As difficult as it might be to comprehend, a large number of British companies are yet to develop a website, let alone go mobile and embrace the lucrative and promotional splendors of mobile marketing.
A new study from Made Simple Group shows that approximately one in four UK businesses haven’t developed a dedicated company website. What’s more, one-third of this segment of business owners aren’t planning to develop one.
The study in question, which was sponsored by Microsoft, Huddlebuy, Business 2012 and TaxAssist Accountants, surveyed some 2,000 United Kingdom business owners.
The survey also found that the cost of web development is a major deterrent for many firms; of those who admitted they don’t have a website, more than half cited money as a key concern.
In addition to the lack of motivation for website development in the U.K., the British could also use some help keeping current the websites they do have. The folks at Made Simple Group say that just 8% of companies update their website more than once a day, while one in six “don’t update their site at all.”
SAP’s in-memory software SAP HANA has been officially available for nearly a year, and yet, when it comes to the working functionality and the possibilities for practically applying the technology, many customers remain in the dark.
At CeBIT, SAP took the opportunity to clear up any lingering confusion on the subject by demonstrating a real user example from the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin. One of the largest university hospitals in Europe, Charité has deployed SAP HANA Oncolyzer to analyze patient data for use in medical research and treatment.
SAP customers weren’t the only ones eager to see SAP HANA in action. Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was also present at the demonstration and even tried out SAP HANA Oncolyzer on the iPad herself.
Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype promised to be a marriage made in an integration heaven — especially for Windows Phones owners — but so far it’s been all talk and no action.
A Skype for Windows Phone application, however, will soon make its debut, Skype vice president of products Rick Osterloh asserted in a recent interview taped at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas.
“We’re … working on a Windows Phone product that will be coming out soon,” he said.
When Microsoft purchased the video-conferencing company for $8.5 billion in June 2011 (the deal closed in October), it talked up an unrivaled Windows Phone Skype offering that would include deep integration between the voice over IP service and its mobile operating system. But the merger still has Windows Phone owners waiting for platform integration, let alone a basic application on par with what’s already offered on iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.
That wait is likely to continue. The first Windows Phone product, according to The Verge, could be released as soon as the Mobile World Congress in February, but it won’t be the much-ballyhooed operating system-wide offering originally touted by the companies. Windows Phone owners may have to wait for this rich Skype integration until the Apollo software release, which, according to a leaked roadmap, won’t happen until the fourth quarter of 2012.
“We understand, from our own sources, that the initial release of Skype will not feature deep Windows Phone integration, and that Microsoft is planning this for “Apollo” and beyond,” The Verge is reporting. “Microsoft’s first Windows Phone Skype application will largely be seen as an interim release until Windows Phone ‘Apollo’ is made available.”
But Microsoft and Skype would like you to know that integrations are coming — eventually. “We’re working with a lot of different Microsoft product groups to create direct integrations,” Osterloh said. “Right now, we’re working on Windows Phone, we’ll be working on Windows 8, Xbox, Lync. So a whole range of different Microsoft users will get access to Skype and have a great experience.”
Skype, Osterloh said, now has more than 200 million monthly users.
Now that the information regarding LTE-capable Windows Phone handsets coming to the United States is out of the bag, new questions are arising from the, admittedly scant, information.
Primarily: If the long rumored Ace is the LTE Windows Phone handset that AT&T is set to carry, what happened to the LTE-enabled Lumia 800 handset that was known to be undergoing testing at that very carrier? Was it set aside for the Ace? And if so, why was it being tested at all, given that this deal with the Ace must have been long in the works?
Even more, it’s not known exactly how Windows Phone will be supporting these LTE handsets, as the software itself has been noted to be slack in its LTE capabilities to date. Therefore, if there is a software update coming quickly down the pike is not only an open question, it is a pressing one.
The only scenario that I can summon to mind that might make sense is if Verizon has agreed to pick up the Lumia 800, sans LTE, and AT&T scored the LTE-enabled Ace. Then the information that was leaked today is accurate, that only one Nokia handset with LTE is coming to the states, and we have an explanation as to why AT&T, which had been tipped as very interested in the Lumia 800, did not accept the handset.
