Data point: Mobile disrupts most media

May 24, 2012

Posted by: in North America

As smartphone adoption grows and attention spans attenuate, people are increasingly multitasking their media consumption. According to recent research published by Google, almost 9 in 10 smartphone owners in the U.S. use their mobile while doing other things, whether watching a movie, playing a video game or reading. We highlighted this phenomenon in our recent report, “15 Ways Mobile Will Change Our Lives.” And our latest report spotlights how marketers are taking advantage of the second screen as more TV viewers sit on the couch with smartphones (or other mobile devices) in hand. Google’s research finds that more than half of U.S. smartphone owners use their device while watching TV. The spike in connected screens and services that link them with the big screen is creating intriguing new possibilities for TV broadcasters and marketers alike.

Google’s report also looks at how people are turning to their mobiles for a growing roster of functions, behavior that will become increasingly prevalent. The data shows that 35 percent of smartphone owners expect to use their device to access the Internet more often in the future. And as more marketers lead shoppers onto their smartphones, m-commerce will become increasingly important to retail. As yet, more than a third of Google’s respondents said they have purchased a product or service on their smartphone, and more than two-thirds of those did so in the previous month. Mobile-optimized sites and location-specific deals will become crucial for capturing shoppers via their smartphones.

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What’s a Store Anyway? The Rise of the Mobile Shopper

November 25, 2011

Posted by John Squire in Benchmarking on November 4th, 2011

Around this time last year, Susan Etlinger, an analyst with Altimeter Group said something that stopped me in my tracks. In the context of discussing ecommerce, Susan asked, “what’s a store, anyway?”

Not that long ago, it would have been clear that a store is where you go when you want to buy something. Obviously it had to be a physical place. But starting in the 90s, people began shopping online using their PCs and a web browser. We had to come up with the terms “brick-and-mortar” and “ecommerce” to distinguish a physical store from one on the Internet. Now with the rise of mobile commerce, stores have become entirely portable; since most people never leave the house without a phone, a store can go wherever you go.

That conversation with Susan came back to me as I started thinking about what this year’s online retail trends were likely to be. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to say that this is going to be a breakout year for mobile shopping. IBM data suggests that an unprecedented 15 percent of people will shift their shopping from the PC to a mobile device this holiday season. This prediction is based on October 2011 figures which show that nearly 11 percent of people who logged onto a retailer’s site used a mobile device, up from the 4.2 percent recorded on October 2010. Furthermore, if current consumer trends stay true to form, we expect that 15 percent of all online sales—not just traffic—will come from mobile devices. That means people are using their mobile devices not just to browse for or research products and services, but to buy them.

What we’re watching is the rise of the post-PC consumer (by the way, here’s a detailed read on IBM’s strategic decision to sell its PC division to Lenovo, by Mark Dean, one of the original engineers who created the PC) and that’s where Susan’s observation about the changing nature of stores gets really interesting.

Global brands need to think about their consumers in an entirely different way. IBM data shows that mobile shoppers are even more laser focused than their PC-using counterparts: 44 percent of mobile users will abandon a site if they don’t find what they want on the very first page, versus an overall online rate of just over 37 percent. Mobile users, it would seem, don’t have the patience or the inclination to sift through a site for what they want. And why should they? With a simple flick of a finger across a screen, they can obliterate one brand in favor of another.
Over the long haul, this trend is only going to get bigger.

Right now, we’re experiencing the voracious adoption of mobile phones across the globe. Relatively tech-savvy people with some amount of money to spend are driving the spike in mobile commerce. But in the future, mobile shopping will spread everywhere. Think about the many millions of people who don’t have broadband access in their homes and who don’t own a laptop (and perhaps never will). We can anticipate that one day, when these people shop online, they’re going to do so using a mobile device.

The onus is on retailers to remember that their brands have become entirely portable. The empowered consumer quite literally has retailers, their brands, and their stores right where he wants them: in the palm of his hand. That means that relevance—a tailored, personalized, wow-they-really-know-what-I-like approach to marketing—is more important than ever.

