a mobile PBX. The service costs between $14 and $16 per month, depending on the number of users, while the application is a free download.
The app can be used with existing mobile and fixed-line phones, running services such as auto-receptionist, multiple department and employee extensions, voicemail, rules for call handling, faxing and on-hold music, among other features. Not all employees need to have wireless phones to use the service.
AT&T said it partnered with RingCentral Inc., which provides a cloud-based business phone systems platform

Read more at www.rcrwireless.com
 
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2011 Bucket List: Cloud Computing Predictions

December 4, 2010 by Leave a Comment

I’ve been getting a growing number of questions about my predictions for the Cloud Computing market in 2011.

My work is still in progress, but here are a few predications that I hope you will find provocative if not down right brilliant :-)

• Despite the hype to the contrary, in 2011 many cloud computing efforts in large enterprises will bare tornadoes.

The principle issues include but are not limited to incomplete cloud management platforms, immature security tools and significant shortfalls in interoperability.

• Cloud computing acceptance will accelerate in the small business sector during 2011.

One of the byproducts of the macro economic environment we find ourselves facing, is high relative net new growth in the small business (SMB) services sector. This is an operating group that traditionally as been both frugal and incompetent, or looked at IT as a necessary evil and not a weapon of revenue. I think that there is a seismic shift in the behavior of small business about the value of IT and one of the translations will be a migration to cloud computing.

• New cloud market entrants touting specific service agilities and/or functions will make the loudest noise in 2011.

In fact its quite likely that we will see more function specific clouds supporting multiple modalities across both public and private cloud frameworks in 2011 than we have seen in the last five years combined.

• The mobile cloud computing market triples (at least) in 2011

Statistics indicate that nearly 30% of American’s are walking around with more computing power than they had at their desktop toward the end of the last decade. We will likely see innovation here a few areas including: private mobile frameworks for the enterprise workforce, public multi-tenant, multi-service frameworks that support consumer application provisioning that include support for real time and on demand video, audio and gaming services.

Again, this is work in progress. I would really appreciate hearing your point of views. predictions

…and of course, feel free to flame me !

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Filed Under: cloud computing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Some Data-Miners Ready to Reveal What They Know

December 3, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Via the WSJ

Online tracking is legal, and companies currently aren’t bound by government rules to show people what they know about them.
The Federal Trade Commission earlier this week called for the development of a do-not-track tool system that would enable people to avoid having their actions monitored online—a move the online advertising industry opposes.

The $25 billion Internet advertising industry is scrambling to make more transparent its widespread practice of collecting, selling and using Web browsing and other profile information about consumers, as part of a broader effort to ward off federal regulation.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704377004575650802136721966.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEADSecond

BE - These issues extend to smartphone handset access to the internet, but also the spyware that is embedded into mobile applications that is use to gather intelligence about the handset owner.

while some very aggressive trackers are participating, larger companies like Google and Yahoo are missing in action.

I think the industry has 12 months to really get its act together otherwise it will be forced into regulation.

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Filed Under: privacy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Consumer mobile banking up 1.6% in Q2

November 22, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Che
Image by owenkohai via Flickr

Consumers who use mobile banking carry a higher balance.
Mobile Office workers make up 14.8%  of mobile bankers.

About 13.2% of households accessed mobile bank account in Q2.

Data via Nielsen

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Filed Under: consumer experience, mobile browser Tagged With: , , , , ,

Will Microsoft Mobile Find Success? 5 Things We Need To Hear

October 11, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Image representing Microsoft as depicted in Cr...

Image via CrunchBase

Today is a very important day for Microsoft – one that could very well determine the long term success of the company. At question is whether the company can muster the talent to either extend its’ dominate desktop franchise and architecture and put it into the wanting hands of mobile consumers, or redefine its position in the category completely, in what is already a very fragmented market.  Keep in mind; this is Microsoft’s 3rd or 4th reincarnation hailing as far back as its JV with Qualcomm – Wireless Knowledge.

With that in mind, here are five things I think we need to hear from Microsoft.

