One of the more enjoyable things I get to do in my job is talk to the folks who are actually using mobile technology to better their businesses. No big marketing studies, no polls, no government statistics, just me and one person sitting down to talk about how mobile technology is affecting them. It’s not that polls and statistics don’t have their place, they do. But I have been in sales and business development for over 20 years, and there is nothing that substitutes for speaking directly with a business person to get a real feel for what works and what doesn’t.
Recently I decided to make it a point to schedule a few lunch appointments each month with various Small and Medium Business owners to talk about mobile technology. Some of them are people I know well, and some are folks I have just been introduced to. The approach is the same in all cases. We sit down for lunch and talk about their business, how they use mobile technology, how they locate technology, how they acquire it, and what additional mobile solutions they would like to get their hands on. These are business discussions, not technology discussions.
While this is not a scientific approach to gathering statistics, the information gathered during these discussions provides a huge amount of insight into what works, and what doesn’t with regards to getting mobile technology into the hands of Small and Medium Business. As I run across findings I think will interest a larger audience, I’ll take the time to blog about them here on MobileBizBuzz. (more…)
The Smartphone market is one of the areas we closely watch as it serves as a bellweather for trends on how businesses are adopting mobility. Within this market is Nokia, RIM/Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile devices, HTC, Palm and others. What makes these devices ’smart’ as compared to a cell phone? In simple terms they have an operating system that allows applications to be downloaded, a wireless data connection and usually a keyboard that accomodates a lot of typing.
I was perusing Russ McGuire’s 
I was at a local convenience store today and noticed a delivery man standing with the store manager, looking at a little black box, about half the size of a desktop keyboard. All of the sudden, two pieces of paper pop out of it, the manager signs it as if he was closing the tab at a restaurant.
First of all it’s important to remember that only two app stores actually exist. These are the iPhone App Store and the Android Marketplace. All the others you may have heard about like Ovi from Nokia, Skymarket from Microsoft, BlackBerry Apps Storefront, and the webOS Software Store from Palm are all just announcements right now. That’s right. You can buy any software you want from an app store as long as your smartphone is an iPhone or the G1 phone. That’s it. There are not any other choices right now today.