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Connected kids

November 23, 2011

At C24 we work a lot within education. We spotted this excert below that we thought really highlighted how connected todays kids are. It is

I pulled some data from a presentation from the K5 Learning Blog. Kids today are amazingly connected, but less involved in the physical world:

  1. More US kids aged 2-5 can play a computer game than ride a bike.
  2. 19% of kids aged 2-5 know how to play a smartphone app; 9% know how to tie their shoelaces.
  3. More kids aged 2-5 can open a browser than swim unaided.
  4. Kids aged 0-8 spend an average of 1 hour 44 minutes watching TV or video daily, 29 minutes reading, 29 minutes listening to music, 25 minutes playing computer or video games, and 5 minutes using new mobile devices.
  5. Kids aged 8-18 spend 7 hours 38 minutes using entertainment media daily: more than 53 hours per week. That’s an hour more than 2004 (6 hours 30 minutes). Because they multitask [non-rivalrous media] they pack 10 hours 45 minutes into those 7 hours and 38 minutes.
  6. 65% of kids aged 0-8 watch TV at least once per day. That’s 37% of kids aged 0-1, 73% of kids aged 2-4, and 72% of kids aged 5-8.
  7. Kids under 2 spend twice as much time watching TV and videos than being read to (1 hour 54 minutes versus 53 minutes per day).
  8. For kids aged 8-18, live TV consumption declined by 25 minutes from 2004 to 2009, but total TV consumption went up thanks to the Internet, cell phones, and iPods. 59% (2 hours 39 minutes) consisted of watching live TV, and 41% (1 hour 50 minutes) consisted of time-shifted TV, DVDs, online, or mobile.
  9. 53% of kids aged 2-4 have used a computer, 90% of kids aged 5-8 have.
  10. 25% of kids are going online daily by age 3, 50% by age 5.
  11. Cell ownership among kids 8-18 rose from 39% in 2004 to 65% in 2009.
  12. 7-12th graders spend an average 1 hour 35 minutes per day sending and receiving texts.
  13. 51% of kids aged 0-8 have played a console game, 81% of kids aged 5-8. 17% of kids aged 5-8 play console games at least once a day, 36% play then at least once per week.
  14. 27% of kids aged 2-5 screen time is used with new digital devices.
  15. 29% of parents have downloaded apps for their kids aged 2-5 to use.
  16. iPod ownership for kids aged 8-18 rose from 18% in 2004 to 76% in 2009.
  17. 23% of kids aged 0-8 watch educational TV shows, 8% use educational programs on the computer, 7% play education games on new mobile devices.

via stoweboyd:

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Cloud Computing is one of the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2012

November 10, 2011

As every year, Gartner identifies the 10 technologies that will be strategic for most organizations all through next year. And of course, cloud computing is among them.

For Gartner, the technologies appearing in the report have potential enough to significantly impact during the next 3 years, whether in business or IT department, as well as receive an important volume of investment or mean a risk in case organizations do not implement them in time. A strategic technology can already exist or be mature and/or become suitable enough for a wide range of uses. It can be also an emerging technology that offers an opportunity for strategic business advantages for early adopters or with potential for significant market disruption within the next five years. These technologies represent an impact on the organizations long-term plans, programs and initiatives. In short, these technologies will be strategic for most organizations and, as such, they should be included in planning for IT leaders.

Let’s see what Gartner says about Cloud computing technologies:

The cloud is a disruptive force and has potential to generate a long-term impact in most industries. While market remains in its early stages in 2011 and 2012, it is expected that all suppliers of large companies offer the possibility to build cloud environments and also services in the cloud.

Companies are already implementing private and hybrid cloud environments to bring together capabilities such as securing, managing and governing all business requirements.

