Here we are on the eve before of what will definitely be the next iPad Gold Rush... the iPad2. I expect to see this in the media, in various ways. Already I have been spotting articles of some dedicated folks staking claim, to the first place in line, at some Apple Stores and I expect to see more join them tonight/tomorrow. What is sure, is that launch day will see critical mass, especially as this time pre-ordering has not been possible. I am wondering if this is Apple's wayof making sure that the amount of interest is translated to the lines and therefore can easily be measurable, reported on by the media and marketed by Apples PR machine? This is in comparison to the rather invisible shipments arriving at potential iPad2 owners front doors.
No sooner had Steve Jobs’ announced the iPad 2 and talked about the “post-PC” phenomenon than Gartner axed its estimates for PC sales growth this year. It sheered its outlook from 15.9% to 10.5% on the assumption that laptops and netbooks won’t be as popular as it previously thought because of tablets. It’s now figuring on total PC sales of 383.8 million this year, with its optimism on 2012 also hedged, cut from 14.8% growth to 13.6% against the new lower 2011 estimate. Gartner figures that people, including the Chinese, will either buy tablets instead of PCs or extend the life of their existing laptops. It’s expecting home mobile PC sales to rise less than 10% a year through 2015.
In the 7th and penultimate article of my Sybase UnWired Platform Series developing against iOS, we have created the app and now need to iteratively test. Testing the iOS/SUP application uses a combination of Apple's Xcode Environment, the SUP Control Center and the Logs generated by the Unwired Server. Below is a screen shot of the SUP Control Center web console. This is where we need to register a user against the Unwired Server, including an activation code, before we run the iOS client that has been written.
Lately there has been a lot of rumor on the web about the iPhone 5, or whatever it will be called... 4GS? Also today we have the announcement of the iPad 2. One thing that most iSpeculators and Technical iBloggers seem to agree on, with regard to the iPhone 5, along with more internal memory for running of programs and a faster processor, is the use of NFC (Near Field Communication). Yes still speculation until the time the next iPhone will be announced, which will probably be in June at Apple's WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference), but worth talking about in advance. I am also wondering if we will see NFC in the iPad 2 or will Apple wait until a later rev?
I have been using Apple's iPad since it was launched and am totally hooked on using it whilst out on the road in a personal & business basis. So yesterday we had the announcement of Apple's iPad2 and I was glued, like most of the internet, to the live feeds etc. Firstly, I have to say what a delight it was to see Steve Jobs come back for the day to announce the updated device. Secondly the update is not massive, it is not a game changer like the introduction of the iPad in 2011, but it is still respectful enough for iPad converts to upgrade and for the iPad2 to continue its march ahead in 2011 (excuse the pun March... as we are looking towards release on March 11 in the US and March 25 in other countries). What this revision does is to push it further ahead, maintaining its lead in the Tablet Market, which is definitely here to stay.
Vodafone Italy announced on Friday that it now provides all its prepaid and post-paid iPhone users with a free mobile location companion, Vodafone Find & Go, powered by Telmap, specially designed to enrich users' on-the-go experiences, beyond in-car and pedestrian navigation. Vodafone Find & Go will be free to all iPhone users who purchase a data package, and represents the first time such a service is offered in Italy for free. It will enable users to search for and access up-to-date location-based information.
Apple stockholders Wednesday morning voted down a proposal to make the company disclose its succession plans in case its frail CEO Steve Jobs, who’s had cancer surgery and a liver transplant and can’t seem to put on weight, can’t come back from his latest indefinite medical leave. Jobs, who left COO Tim Cook to run Apple again day-to-day, did manage to make a private dinner with Barack Obama and a bunch of other Silicon Valley CEOs last week. He is also said to be working from home. Apple opposed the succession disclosure claiming it would weaken its chances of retaining and recruiting top talent and give away secrets its competitors would like to know.
Reuters early Tuesday morning reprinted some loose talk by a Taiwan broker called Yuanta Securities claiming the launch of the iPad 2 would be delayed from April until June because of some production problems at Hon Hai. It said component makers had to change processes because of design changes Apple made late in the game. It also said that the two-month delay would sheer 7.6 million units off of estimated iPad shipments this year of 30.6 million units.
