Articles about Mobile

As the market gears up for the new iPhone, research from analysts Forrester and mobile engagement company OpenMarket offers some insight into the struggles companies are having to incorporate the use of mobile devices into their business models.

The study of 167 enterprises in the USA, commissioned by OpenMarket, examines how in the era of smartphones, tablets and BYOD, organizations are adapting to the widespread shift to mobile -- both internally and among their customers. It found that 74 percent of businesses surveyed regard mobile as a priority, however, their IT departments are struggling to build and manage mobile solutions using their existing skills and technologies.

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Mobile technology moves pretty fast these days. Think back ten years and things were very different. Most people had basic mobile phones with physical button keypads, and despite Microsoft’s attempts to bring tablets to the masses it was Apple launching the iPad in 2010 that finally made it happen.

The past decade has seen some amazing innovations, and changed the face of business. According to a 2013 AT&T Technology Poll, 98 percent of small businesses use wireless or mobile technology in their daily operations and 66 percent of small businesses have stated that it would be a major challenge to operate their business without such technology.

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For me, virtually any trip out of the house means loading up on various pieces of tech. I, obviously, cannot leave the house without my phone -- my trusty HTC Sensation has been with me for two years -- but there are usually other things to consider as well. While my phone is great for picking up my emails on the move and staying in touch with people via IM, Facebook etc, it’s far from ideal for doing any work.

Depending on where I’m going, and how strong I’m feeling, there are various other pieces of kit I can take with me to make things easier. My Sony Tablet S is easier to type on than my phone, thanks mainly to its larger screen, but it’s not something I like to use for extended periods of time. I could take my laptop with me, or the MacBook Pro, which are great to work on, but rather weighty to hump from place to place.

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The Texas-based marketing platform for small businesses Main Street Hub is introducing HubSites. These provide a mobile-friendly landing page to act as a link to a company's main site.

Features include a prominent click-to-call button, the ability to capture testimonials, Google Maps integration, a real-time Twitter feed and more.

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Adopting Windows Phone 8, and ditching Android, was one of the most daring decisions that I have ever made in my entire tech life. I am the sort of person who does not warm up to major changes (not my strong suit), especially ones that involve transitioning between two polarizing mobile platforms. But, surprisingly, I gave up the flexibility and versatility of the green droid operating system for the glanceable information and simplicity of Windows Phone. Admittedly, it was not smooth sailing from day one.

The problem is that, in order to fully adjust to the change, something has got to give, namely features that I consider to be essential for a modern-day smartphone operating system. For some they may not matter as much, but others -- like me, and maybe you -- are likely to be left wanting for more. And, no, I am not talking about widgets, themes, root or Instagram (it, however, seems to be the tech media's favorite blaming toy even though there are good third-party alternatives), but rather more down-to-earth, mundane ones.

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Microsoft will pull the support plug on Windows XP on April 8 2014. But with only 10 months to go to the deadline as many as 39 percent of enterprises have yet to migrate to another version of Windows, warns services and solutions company ITC Infotech.

Current trends towards BYOD are also making the migration process more complex but businesses need to address the issues in order to future proof their operations.

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Enterprise application and data security company Mobile Helix has announced the results of an independent survey of CIOs. It shows a large percentage of businesses delaying the roll out of enterprise apps on mobile devices thanks to concerns over security, costs and complexity.

Highlights of the survey, conducted among 300 CIOs in the US and UK, are that companies on average had over 400 applications within their organization but that only 22 percent of them could be accessed from mobile devices despite clear demand from employees for mobile access. Major barriers to adoption are development and support costs along with security.

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Point.io has released its new Baas (Backend as a Service) platform. Aimed at document management and workflow, Point.io's offering is designed to help companies maintain control of their content whilst enabling BYOD (Bring Your Own Device).

The application allows developers to build mobile apps that let users access and share content on any device efficiently and securely. Ron Rock, CEO of Point.io says, "By design, enterprises have been locking down their content for decades, but with the shift in workforce mobility it's become critical that content, and the workflows that thrive on it, are unleashed to devices beyond the corporate firewall".