Furthermore, form security point of view, companies are already working to solve this critical point. For Gartner, the challenge of private clouds is to lead the operations and development groups closer among each other in order to approach the speed and efficiency of public providers of cloud services.

 

As an anecdote, we’ve also deemed important to refer to other technologies covered in the report:

Mobile Devices platform: A unique platform leave us in a both B2E and B2C environment, and IT managers will have to face that.

Applications for mobile devices, changing interfaces: The emphasis on touch, gestures, search, voice and video, will change the way we design user interfaces.

User experience: The quality of interaction with the end user or an object will improve knowing computer context built with information obtained through activities, connections and user preferences; and this all, in order to anticipate to users needs.

Internet of Things: The Internet is reaching objects thanks to the inclusion in them of devices connected to Internet focused in technologies for identifying, sensing and communicating.

Apps stores: Gartner predicts billions of downloads per year. This will grow from a consumer-only phenomenon to an enterprise focus creating the Enterprise app stores.

Next generation Google Analytics: Analytics will mature from structured and simple data analyzed by individuals to analysis of complex information of many types (text, video, etc…) The new step is to provide simulation, prediction, optimization and other analytics, that goes beyond information.

Big Data. The size, complexity of formats and speed of delivery exceeds the capabilities of traditional data management technologies, a fact that underscores the emergence of new technologies to solve it.

In-Memory Computing. Gartner emphasizes that there is an excessive use of flash in consumer devices. Large volumes of information are a reality for any department of Business Intelligence, and the increasingly advanced use of large databases in business, the operating speed is a key concern: in-memory computing could be the answer who was looking for.

Low-power servers. The potential advantage is the reduction of consumption but have to avoid or minimize intensive tasks and redirect workloads to a website.

Anticipating to what will happen seems interesting, doesn’t it? If you want learn more, we invite you to read the whole article, as always.

Thanks to http://blog.eyeos.org/en/2011/10/26/cloud-computing-is-one-of-the-top-10-strategic-technologies-for-2012/

 

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The Optimized Mobile User Experience: Convergent Commerce Series

October 5, 2011

Mobile commerce has quickly advanced past a cut-and-paste of a retailer’s ecommerce site—it is a viable, independent channel that needs its own strategy, unique capabilities, and personality if it is going to be a valuable part in a retailer’s cross-channel commerce strategy. In the first Convergent Commerce Series Article, Cross-Channel Plan for Mobile Engagement, the growing reasons to integrate a cross-channel strategy incorporating online, mobile, brick-and-mortar and social were highlighted with a specific focus on mobile. The most effective mobile platform consists of a mobile optimized website, downloadable rich app, and in-store mobile engagement. Incorporating mobile into the overall marketing strategy is an effective means to increase consumer awareness of a retailer’s various channels. In doing so, retailers can attract more visitors, generate more sales, leverage their marketing and merchandising spend, gain insight into customer purchase decisions, and heighten customer relations.

It is important to recognize that while mobile is its own channel wherein consumers interact in a very different way than they do other mediums, it simultaneously links all commerce outlets between the customer and the retail brand. While on the go, consumers use their phones to browse products, perform research through ratings and reviews, video demonstrations and detailed product descriptions, share an item to Facebook and Twitter or email it to friends and family, and ultimately, purchase in as little as sixty seconds. In store, the mobile device and rich apps act as a store loyalty card and personal sales associate providing product details, demonstrations, consumer opinions, and special product and store offers.

There are many important features and functionalities that need to be enabled on a mobile optimized website and rich app in order to provide a convergent commerce platform that enhances the customer shopping experience both in and out of the store. These include:

Rich Product Images and Detailed Product Descriptions: A key feature of an optimized mobile web site and rich app is the ability to view rich and large product images from anywhere at anytime. Consumers can visually see what they are about to purchase in a mobile optimized format, and multiple images per product allow for an interactive user experience from all angles. The product information should be detailed and include variants such as color and size and the price range, if necessary, can include was price, now price, and MSRP.