There is actually one other scenario, which is that the sources who reported that the Lumia 800 was undergoing testing at both AT&T and Verizon just got it wrong, and in reality the Ace was in the works. For now, we know what is coming in a sense, but there is much more to this story that we have yet to unfold.
Microsoft’s Bing is steadily climbing the Internet ladder to become the no. 2 search engine on the web.
According to Matt McGee of Search Engine Land, “Bing’s slow growth in US search market share continues, and Microsoft’s two-and-a-half-year-old search engine is now practically neck-and-neck with Yahoo.”
Bing’s battle with Yahoo, however, strikes some as peculiar, particularly in light of the fact that Bing powers Yahoo search. And just last year, both companies struck a 10-year deal that will keep Bing in business with Yahoo on a number of fronts.
Still, despite Bing’s tremendous growth since its inception, Google remains the top dog of search engines by a wide margin, according to comScore data.
While both Yahoo and Bing now each control about 15 percent of the search engine market, 65 percent still belongs to Google alone – more than Yahoo and Bing put together.
“For comparison to last year,” McGee writes, “comScore measured Google’s market share at 66.2 percent in November 2010, while Yahoo was at 16.4 percent and Bing at 11.8 percent.”
In a decision that could have some far reaching effects for Apple and the various cases it is currently pursuing against Android device manufacturer HTC, the International Trade Commission has ruled that Apple did not violate patents held by chip manufacturer S3 Graphics, reports Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents.
The official notice of judgement states that no violations by Apple were discovered and that the investigation is terminated. This is S3′s first complaint against Apple, although it still has one more in action.
The case had been going on for some time, even before phone maker HTC acquired it in July of this year. HTC had purchased S3 in order to strengthen its stock of patents in the case that Apple has brought against it. HTC’s hope was that S3′s graphics-related patents would help it fight its battles.
S3 wasn’t HTC’s only hope though, as it’s case has also been bolstered by patents essentially gifted to it by Google. The Android maker has a stake in this as some of the patents involved in the infringement case that Apple has brought against HTC have the potential to affect all Android devices, not just those mande by them.
An ITC judge recently ruled that HTC was in violation of two of Apple’s patents. One of those patents, 6,343,263, for a ‘realtime API’ isn’t just a component of HTC’s devices, it’s a core component of Android and if that ruling was made to stick against it, it could affect the entire Android ecosystem, not just HTC.
“While the outcome is not what we hoped for, we will review the ruling once the commission provides it and will then consider all options, including appeal,” HTC told All Things D.
Losing this complaint is a definite blow to HTC, and could have some ramifications in the overall war, although there is still some 2o separate patent suits being tried in relation to Apple’s patents and HTC products.
It’s a turbulent time for Nokia, as reports have begun to crop up across the media world that carry a single theme: Mass market Nokia Windows Phone handsets will not land in the hands of consumers until 2012. Even more, it could be that no WP7 devices from the famed OEM are released in 2011 whatsoever.
That is a far cry from the Nokia which proclaimed that its handsets were coming this year. It was emphatic. Microsoft can’t be thrilled over the delay either, as the company has placed massive bets on Nokia pulling through and helping it to boost unit shipments. Still, if the product isn’t ready, it is likely better to wait, miss the holiday sales push, and release solid hardware later, than deal with a crippled and rushed first attempt.
And all this before we have manged to get a full handle on what Nokia is truly building. That comes on Wednesday, at Nokia World, when the company is set to lay bare what it has been up to all these months. Let’s go over what we know. First, Ballmer himself promised a “bunch” of handsets from Nokia. According to ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, that means two or three, which is hardly what we would call a ‘bunch,’ but perhaps Microsoft’s CEO was simply mistaken.