  1. A blistering cool user interface that gets people talking. Given what we’ve already heard, we know there is a new operating system (OS). How consumers feel when use the new OS is going to be key
  2. Socially seamless consumer experience.  Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla plus email, instant messaging, music, picture and video sharing continue to be a growing daily digest of things people do – at home and on their mobile. If Microsoft can seduce consumers to its platform by making the social consumer experience simple and seamless, this may stand to differentiate the company from the field.
  3. Mobile Cloud solution for small business – The appetite for getting things done faster, simpler and at lower cost is an insatiable requirement in the small business market. This could be a big home run sector for Microsoft if it puts together a smart toolbox.
  4. Tools that allow IT to more easily embrace the consumerization of IT. Increasingly CIO’s and their IT staff are pushed against the wall to support the latest and greatest mobile handset. There is a growing IT policy be dammed attitude brewing that will come to a quick halt the minute some consumer, employee or regulatory infraction results in a lawsuit named after the offending company. Research in Motion (RIM) is the king here; Microsoft needs to go after RIM with both guns afire. Apple has some enterprise hooks, but similar to using the Android platform most CIO’s resort to third party solutions that result in raising the complexity of device management and the total cost of ownership of the mobile solutions.
  5. A large application warehouse that has great developer incentives. Nothing more need be said about this.

Clearly there are other basic items we need to hear including but not limited Microsoft’s hardware handset roadmap, carriers and content partners, but this list is a start of what I think could differentiate Microsoft in the mobile sector. What do you think we need to see?

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Filed Under: Android, Apple, Blackberry, business productivity, cloud computing, consumer experience, device performance, Microsoft, Mobile, mobile applications, mobile enterprise Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

New rule on mobile ACH payments in US

October 6, 2010 by Leave a Comment

An important step in standardizing mobile payments in the U.S.
Pseudo regulations/standards action like this tend to legitimize an emerging tech trend – in this case, mobile ACH.

US electronic payments association NACHA has approved a new rule on mobile ACH payments as part of the NACHA Operating Rules.
http://linkd.in/dpI3Fj

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Filed Under: mobile applications, mobile banking, mobile commerce, Mobile Industry Issues, mobile payments, standards Tagged With: , , , , ,

Mobile payments in the U.S. remain an attractive but elusive idea

September 28, 2010 by Leave a Comment
The door to the walk-in vault in the Winona Sa...

Image via Wikipedia

The report concludes that the most successful current mobile payment applications occur where a “scheme operator” controls both the banking and telecommunications assets of the plan. In the United States, ownership in both the telecom and banking industries is too fragmented for one firm or even group of firms to operate a broad mobile payments solution.

The opposite is true in many developing countries that combined with a less complex regulatory structure is why mobile payment initiatives have been far more successful in emerging economies.

http://bit.ly/9pxNFl

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Filed Under: Mobile Industry Issues, mobile payments Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Nokia’s World: The U.S. Problem

September 14, 2010 by 2 Comments
Image representing Nokia as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

According to my most recent mobile device snapshot poll, there is no surprise that Blackberry continues to dominate the business market by some 20 points. That the Apple iPhone, especially in small business continues to gain share (more on that later) is clearly a worry from RIM. For all the hype of Android, is still a techies dream and remains no serious cause in the business market based on the responses. And Microsoft has all but lost its positions as a player in the business market with its mobile offering.

Nokia, who all but orphaned the enterprise device market a few years ago, is still the #1 player in the worldwide consumer market. However I believe if the company is going to reinvigorate itself Nokia would be well advised start thinking more about how to gain share in the business market. More and more consumers are pushing IT to support their choice of phone – case in point the iPhone. No consumer push, no support.

Few prosumers want or have to carry two phones. This should come as no surprise as this sort of work/personal device convergence aligns well with the new media, payment and communications convergence that is taking place.

What Smartphone device does your IT group support for you?

Disclosure: I am a Nokia shareholder

Filed Under: Blackberry, mobile applications, mobile enterprise, Mobile Industry Issues, Nokia Tagged With: , , , , , , ,