Product Search: The goal of a product search is to get the consumer to where they are going in as few steps as possible, and so the search function needs to be designed to move the consumer from the homepage to checkout in as little as six clicks. The product search results, whether accessed by searching for product name, category, brand, or item number, should be easy to navigate and have breadcrumbs in place so the customer can easily see the path to return to a previous page or result. Once the customer finds what they are looking for, they should be able to buy it directly from their mobile device or search for Find a Store so they can buy it locally.

Find a Store: Enabled through a geo/zip store locator implementation, Find a Store converges the mobile and in-store channels by enabling consumers to quickly and conveniently access a retailer’s products and information across channels. The store locator makes finding a retail store or merchant vendor quick, simple and convenient. For the retailer, it eliminates customer abandonment based on direction hassles, calling frustrations and time-intensive, unnecessary steps. A one-touch store locator enables a seamless transition from mobile to in-store shopping, further converging retail platforms. In addition, it is through the Find a Store implementation that retailers can enable weekly circular promotions and deals directly to consumers’ smartphones, which broadens their distribution and entices customers to visit the store. The weekly ads, only redeemable in-store, show users local product-specific discounts at stores near them.

Mobile In-Store Marketing: When a customer walks into a retail store with the retailer’s branded rich app installed on their smartphone, they can open the app and click to “check-in” to the store. If the retailer has set up a campaign to be triggered by a check-in at that particular store, a rich message will appear that may be a store announcement, a specific offer, or simply a welcome message. While in the store, retailers can push notifications to consumers based on in-store events or announcements. Upon leaving, retailers can send customers a notification within the branded app that could include an invitation to an exit survey, a loyalty promotion, or even a simple “thank you” for visiting the store.

In-Store Product Research: Barcode scanning via a smartphone’s camera is an integral part of the cross-channel retail strategy and is one of the driving forces between the mobile and in-store channels. The retailer’s rich app implementation of barcode scanning empowers customers to access additional information about specific products, such as complete product descriptions, additional product images, ratings and reviews, add to wish list and registry, and even see a product video demonstration or receive an instant coupon for a special product offer. Additionally, the customer can view up-to-date availability and can order directly and immediately from their mobile device if the store is out of the size or color the consumer wishes to purchase.

QR Code Scan: A customer’s ability to scan QR codes within the retailer’s branded app and have them link to any number of offers or responses unlocks countless possibilities for making a retail store mobile-aware. Scanning QR codes cannot only generate insights into product preferences, but can also create an opportunity to serve relevant promotions. QR codes can be used in catalogs, in-store signage and even advertisements, all to drive product and promotion awareness within the retailer’s branded rich app.

To determine which mobile platforms— web site, app or both—will bring the most ROI for a retailer’s investment, brands should look at their customer base and commerce outlets. It is through the mobile web that consumers will initially interact with a retailer from a mobile device. Mobile web allows customers to benefit from a fast, easy-to-use interface for browsing, searching and buying while on the go. The retailer can then engage and transform the customer from occasional visitor to loyal customer by having them download the app for faster, more frequent and higher value experiences, whether they’re in the store or on the move. In doing so, the retailer can drive incremental sales, increase customer loyalty and learn more about consumers’ buying behavior to serve them better in the future.

Article from mobile retail blog

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Cloud Backup Leader Asigra Introduces Latest Model

June 6, 2011

Asigra, a leading cloud backup recovery and restore (BURR) software provider since 1986, is bringing a lot of firsts to the market with its latest offering. Today, the company introduced the Asigra Cloud Backup v11 with Cloud BURR industry firsts including: data protection of handheld devices, including tablets and smartphones; the first multi-tenanted client to reduce dramatically management resources; and the industry’s only automated cloud license server.

The new software also takes the title as the first enterprise-class cloud backup platform to protect the entire digital footprint, including storage, servers, desktops, and laptops; to provide data recovery and restore assurance (R2A) for consumers, and to establish new performance benchmarks.