We are going to put out a bet for two handsets. Why? Because the schedule seems to indicate it. Following the keynote, past a second session, the event breaks into two ‘options’ to “[g]et to know [Nokia's] latest mobile products:”
Unless Nokia decides to cram two handsets into one session, and put only one into the other, it appears that there are two devices on tap. And what might those devices be? You already know: The Sea Ray and the Saber. The Saber is smaller than the Sea Ray. There has been some talk of a device built for businesses called the ‘Ace,’ but we are quite shaky on its details. Check our most recent spy shots for a taste:
What else might we see? We could get a face-full of the changes that Nokia has made to the Windows Phone software that other OEMs are precluded from implementing. A session at the event entitled “Building a different kind of UI” could be the venue for this, although that talk is set to be given by Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore, so it doesn’t fit perfectly.
Nokia does seem prepared to release a large amount of information at its mini-conference, or at least its sessions dubbed “From Black Swans to Purple Cows and everything in between – 10 things you didn’t know this morning” seems to indicate it.
If Nokia flops on its home turf, following the news of delays, it is hard to say what the company could do to regain investor confidence. Putting that side, the fireworks start in two days. Get ready.
New stock has arrived in Apple’s App Store: SAP apps for iPad and iPhone enhance SAP CRM, support sales, and facilitate mobile use of BusinessObjects. SAP.info offers you a glimpse of these compact, powerful, and free packages.
With Windows 8, Microsoft is preparing for life after the PC. An app store and support for both touchscreens and mobile platforms are to make the next version of the company’s operating system a weapon fit for any arena.
There’s no denying that tablet PCs like the iPad are destined to become well and truly rooted in the business world and smart apps are slated to replace conventional software. We took a look at apps for day-to-day business use.
SAP.info on site at the NEO Mobile Business Conference 2011 in Stuttgart. (Photo: Christiane Stagge)
For 10 years, NEO Business Partners has been implementing software for processes in customer relationship management, service, and maintenance, and for mobile devices as well. Since then, the hype – and consequently the number of events – around the topic of mobile software has grown considerably. Nevertheless, the sixth NEO Mobile Business Conference (MBC) was able to maintain its importance and registered 130 participants.
One change that has occurred over the course of the mobile software movement was quite obvious to see: While laptops were the standard in the beginning, the clear trend is now toward smartphones and tablet PCs.
Hybrid apps and HTML5 on the rise
Mobile software can be used in three different ways: online, offline, or a hybrid of the two. In the case of online applications such as SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM), a constant Internet connection is required. If a connection is interrupted or no UMTS reception is available when a user is on the move, he or she won’t be able to work properly with the software. With offline applications – Adobe Interactive Forms, for instance – no Internet connection is needed; all key functions are available by default. However, these applications can only synchronize data before or after the user’s work is done.
The trend, therefore, is moving toward hybrid applications. With these apps, only certain subareas are made available online, and data synchronization can be set to a particular schedule. NEO Mobile Suite is an example of a hybrid application.
Meanwhile, HTML5 is also opening doors to new possibilities. Using the new API for offline Web applications, a Web site can enable visitors to store temporary copies of its information in a local database through Java. Users can then continue working with the site even when not online.
While Google may be winning the battle in terms of getting the most devices out in the wild, it looks as though Apple’s iOS is still winning the war.
As part of the Senate Judiciary hearings today, former FTC official and new Google employee, Suzanne Michel, said that a full two-thirds of Google’s mobile search traffic comes from iOS devices, even though recent Android trends suggest otherwise. She also detailed the fact that Microsoft, Yahoo and Google all bid to become the default search engine on future iOS devices — with Google obviously submitting the winning bid.
There’s long been theories that while Android is doing well, its users might primarily be using these devices as so-called “dumb phones.” There was also data released today indicating that airport WiFi is mostly used by iOS devices as well. A lot of this could be attributed to the extreme popularity of iPads, but it’s still food for thought.
As difficult as it might be to comprehend, a large number of British companies are yet to develop a website, let alone go mobile and embrace the lucrative and promotional splendors of mobile marketing.
Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype promised to be a marriage made in an integration heaven — especially for Windows Phones owners — but so far it’s been all talk and no action.
Microsoft’s Bing is steadily climbing the Internet ladder to become the no. 2 search engine on the web.
