Easymobile Closer to &#39;Lean, Low-Cost Service&#39; Launch
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Moves by easyJet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou to launch a low-cost mobile service were boosted today by an agreement to rent airtime from T-Mobile.
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Aggregator says it expects flat-rate pricing to simplify budgeting for enterprises and to increase usage of hotspots. By Mobile Pipeline News.
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This will simplify the process of discovery, trial and purchase of mobile applications, content and services for the consumer. HELSINKI: The world&#39;s largest mobile phone maker Nokia, has launched an initiative
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Underdog mobile operator Sprint Nextel Corp. quietly rolled out an emerging technology on Monday to give customers a strong cellular signal and flat-rate calling at home.
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Few service providers are stepping forward to assist businesses with mobile services, according to an IDC survey.
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(InfoWorld) - Field service automation is one of the most advanced areas for mobile applications development among enterprises, and at $280-million-per year laundry services provider Mac-Gray, IT managers say such a project has helped the company clean up both its operations and fuel growth. Tracing its roots back to 1927, when the publicly-held company became the nation's first certified distributor of Maytag brand washing machines, Mac-Gray currently provides laundry outsourcing services to an estimated 58,000 U.S. locations. Customers of its services -- which include apartment buildings, colleges, and other multi-tenant locations -- typically pay the company to provide and service all of their coin-operated laundry equipment under a lease relationship and then split the revenues generated via use of the machines with Mac-Gray. In 2003, as the company found itself looking to grow rapidly via the acquisition of smaller rivals and simultaneously hoping to better optimize its workforce of machine service technicians and money collectors, Mac-Gray leaders decided to replace the voice-based field force management system with a pair of data-driven mobile applications that also embraced geo-location. Four years later, having roughly tripled both the size of its workforce and its annual revenues while dramatically increasing productivity and lowering its consumption of fuel, company executives are heralding the applications -- developed using mobile platform software provided by Vettro -- as a resounding key to its recent success. "The impact of the applications we've built is fairly evident as it's helped us to triple in size since we rolled them out, and there's no question that they have also made us a more competitive company in a lot of ways," said Mike Lento, vice president of operations at Mac-Gray. "We wanted to become more efficient in terms of saving time and money while bringing onboard a lot of smaller companies, and adopting these mobile applications allowed us to do that quickly." Mac-Gray's workers had already been using their company-issued cell phones to communicate with dispatchers, receive assignments, and call in progress reports on their appointments for years. Through the creation of its new applications -- dubbed internally as TechLinx and CollectorLinx -- the company's service technicians and money collectors, respectively, now send and receive text messages about their status instead. In addition to cutting the workers loose from their dispatchers and saving the employees an average of one working hour per day previously spent doing business on the phone, the application is also used in geo-location tracking to maximize the routes workers drive and the assignments they receive to save fuel and mileage on the company's 500 vehicles. Over the course of the project, the system has helped cut fuel expenses and driven down the miles traveled each day by an average of 15 percent per vehicle, Lento said. The tools also channel other vital information back to Mac-Gray's central business operations, including the average time it takes for each transaction to occur and real-time inventory updates of all the parts being used by the company's techs. In that sense, the applications are helping the firm better account for all of its assets and plan for the future, he said. "We had a system that had workers spending a lot of time on the phone in the morning and evenings trying to communicate their progress back to the company, and it was very manual and inefficient," said Lento. "Now our workers act more independently and get more work done, and we use the environmental benefits of the mobile system as a marketing tool." Among the major benefits of using New York-based Vettro's 360 mobile software delivery platform, which helps companies map and create workflow for their applications and tailor programs to run on different types of devices, was that it allowed Mac-Gray's own IT workers to retain complete control over their back-end databases, which could be quickly integrated with the tools, according to the executive. The applications have also proven simple enough to work well on low-cost devices and for most workers to pick them up without extensive training, leading to further savings, said Lento. Industry watchers have observed that while traditional providers of enterprise applications have struggled to find the right mix of technologies to push mobility into many types of large businesses, customers like Mac-Gray who can embrace the tools to streamline logistics have been among the first to benefit from the systems. "Companies in businesses such as overnight shipping and with significant filed force populations have been among the first to truly embrace enterprise mobility, and they will likely continue to find ways to use it to promote real business improvements," said Maribel Lopez, analyst with Forrester Research. "In a lot of industries people still don't have the business case to defend the investment in handhelds and related technologies, but those companies who can apply these tools to logistics will continue to be among the leading adopters."
