My Internet Notebook

Run across a sales article for Microsoft CRM Mobile

It is a sales collateral but does have some interesting information in there, such as this bigger picture on mobile CRM:

Mobile sales solutions will constitute a nearly $1 billion market by the end of 2006, a better than seven-fold increase over the $132 million spent in 2002.

Worldwide, mobile workers number about 60 million, or about 40 percent of the professional work force.

Leading early adopters of mobile technology include pharmaceutical and high-tech manufacturing companies, with insurance, retail, real estate, and consumer packaged goods industries making up the second rank.

Saw an interesting press release in which former Smartner CEO (now at Seven) talked about Nokia will have Seven’s push email technology on every Nokia phone.

This could be just Seven’s marketing tactics but it does bring up questions on Nokia’s strategy on push email. As a device provider to carriers, Nokia has to entice individual software company to build software on its mobile platform at the same time it has to work within the constraints of mobile carriers. And the software providers also want to work (i.e. sign deals) with carriers. Jury is still out on which partnerships are going to get customers faster sooner.

In the push email space particularly, there are already a growing number of software providers such as Research in Motion, Good Technology, Seven, Microsoft etc. RIM seems the clear winner in the enterprise space but nobody seems to have a clear lead in the consumer space.

Consumer mobile technology today are really giving people choices and power. Below is an excerpt from a post on Edmunds.com, a community discussion site on cars and trucks:

Those drives to Berkeley … will now be even better – Audio books using the Escape Hybrid’s 6 cd player; Audible books, MP3’s or streaming with Shoutcast using our Treo 600’s using handy 12 volt console plug and Seidio FM modulator; the Roady2 XM satellite radio with built in FM modulator using handy 12 volt console plug and cupholder mount for Roady2 or just playing with the Garmin Quest GPS (while my wife drives, safety first) using handy 12 volt plug near the stereo. Can’t do all that with the $1800 nav. sys.

The latest Mobile OS from Microsoft, unveiled at 2005 Mobile and Embedded DevCon:

Windows Mobile 5.0, code-named Magneto, offers enhanced support for third-generation wireless, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections, one-handed device navigation and other services like push-to-talk.

Finally ending a painful three-year decline, worldwide PDA (personal digital assistant) shipment grew in the first three month of 2005 to 3.4 million, a 25 percent from the same period last year. Research firm Gartner said in a report tracking PDA sales.

This is certainly good news for us as there will be more customers we can sell our mobile solutions to.

Another highlight in the report is that RIM became the No.1 PDA vendor as BlackBerry shipments grew 75.6 percent in the first quarter. This is a great news for our upcoming Mobile Sales for BlackBerry product.