Recently in Mobility Category

Let's not talk serious photography.

But consider that there are more cameras sold as as a feature on a cell phone than as stand-alone devices.

In fact, Telus, the second largest carrier in Canada, just bought over 100 Black's Camera stores, to get retail space.

The industry never ceases to amaze me.

Andrew raises some good points about iPhone apps and makes you wonder how lock-in can be avoided by enterprise IT.

But not here.

The 'vergatario' was launched by Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela.

And it's not just a phone but also a cell phone, a WAP internet device, and MP3 player and an FM radio.

It is the result of a collaboration between a Chinese company, ZTE, the designer of the phone, and a Venezuelan manufacturer... o yes and some creative branding by the latter.

600,000 will be manufactured this year.

It demonstrates that extermely price sensitive mass markets (not just Venezuela, but India, China and many others) will be served by the likes of Vergatario and its cousins, rather than pricey iPhones and Blackberries of our part of the world.

I heard on BBC's Digital Planet podcast, that, in 2008, there were 1 million malware incidents, but only 6 on cell smart phones! Unfortunately, the podcast is no longer available and the source wasn't cited.

This was given as an example of how secure smart phones have become.

At the same time, last week, Apple fixed a well-publicized security flaw in their iphone.

What's happening?

Well, the two most common smart phone architectures (Symbian and Blackberry) use a centralized architecture, which is easier to secure. Importantly, telephony is isolated from the data side.

The world is moving towards peer networking and VoIP, so security (I suspect) is not a permanent attribute of smart phones (unfortunately).

An annual event on Gartner's calendar is the publication of their top ten technologies.

They say: "Companies should look at these 10 opportunities and evaluate where these technologies can add value to their business services and solutions, as well as develop a process for detecting and evaluating the business value of new technologies as they enter the market."

But this year's list, for some reason, omits mobility technologies and specifically Fixed Mobile Convergence.

Fixed Mobile Convergence brings together the enterprise wired and WiFi environments with public cell networks. FMC allows enterprises to get more out of their growing mobility investments and more control over their mobility environments from cost, security and functionality perspectives, in the broader context of unified communications (UC).

True. Solutions to date have provided limited functionality, been centered around a small set of clients (including first gen dual mode sets) and built on wireless LANs that were not designed for voice coverage and performance. As a result, deployments have been few and far between.

I expect to see roll-your-own and service provider solutions that better fit enterprise environments and subsequently are more broadly deployed, extending PBX features to mobile users, providing handoff between cell and wireline phones, and improved dual mode operation.

You'll have to ask Gartner why mobility was not on their list.

Dave Barnes, the CIO of UPS, made the Top 50 CIO list.

There's a lesson to be learnt from UPS's Delivery Information Acquisition Device.

You know the one-- every UPS delivery person has one.

The latest version of this device was the first in the industry to use personal area (Bluetooth), local area (WiFi) and wide area (GPRS or CDMA) wireless connectivity options; and to introduce GPS to the handheld computer market.

Few of you have UPS's special needs.

But every large enterprise has the need for increased mobile effectiveness. For certain business processes (e.g. field support), there would appear to be a real application advantage from standardizing on a single device (and mobile application environment) globally.

UPS is delivering just this.

The Swedish Consumer Ombudsman has announced that wireless operators in Sweden must stop making bandwidth claims that don't align with what the customer will get.

For example, a service with a theoretical bandwidth of 7.2Mbit/s (including all sorts of overheads, will now be marketed as having "a practical maximum speed of 6M bps."

This "practical" claim is not all that practical, since it assumes optimal conditions (no other users and best location).

While this is a step in the right direction, at least for enterprises, how about a minimum committed rate at peak hours, reflecting some sort of engineering criteria?

This would allow IT to start making choices on price/performance.

Theoretical and practical bandwidths don't do it for me.

O yes. Happy Canada and USA days!

Blackberry is tops in 3 of the top 5 smartphone categories.

Why such success in the enterprise hyperconnected world?

Three reasons why it beat out the iPhone:

1) Enterprise fit, apps and security- R3 of iPhone will narrow the gap.
2) Carrier support: Blackberry is available from all top 4 US carriers, while iPhone is only available from AT&T. Remember that many enterprises have a preferred wireless provider, so this is a big deal for those that aren't with AT&T.
3) Blackberry is a more mature product in a market that they have created (at least in enterprise).

As the smartphone market matures, driven by consumers, expect to see more competition in the enterprise segment.

For years (I think I started in 1998), I carried an HP Jornada handheld PC (the first one literally fell apart so I got a more recent model which likewise was loved to death). I wrote over 100 articles, blogs and white papers on this handy device and took notes at numerous meetings. It was small enough to use on a plane even with the seat ahead oif me pushed back, and unobstructive enough not to put a barrier between me and a customer during a meeting.

It ran Windows CE and Pocket Office with Word, Excel and Powerpoint (view, hide and reorder only). I had PCMCIA cards for Ethernet, WiFi, PGA projectors (for powerpoint); I had an extra battery; I had a VPN client for corporate network access (including email) and could sync up my contacts and calendars with my desktop. Often I traveled without my laptop avoiding significant muscle strain;)

When looking for a replacement, I would have bought another Jornada but this form factor was not generally available (Netbooks have now filled this niche). My needs were simple: small form factor including keyboard; always on; integration with my office Windows environment (i.e. Exchange) and with OCS 2007; and good word document handling.

So I bought an HP iPAQ with a foldable keyboard, running Windows Mobile 6- the latest and greatest. Exchange access and Office Communicator ran like a jewel (and was VPN-less), but, possibly of no surprise to you, Windows Mobile was awkward to use and felt archaic. Even though I was well acquainted with Windows CE, an early predecessor, I still had to learn a new user interface which was neither Windows nor CE. To this day, I still can't figure out how to open two documents at once!

WiFi access on the device was also very finicky, particularly for corporate network access- I couldn't find a VPN client that worked, and 802.11i was very flakey; even guest access requiring a browser-based login didn't work even when I called in the IT gurus.

With less than 13% market share (behind Symbian and RIM in 4Q08, with Apple nipping at its heels), Microsoft has a big job ahead if it's to be as relevant in the mobile world as it is desktops.

Caveat: My experience was on a PDA (not a Windows mobile phone) and it's never clear how much was due to Microsoft vs HP.

Last December, I blogged on the fact that I had unplugged my desktop phone (replacing it with a LG-Nortel USB phone 8501), though I observed that this wasn't for everyone!

Well I attended the Nortel Technical Conference, and in fact hosted the final day, and won a new desktop phone- sort of.

Actually, the handset is a Bluetooth device married to my cell phone. Look carefully- no flexicord of olde.

What could have been my grandfather's rotary dial phone is my improvisation for a handset cradle- some place to put my new handset. Fits perfectly!

Visitors get a puzzled look when I answer a call (with my cell on vibrate) using this handset.

No geekier, IMHO, than people who wear cyber ear buds and walk down the street talking into the air;)