“Our CEO back in 1986 lost his data and he was looking for a solution that would provide in his mind recovery assurance,” Ashar Baig, senior director of product marketing, told TMCnet in a recent interview about why Asigra’s new version was introduced. “Since then, we’ve used this term a lot called R2A which is recovery, restore, assurance, which means that the data is always going to be restored back to you.

” Asigra Cloud Backup v11 offers a variety of benefits including the fact that it will become an industry-first SMB and enterprise-wide cloud backup, recovery and restoration support for tablets and smart phones for end-to-end protection of the digital footprint.

This expanded support allows rollback to any point across any device to meet recovery point and recovery time objectives (RPO/RTO), according to company officials. The Apple App Store, Android (News – Alert) Market and Amazon Appstore now carry Asigra’s mobile backup app. In addition, the latest Asigra version guarantees that it will make good on its promise to return lost data, unlike other consumer backup solutions.

“Lots of consumer backup solutions out in the marketplace provide unlimited backup but they don’t provide recovery assurance that your data is going to be recoverable,” Baig said. “There’s no reason to back up the data if you are not going to be able to recover it so the one thing we do on the enterprise class is we offer R2A.

Our software does five things in the background to make sure that your data are recoverable.” Among those things are data integrity checks– data corruption checks and restore validation.

Other highlights of version 11 include an automated Asigra world-class cloud license server which provides the industry’s highest level of management automation of any cloud backup solution for service providers and end-users; a comprehensive and intuitive Web-based command center that provides complete visibility, control and management of the entire Asigra environment; up to 400 percent performance improvement; and support for 10 Gbps LAN interfaces on storage hardware, network switches and servers.

Moreover, the internal Asigra processes have been improved to handle much faster data read/writes. “How organizations protect their data is increasingly determined by user-driven trends, such as the integration of mobile devices in business environments,” David Farajun, CEO of Asigra, said in a statement. “The launch of version 11 reaffirms our commitment to overcoming the challenges of today’s evolving IT environment by providing the finest technology available to meet the needs of our customers. There simply isn’t a better end-to-end data protection solution in the world.”

Asigra Cloud Backup v11 provides a “simple, single, adaptable, and flexible” cloud BURR platform for end-to-end data protection – from handhelds to distributed data centers, according to company officials. The version offers data protection for Apple (News – Alert) iOS devices such as the iPad, iPod, and iPhone and Google Android–based tablets and smartphones.

“It will be important for IT professionals to deploy comprehensive backup and recovery strategies if they hope to reduce the staff requirements, capital expense and operational inefficiencies of managing multiple islands of data protection in the enterprise,” Dave Russell, research vice president for Gartner (News – Alert), said in a statement.

“Cloud backup, recovery and restore providers that deliver more holistic solutions will see their message resonate rapidly with the growing number of organizations plagued by backup challenges.” Added Baig, “We have 400,000 end customer sites that are protected by Asigra. We have been in business 25 years. But of all these end customer sites if anyone ever initiated a restore their data was always restored to them. That’s a very powerful statement to make in this day and age.”

Carrie Schmelkin is a Web Editor for TMCnet. Previously, she worked as Assistant Editor at the New Canaan Advertiser, a 102-year-old weekly newspaper, covering news and enhancing the publication’s social media initiatives. Carrie holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a bachelor’s degree in English from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Article source: http://it.tmcnet.com/channels/cloud-communications/articles/182569-cloud-backup-leader-asigra-introduces-latest-model.htm

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Has Everyone Gone Barking Mobile?

January 17, 2011

App Store

Image by Cristiano Betta via Flickr

The answer is yes. Is this a new topic? Well no and yes.

Nowadays when you mention mobile, most people will immediately equate this to mobile phones.

Believe it or not mobile phones could be found in cars as long as 50 years ago and handheld phones could be used in 1979 when the first publicly accessible cellular network existed. But the technology really took off as we know it today about 25 years ago when Mobile phones the size of a brick appeared, and they became commonly used in cars (without hands free) shortly afterwards and so started the era of universal mobile telephony.