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Motorola is chosen to initiate a line of mobile handsets costing less than $40 to drive take-up in developing countries.
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When Microsoft realized that enterprises needed help deploying and&#160;managing mobile phones, it turned to a partner it first found in the 1980s.Microsoft approached Mort Rosenthal recently with the idea of starting a company that could help enterprises design, deploy, and manage Windows Mobile mobile phones and services, Rosenthal said. He plans to formally launch the company, called Enterprise Mobile, on Tuesday at the CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment conference in San Francisco. Microsoft is a minority stakeholder in the Watertown, Massachusetts, company, which has quietly been doing business since June.Rosenthal began working with Microsoft in the 1980s when he founded Corporate Software, a company that resold software to large companies and offered them technical service and support.The enterprise mobile market looks similar to the software market at that time, when software was largely sold through retail stores without channels or support for enterprises, he said.&quot;What comes from the [mobile] market is consumer-driven devices,&quot; he said. &quot;We&#39;re about turning those consumer driven devices into enterprise devices.&quot;Enterprise Mobile will do that by offering a wide range of services to enterprises, starting with development of a vision, through to deployment and then including management and support services.Currently, an enterprise has to work with different types of companies that provide a range of services including security, asset management and expense management, said Kitty Weldon, an analyst at Current Analysis. &quot;What Enterprise Mobile brings is the ability for companies to just say, &#39;phew, I can go to this one set of people and they can do everything&#39;,&quot; she said.Enterprise Mobile will work exclusively with Windows Mobile phones so it won&#39;t serve companies that want to support a variety of devices, including BlackBerrys. However, there&#39;s a large market for companies that are happy to standardize on Windows Mobile and other providers similar to Enterprise Mobile might pop up to serve the heterogeneous companies, Weldon said.Enterprise Mobile customers can pay for the services in a number of ways, including a flat consulting fee for the design of a system and then a monthly per-device fee or a per-incident fee for ongoing support.One of the most attractive parts of the ongoing service offering will be that Enterprise Mobile serves as a single point of contact, Rosenthal said. &quot;Today if you have questions, do you call the operator, Microsoft or the OEM?&quot; he said. &quot;Here, we&#39;re the one throat to choke.&quot;Another problem facing many enterprises is challenges around device procurement. If an administrator is designing a new mobile deployment to launch in a few months, it&#39;s virtually impossible to find out if a chosen device will continue to be available by then. Operators and handset makers aren&#39;t forthcoming with that information, Rosenthal said.That&#39;s different from the PC world, where manufacturers will continue to support and make older models even while they introduce new ones.Enterprise Mobile hopes to help solve this problem by working closely with operators and phone makers and possibly even to create its own inventory of devices in order to maintain availability longer, Rosenthal said.Currently, Enterprise Mobile doesn&#39;t have much competition, Weldon said. Companies such as IBM, Accenture, and Electronic Data Systems do help enterprises deploy and manage mobile phones, but they often do so only in tandem with other large jobs, and they may outsource the work to various companies with expertise in different components, she said.However, Microsoft expects to partner with other companies like Enterprise Mobile that might emerge. &quot;We&#39;re kick-starting a new level of engagement&quot; with Enterprise Mobile, said John O&#39;Rourke, general manager of Microsoft&#39;s mobile communications business.Enterprise Mobile has implemented beta versions of Systems Center Mobile Device Manager 2008, mobile device management software that Microsoft plans to introduce on Tuesday.
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Verizon Wireless, preparing to open its network to devices it doesn&#39;t sell, will tell developers how to build products to run on its network at a two-day conference in New York in March.Late last year, the nation&#39;s second-largest carrier announced it would&#160;let consumers use equipment from third parties&#160;as long as it meets minimum technical standards for operating safely on Verizon&#39;s network. Verizon also said it would let them use any application on those devices. The move, expected by the end of this year, would represent a break from the traditionally closed networks of U.S. mobile operators. They typically sell phones themselves, with their own applications loaded, and only after dictating configurations and carrying out rigorous testing.Verizon&#39;s Open Development Conference, which will run March 19-20, will focus mostly on the requirements for devices that would run on the Verizon network, the company said. Verizon had said last year that it would publish technical standards for the developer community by early 2008. More information about the company&#39;s open initiative can be found here.Verizon&#39;s move was widely seen as anticipating the openness requirements attached to a part of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission&#39;s 700MHz spectrum auction, scheduled to begin later this month.&#160;Verizon is among the companies planning to bid&#160;on the prized frequencies, which are expected to reach longer distances and penetrate walls better than the cellular bands used in the U.S. today. Google, which has advocated more open networks, and Verizon rival AT&amp;T also plan to participate. Sprint Nextel plans to turn to third-party vendors for devices to run on its WiMax high-speed mobile network, due to launch in April.&#160;
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Struggling electronics firm considers breaking itself up in a move that could reshape the mobiles industry
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A startup is giving enterprises a way to roll out one phone for use inside and outside the office without a mobile operator's help.
