mobile OS market share comparison (via @icrossing_uk)

There are several ways of looking at the market share comparison map by iCrossing. One is to highlight that Apple now has gone over the 50% market share mark in many countries (per below). Another is to stress that France and Australia are even the 60% bar, which is absolutely amazing. A third would be to spot that in America, their market share is only 35%, but that Blackberry is taking the plunge save for Britain (numbers per below). A fourth would be to show that Android is very strong in South Korea but still falls behind in countries like France and Spain and UK. Eventually, Nokia is still strongest in most emerging countries – countries in which feature phones are king – but time will tell whether the Windows phone gamble will work out for them. In any case, this map is really useful; a fine job.

for those who might wonder about the representativeness of the the data, it has been  collected from the http://gs.statcounter.com/ website

 

Mobile OS market shares

This map shows the popularity of different mobile browsing platforms country by country, with some interesting results.

Apple’s dominance can clearly be seen, with the iPhone and iTouch accounting for over half the market in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany and Japan.

via Mobile browser market share map – iCrossing.

Enterprise 2.0 fear factor: Overcoming risks, uncertainties and doubts

There are risks associated with adopting any new technology, and Enterprise 2.0 is no different. Enterprise 2.0 holds the promise of dramatically increasing business productivity, stimulating greater innovation, and creating tighter connections between employees, as well as with partners, suppliers and customers. While these technologies and other social networking softwares are facilitating knowledge sharing, accelerating team communications, fostering increased collaboration and online communities creation, many executives are recognising their value but worry about losing control of information, compromising sensitive data, opening their networks to security breaches or even exposing employees to time-killing “network noise”.

Liability for potentially illegal activity involving workers, risk of malware infections, bandwidth constraints and other drop-offs in employee productivity are obvious reasons why the “open social Internet” just goes against the instincts of many Chief Information Officers.

It is also true that employees using these systems for group collaboration, usually operate outside the approved IT applications, meaning they aren’t actually subject to enterprise policies governing compliance and information protection. It is obviously a challenge for any IT professional to give up control over the IT systems they depend on. As Enterprise 2.0 is decentralised and ad hoc, control is in the hands of users rather than the IT department …

Predictions for 2008 … Eight business technology trends to watch

While every day seems to bring a whole bunch of predictions and thoughts for this new year (and the decade to come!), I have selected this excellent article from The McKinsey Quarterly entitled “Eight business technology trends to watch“. In a Nutshell, this article provides an extremely interesting overview of emerging technology-enabled trends that will shape businesses and the economy in coming years.

These trends fall within three broad categories, namely managing relationships, managing capital & assets and leveraging information in new ways, and include …

New Year’s top resolution: Managing your online reputation!

Now that we’re on the other side of the New Year, I thought I would share my thoughts on what I feel should be one of the companies’ top priorities – and probably their number 1 resolution for this year: Efficiently managing their online reputation.

Managing online reputation is fast becoming a growing problem for businesses. With the rise of social media and user-generated content, the Internet has quickly become a complex ecosystem where public opinion can be created and disseminated within seconds. Keeping your eyes and ears on the world of consumer generated media can be a daunting task for any company. Blogs, forums, wikis and social networks gain popularity every day and without a plan to monitor and manage your company’s online reputation, you could be at risk.

A great brand can take months, if not years, and millions of dollars to build. It should be the thing you hold most precious and managing your business’s online reputation is key to owning your brand.

So now is the time to take control of your online reputation!

Discover how to maintain, enhance & protect your brand identity …

SaaS predictions for 2008 and beyond

Now that 2008 has arrived, along with the New Year’s resolutions and the ever-present pundit predictions, I thought it was the perfect timing to dive into what Saugatuck Technology just reported as being their Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) predictions, highlighting five key trends for 2008 and beyond:

SaaS platforms and marketplaces will begin to proliferate, becoming a significant channel opportunity for vendors, as well as a key means by which users will gain access to SaaS solution capabilities.