This of course pre-dated email and of course the internet or at least as we know it today. So for a long time we have enjoyed the ability to make a phone call while on the move (mobile) which personally saved me a lot of time looking for a phone box which hadn’t been vandalised.

PDA’s even pre-date mobiles, they were used by mobile workers (those who were out and about to you and me) who needed to (or just could) capture data while they were out and about which could then be uploaded at the end of the day onto the server for whatever processing was required. So in a sense haven’t we have been mobile for getting on for 30 + years? So what’s changed and why is it even important what mobile is or isn’t?

The reason it matters is this–

If you are a software vendor and you are not mobile ’enabled’ for all but a few specialist applications, you will be DEAD. Business applications have been sliding towards thin client web enabled mode for years, i.e. you don’t need a client machine to run these applications just a thin client device. Personal applications (and dare I say it MS Office) are going the same way so don’t be dumb, be mobile in everything you do.

The ‘Net’, inter or intra has in effect given everybody the ability to be mobile and continues to define what mobile is; and if enough people think it’s a good idea (and we are way beyond that) then that’s what will happen.

There are massive philosophical issues here. Why talk when all you have to do is txt? Personally I am not sure about that but that’s me. Why go in the office where you can interact with your team when all you have to be is, online. Anyway, back to the point. So what does mobile actually mean because there are many types of ‘mobileness’? Telephony, the most ubiquitous was not even the first way of mobile working, as discussed earlier?

Well try this; The opportunity to interact or operate socially and/or professionally without being location dependent.

If this is a fair description then this has to be applied to applications to see if they pass the acid test. BUT, is even this a true definition? Any idiot can move around with their laptop in any location and as long as there is wireless, are they therefore not living in truly mobile world?

Well in a sense they aren’t because at the end of the day their ‘client’ (i.e. their laptop) is only superficially mobile (i.e. you can carry it); most of the installed software is stuck in one place on their laptop which needs to be with them. I would suggest being truly mobile, a person must use an application that can operate on the ‘thinnest’ client whilst interacting with the cloud in the ‘skinniest’ way to qualify as the gold standard of mobile working … and we all know its better for the planet.

The demise of the desktop is probably a ‘given’; that device which allowed everybody to exist in their own little IT ‘bubble’. and it will be replaced by a mobile IT world where everything is in the ‘cloud’, everything is on demand and everything is mobile. This means of course, applications need to run on whole ’raft’ of mobile devices, phones just happen to be the most common. But, if you are not bothered about talking, just txting, maybe you don’t need one of them either.

So my point is, for the foreseeable future and for most applications, the test of their longevity will be their ‘mobileness’ a new word you heard here, first.

Chris Finch

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Facebook reveals mobile strategy

November 4, 2010

Facebook logo

Image via Wikipedia

The social networking company held a press conference at its Palo Alto headquarters to announce new features that will allow merchants to deliver coupons and specials to Facebook users’ phones, the company has seen exponential growth in the number of users who are accessing the site via a mobile device.

It has signed 22 partners to its ‘deals’ solution, which will allow business to push offers to mobile phones that are in close proximity to the physical store. The Gap one of the first 22 is apparently giving away a pair of jeans to the first 10,000 users  who check in to their local Gap store, which just highlights how important a number of retailers are taking this and how quickly it is being adopted into a multi channel strategy.

It is believed that all companies who have a facebook page will evenetually be using these solutions.

I believe that this could be one of the biggest moves Facebook has done to date as companies will be able to engage directly with ‘fans’ who are very close to purchase with deals and offers. This application will potential change the way retailers/hoteliers utilise their marketing budgets.

I have listed here some important stats for Facebook in 2010

More than 500 million active users

More than 50% log on daily

over 700 billion minutes spent per month

70% of Facebook users are outside the US

A great video to look at about Facebook

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