Ignoring the potentially rock-strewn path that lies ahead of Windows tablets until Microsoft comes up with its promised tablet-friendly ARM-hugging Windows 8, Dell is working on a 10-inch Windows widget that it hopes to put on the market in the next few months. It showed off a non-working mock-up of the thing, called the Dell Business Tablet, at a grand unveiling of its remade PC lines Tuesday in California. It figures the device’s familiar applications, integration, management and governance security blankets will appeal to its stock-in-trade commercial clientele. It gave no indication of the tablet’s specs or price beyond the fact that it’ll be Intel-based. Guess it means the next-generation Oak Trail Atom.
The latest tablet figures claim that shipments doubled sequentially in Q4 to 9.4 million units, up 120% from 4.4 million units in Q3, and that iPad – which owned 96% of the market in Q3 – suffered a 21% share loss to Android – up 2,000% – complements of Samsung purportedly getting off two million of its Android-based Galaxy Tabs.
Any Enterprise iOS application should feature some important features. Firstly Security, so encrypt your users application data on the device and that is in addition to any other Device Management & Security that you should be using. Check out Afaria which uses Apple's MDM. Secondly support for Mobile Working, that will work in both off-line and on-line modes, even though connectivity is getting better and better, there will always be the chance of a 'dead-zone'. Finally Integration with existing 'legacy' back office systems, extending existing Enterprise Applications into the Mobile world.
Well, maybe not quite, but with a mobile ERP iPhone app like SYSPRO On the Go, you can close that big deal from your hammock... Speed up smart decisions by tracking the gamut of business activities directly from your iPhone. Monitor current sales figures, analyze data, generate reports and make approvals to keep you moving forward. When you run out of luck trying to connect a laptop to a wireless network, you can now run the core functions of your entire business using your iPhone anywhere in the world-whether in a taxi cab or at a sales meeting. Besides, a laptop would be in danger of a Mai-Tai spill in a hammock!
As sick as Steve Jobs is he left Apple Monday in great shape and his departure only created a ripple in the stock. The company, now the second most valuable in the world, ended December with a record $26.74 billion in revenues, up 71%, and record net profits of $6 billion, up 78%, or $6.43 a share, with gross margins at 38.5%, down from 40.9% but better than the expected 36%. Estimates called for earnings of $5.38 a share on revenues of $24.4 billion. Jobs left behind a message saying, “We are firing on all cylinders and we’ve got some exciting things in the pipeline for this year.” Nobody asked about him on the conference call and Apple executives ignored the dire unplumbed situation.
IDC said Tuesday that what it calls the media tablet market was up 45.1% sequentially to 4.8 million units in the third calendar quarter driven almost exclusively by global demand for the iPad, giving Apple close to 90% of the market. It’s projecting nearly 17 million tablets shipped worldwide last year and 44.6 million will ship this year, with the US representing nearly 40% of the total. It figures 2012 is good for 70.8 million units. Growth this year and next, it says will be driven by devices based on Android and other operating systems. The researcher is also counting eReaders. They were up 40% sequentially in Q3 to 2.7 million units. It figures the category was good for at 10.8 million units last year, three-quarters of them shipping in the US, and should see 14.7 million units ship this year and 16.6 million next year.
The new ATRIX smartphone may change things for consumers and the enterprise. Motorola calls it the worlds most powerful smartphone which based on the specs thats defendable. Others call it the NirvanaPhone based on a new feature that allows the phone to be docked to a full sized PC display, TV or Laptop dock. This feature called webtop will run Firefox and Citrix Receiver essentially making the entire web plus company applications and data available anywhere.
I have seen many companies use Mobility to create & expand advantages over their customers and streamline processes, increasing staff & customer satisfaction. Recently a Sybase Survey by Kelton Research highlighted that this year 21% of IT Managers surveyed are looking to introduce 20+ Mobile Applications into their organizations. What sort of questions should these guys be asking to help qualify their Enterprise Mobility Projects? I have 9 questions that should help you in initial discussions in 3 sections and once answered help to reduce any problems later down the road, before letting their users loose!
Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who was apparently cured of pancreatic cancer in 2004 only to turn frail and gaunt and need a liver transplant in 2009, has gone out on medical leave again. He never lost the gauntness. COO Tim Cook will stand in for him as he has in the past. Apple issued a copy of the e-mail, signed “Steve,” sent to all Apple employees Monday morning. It reads: “At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company. I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple’s day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011.
Cloud Expo, Inc. announced on Thursday that Cloud Expo 2011 New York, the 8th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, will take place June 6-9, 2011, at the Javits Center in New York City. The International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series is the world’s leading Cloud-focused event and is held in New York, Silicon Valley, Prague, Tokyo, and Hong-Kong. Over 600 corporate sponsors and more than 65,000 industry professionals have participated in Cloud Expo since its inception, 10-folds more than all other Cloud-related events put together.
During the second half of 2010 I was lucky enough to have been given access to an internal engineering build of the Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP) that supported iOS devices in addition to Blackberry and Windows Mobile. SUP is a Mobile Application Platform, which in my opinion and also of folks like Gartner, is the only way forward in multiple application mobilization and multiple device support. MEAPs abstract the data access and Business Logic into Mobile Business Objects (MBOs) that take care of accessing, updating and deleting back end data. That data could be from files, corporate RDMS and other 3rd party systems such as SAP.
You have of course perhaps heard that starting February 10 the Android- peddling Verizon is going to start selling a specially adapted iPhone 4 on its Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) widgetry, breaking AT&T’s cherished exclusive on the dingus.
Who would have imagined back in 1973 when Martin Cooper/Motorola dialed the first portable cellular phone call, that one day we’d be booking airline tickets, paying bills, taking pictures, watching movies, getting directions, emailing and getting work done on a little device the size of a deck of cards. As these ‘cell-phones’ have matured, they’ve [...]
Planning traveling for business in 2011? Then plan ahead and travel light with technology, in fact iTravel... the only way to travel! Firstly though, a point of caution, you always take care of your money and passport, so before you travel make sure your iOS Devices are Secure and Managed by your corporate IT. Remember that as soon as you place any corporate data or applications on these devices, their value increases immensely. Your data is at the heart or your organisation, and it could potentially be disasterous if it fell into the wrong hands, such as your competition. Make sure you always use a passcode for the device and maybe standardize on a custom Lock Screen that displays contact information of either a corporate email and or telephone number. Now that you have iOS 4.x across your iOS devices the passcode can be used in conjunction with the devices keychain, to encrypt data on the device.
The way corporations operate around mobile devices is currently shifting — employees are starting to use their own devices for business purposes, rather than company-owned devices. With no direct control of the endpoints, IT departments have generally had to prohibit this or risk insecure access inside the firewall. But as more mobile devices appear on the corporate network, mobile device management has become a key IT initiative. This technical brief describes how the BIG-IP Edge Portal app for iOS devices provides simple, streamlined access to web applications that reside behind BIG-IP APM, without requiring full VPN access, to simplify login for users and provide a new layer of control for administrators.
LinkedIn is the fastest growing professional networking site, and every day thousands of recruiters are using it to find new talent. Epic's app is designed to show how LinkedIn works, its benefits and how it can be used to find employment. Containing over 20 instructional videos and 3 specially designed paper animations, the app offers over 45 minutes of learning materials split into 6 sections. Topics covered include how to find and apply for jobs, getting the most from your network and the all important step-by-step guide to completing your profile to 100% - crucial for appearing trustworthy to potential employers.
During the Holidays I managed to get a copy of the 'Enterprise iPhone and iPad Administrator's Guide' from Apress, written by Charles Edge. If you are a regular reader/follower of my blogs and tweets you would already know that Enterprise iPhone and iPad is a subject very close to my heart. I believe that this has already started and is being accelerated with the iPad over the iPhone. So this book should explain strategies for iOS Deployment, Integration and Control.