SaaS is becoming an international phenomenon, driven by both local demand as well as large multi-nationals who are adopting SaaS business solutions on a global basis. While US SaaS adoption is clearly going “mainstream”, Europe and Asia are only now beginning to experience the steep adoption ramp that the US has witnessed over the past two years. Whereas average US market growth rates will likely slow into the 35-40 percent range in 2008, European market growth rates should exceed 60-70 percent next year.

SaaS merger & acquisition activity will explode. No doubt a serious feeding frenzy is about to unfold and it could be anticipated that a large number of venture-backed start-ups and emerging SaaS companies would be acquired by either SaaS pure-plays, ISVs hungry to enter the SaaS fray or on-shore & off-shore IT services and BPO providers who are eager to leverage a SaaS model.

Traditional on-premise application ISVs will earnestly begin to fight back. Approximately 15-20 percent of ISVs have already either begun new initiatives or gained access to SaaS assets and development experience through M&A activity. However, over the next 12-24 months, this number is anticipated to rise dramatically, as a tougher economic climate will only exacerbate an already challenged on-premise and traditional perpetual license model.

SaaS development platforms will evolve and 2008 will see explosive growth in the adoption and use of SaaS-based software development platforms and services. Wide availability of open, standardised tools and technologies in subscription-based, on-demand environments will help streamline and reduce the costs of software development and customisation.

Other key insights and Strategic Planning Positions provided by Saugatuck include the following predictions …

Unleashing the power of remote collaboration & virtual team management

When thinking about factors that distinguish top performing companies, the root of their success often can be traced to the human equation. But how many companies are able to tap more than a fraction of their workforce potential? How many are able to take advantage of latent talents, ideas and contributive strengths waiting to be switched on? How many are able to unleash the power of remote collaboration & virtual team management? The companies that find the means to use a larger fraction of their human resources will undoubtedly supersede their competitors. That is their edge in the global economy.

With increased globalisation, virtual leadership has started gaining a strong foothold in recent times. As the workplace evolves, the techniques for managing employees are changing. Today’s leaders and managers are faced with a different set of challenges for managing employees who work in various locations across the globe or telecommute. Managing in the virtual environment can be quite a daunting undertaking.

The biggest challenge with remote collaboration & virtual team management is actually to maintain quality and productivity across all participants, despite the physical and cultural distance. Other associated issues are operational. Indeed, you do need to ensure that everyone is working on “the same project”. Social issues may also come into play: If the teams adopt an “us versus them” mindset, they might well wind up working at cross-purposes. All these challenges may finally be exacerbated by time zone and language differences that make collaboration and real-time communication even more difficult.

Advances in information and communications technologies have enabled businesses to become truly global in scope. There is an abundance of technology available today for collaboration. However, a company’s culture and processes that encourage people to share work in a productive manner are central to effective collaboration.

So how are top performing organisations avoiding the many pitfalls of remote collaboration & virtual team management and what are the key to success for adapting to this complex and ever-changing working environment?

Sales 2.0: Taking sales to another level

Yes, the ’2.0′ hype is getting somehow out of hand and the moniker now comes to Sales … There’s been a lot of talk recently about ‘Sales 2.0′ and how companies can benefit from adopting Web 2.0 concepts and technologies in sales. The movement is under way to classify and clarify this latest version of sales-related technology. So before we dismiss Sales 2.0 as yet another buzz word, let’s try and identify what ‘Sales 2.0′ really means for the sales and marketing disciplines.

It seems that Sales 2.0 truly merges sales and marketing into a seamless effort to target buyers more effectively using innovative and integrated tactics with an objective to bring in a lot more business at a lower cost. It is also about making anything and everything in the sales and marketing lifecycle measurable, so that you can take that information and resulting analysis to further optimise your sales process. More streamlined processes, together with the technologies to carry out smarter approaches, can immediately help organisations that are committed to moving their sales and marketing efforts to the next level of performance and dramatically accelerate their sales cycle.

More than a collection of technologies that help sales professionals personalize information for customers and interact with them rapidly, Sales 2.0 should be considered as the synthesis of new technologies, models, processes and mindsets.