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At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Qualcomm offered a sneak peek of its concept for an ultramobile PC for the largely untapped market where it will meet Intel head on.Qualcomm for the first time demonstrated a prototype of a device reminiscent of Nokia&#39;s N800. Qualcomm calls it a pocketable computer because &quot;if you can&#39;t carry it in your pocket, you can&#39;t carry it with you,&quot; said Sanjay Jha, chief operating officer and president of Qualcomm&#39;s CDMA Technologies Group. The device, which has a slide-out keyboard, runs Windows Mobile, and has HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), GPS (Global Positioning Service), Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.The screen is 800 pixels wide so that most Web sites designed for PCs render nicely, Jha said. That means users could view the regular YouTube.com site, rather than a version of the site designed for mobile phones, he said.The prototype runs on the 7201 chip, a new chip released recently by Qualcomm, but the design is intended to showcase&#160;Qualcomm&#39;s new Snapdragon line of chips. Those chips are now being sampled by hardware vendors, with initial commercial devices expected out this year, he said.Despite the slow take-off of such devices that sit between notebooks and phones -- such as the Samsung Q that runs on Microsoft&#39;s Windows-based ultra-mobile PC platform -- Jha said other factors are finally falling into place to increase their appeal. Faster wireless networks, better processors that require less power and in the near future, the openness of mobile networks and billing plans should increase demand and sales, he said.Still, Qualcomm doesn&#39;t expect that this category of device will approach the widespread adoption of mobile phones. He figures that smartphones make up about 200 million of the entire 1.3 billion handsets on the market. &quot;I think it&#39;s possible to envision a device that sells in that ballpark volume,&quot; Jha said.The chip maker will face Intel in this market, which is also introducing chips for devices that are smaller than laptops but bigger than cell phones. In fact,&#160;Apple is rumored to be developing an ultra-mobile PC product&#160;based on Intel&#39;s processors.&quot;We come at this problem from an understanding of wireless,&quot; Jha said. &quot;Intel comes at it from an understanding of computing. We both bring different things to the table. Time will tell how our vision works versus Intel&#39;s direction.&quot;The companies are also making different bets in terms of wireless network compatibility. &quot;We&#39;re working on WiMax as well but our priority is clearly 3G,&quot; Jha said. Intel, a big backer of WiMax, has said that it may&#160;build WiMax into Menlow, its platform for ultramobile devices, for release some time this year.Nokia&#39;s N800 devices fit into a similar category between a phone and a notebook. Despite the fact that Nokia and Qualcomm are in a bitter licensing dispute, Jha praised the N800, saying it sold more initially than Nokia expected. Nokia has typically declined to reveal sales figures for the devices.Qualcomm doesn&#39;t envision that Snapdragon will only be used in &quot;pocketable computing&quot; devices, the company&#39;s preferred term for what are commonly called ultra-mobile PCs. The chips could be used in navigation devices with wireless connectivity to deliver traffic information to users. Gaming devices, dedicated Internet devices or gadgets like Amazon&#39;s digital book-reader Kindle could also use the chips, Jha said.
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Location-based services are trying to revamp the Web experience to be less cumbersome on mobile devices.
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U.S. chip maker Advanced Micro Devices  has unveiled a low-cost Internet access device that could cost just a few hundred dollars, aimed at first-time technology users in the developing world.
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Leading phone maker launching two features aimed at helping struggling operators take advantage of advertising revenue stream.
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Free software, fee-based service is an attempt to compete in GPS device market.
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The wireless airwaves may get a bit more crowded next year following the announcement that Intellisync'sÂ  goAnywhere technology, unveiled this week, will give users of low-cost feature phones the same push e-mail capability that is now only available on pricier smart phones.