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This weekend, I returned from a nine day cruise of the Caribbean. On this particular cruise, I went to Bermuda, St. Martin, Puerto Rico and Haiti. What I love about cruises, other than the food (yes, I’m a fat guy), is visiting multiple locations in a short time rather than being in one place for the entire trip. This allows me to take very eclectic photos and have memories that will last a lifetime.

I own a fairly nice point-and-shoot camera with the Nikon Coolpix AW100. The Nikon is my go-to camera when I am visiting beaches since it is waterproof. However, while in Puerto Rico, I was to tour El Yunque Rainforest -- a beautiful place to take photos where I would not be going swimming. And so, I decided to use a different camera instead -- the Nokia Lumia 928 on Verizon. Yup, I was trusting my vacation memories with a camera-phone!

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In today's busy world keeping things running smoothly is part of the key to business success. Downtime can mean lost customers and that’s especially true when it comes to IT services. However, traditional service desks haven’t really kept up with the need to respond fast and keep end users fully updated.

BMC Software believes it has the answer to this in the form of the MyIT app.  MyIT allows users to log problems via a self-service interface, they can then receive updates and check on the progress of the problem without having to call the help desk.

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I use AVG AntiVirus Free to keep my PC clear of infections. Every so often the software pops up a little message warning me when one of my browsers is consuming too much memory, giving me the chance to restart the greedy program and free up resources. Just now it popped up a message telling me Firefox is using 1GB of RAM. Five minutes before that it notified me that Chrome, which I'm also running, was using 1GB as well.

If I fire up Task Manager and take a peek I see both of those memory hogs have nothing on Photoshop which is also running and has 30 x 12MB photos open, requiring it to use 2.6GB of RAM. I have 20 other programs on the go at the same time.

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A new report from Symantec shows that many small and medium businesses (SMBs) feel that good IT systems can give them a competitive advantage. It seems that confidence in IT can boost business success.

Using results from a survey of almost 2,500 companies the report has established an SMB IT Confidence Index designed to measure how confidently enterprises approach computing and divide them into three tiers. Top tier companies are far more likely to use IT as a strategic business enabler (SBE). These more technically confident SMBs are prone to invest heavily in computing infrastructure and are more inclined to invest in new initiatives like mobile devices and the cloud.

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Global industry analyst Ovum has revealed the results of its 2013 BYOX (Bring Your Own Anything) employee survey which reveals that 70 percent of employees use their own devices to access corporate data.

Launching the research at the start of the BYOX World Forum today in London, Ovum revealed that BYOD shows no signs of going away. More to the point it will continue whether the IT department wants it to or not. The study shows that 67.8 percent of smartphone-owning employees bring their own smartphone to work, and 15.4 percent of these do so without the IT department's knowledge, with 20.9 percent of corporate rebels doing so in spite of an anti-BYOD policy.

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Mobile security company Lookout has released a report breaking down the types of threat encountered by users around the world. It takes data from the Lookout app in the US, UK, Germany, India and Japan to spot the key dangers in each region.

Threats are broken down into five categories -- adware, chargeware, spyware, surveillance and Trojans. Adware dominates around the world thanks to grey areas surrounding what's acceptable in mobile advertising. However, users in India are almost four times more likely to encounter mobile adware than those in the US. Indian users have a greater chance of encountering any kind of threat with a 5.49 percent likelihood of infection compared to only 1.66 percent in the US and 2.16 percent in the UK.

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Taking center stage at Computex 2013, ARM's Cortex-A12 architecture and Mali-T622 GPU (Graphic Processing Unit) are setting their sights on the mid-range mobile device market.

According to an ARM spokesperson, there will be at least 580 million mid-range mobile devices hitting the competitive mobile space over the next two years -- with the mid-range market projected to exceed the number of high-end smartphones and tablets beginning in 2015. As such, it comes as little surprise that ARM is bolstering its mid-range portfolio, with the UK-based company looking beyond the high-end market which is currently dominated by Apple's wildly popular iPhone and Android handsets like the Samsung Galaxy S4. Both devices are powered by ARM-based silicon.

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