IBM Buys HTML5 App Deve...

IBM just announced the purchase of WorkLight , an Israeli startup that provides a mobile app development and infrastructure software. IBM says the acquisition will help expand the enterprise mobile capabilities it offers to clients. Financial terms were not disclosed. WorkLight , which has raised $18 million in funding, allows organizations develop and deliver HTML5, hybrid and native applications with, and deliver these applications with mobile middleware, security features and integrated data management and analytics. Worklight dramatically reduces time to market, cost and complexity while enabling better customer and employee user experiences across more devices. Worklight’s customers range in terms of sector and include companies in financial services, retail and healthcare. For example, a bank can create a single application that offers features to enable its customers to securely connect to their account, pay bills and manage their investments, regardless of the device they are using. IBM says that Worklight will become an “important piece of IBM’s mobility strategy,” offering clients a development platform that helps speed the delivery of existing and new mobile applications to multiple devices and ensures secure connections between smartphone and tablet applications with enterprise IT systems. IBM’s goal is to provide an end-to-end solution that allows enterprises to build and connect mobile apps, manage security on these apps and devices, provide analytics for mobile data, and more. In addition to Worklight, IBM today is also unveiling IBM Endpoint Manager for Mobile Devices, a new software system that will enable corporate users to manage and secure their mobile devices these applications are running on. The acquisition of Worklight is expected to close in the first quarter of 2012. Worklight will sit within IBM’s Software Group.

Report: Global Mobile M...

New projections published this week from Berg Insights suggest the global mobile marketing & advertising industry will grow an impressive 37% over the next 48 months, representing record growth in an already fast-moving segment. The research firm predicts the industry will reach a value of over $22.6 billion by the end of 2016, attributing most of the growth to continued smartphone adoption and increasing availability of mobile media that can include mobile advertising.  “Brands are now progressively embracing the mobile channel, including the entire range of apps, from games and entertainment to utility applications.  Also, mobile Web advertising and opt-in SMS [Short Message Service] campaigns are popular,” explained Rickard Andersson, telecom analyst at Berg Insight. For more on the report, visit this Mobile Marketing Watch article .

Less than One Percent o...

Though tablet usage among healthcare providers remains a hot topic, it’s been revealed that less than 1 percent of hospitals currently have fully functional tablet systems in place as we enter the New Year. The low adoption numbers are despite aggressive financial incentives from the government and stem from equally low adoption of EMRs, according to Jonathan Mack, director of clinical research and development at the West Wireless Health Institute.  Why such slow adoption?  According to Mack, the most popular systems don’t yet make apps that allow doctors to use EMRs on a tablet the way they would on a desktop or laptop and to use a mobile device effectively requires a complete redesign of the way information is presented. Doing so would require hospitals to “cough up a lot more money,” Mack says.  ”When you look at a health system that has bought into an EMR, they’re not ready to turn the boat around and start over.” For more on the report, visit the Kaiser Health News article here .

The Vertical Integratio...

One of the great pleasures of my young technology marketing career was getting invited to the Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA in 2003 and taking a guided tour of their “House of The Future.”  For those who aren’t familiar with it, the “house” is a mock two-story house in one of their buildings, complete with a landscaped entrance, living room, kitchen, two bedrooms and 2 ½ baths. The purpose of the house is to demonstrate their vision of how people will be living in the near future, not in a Disney animatronics way, but rather in a format that enabled you to get hands-on and live the part of someone in the next decade.  As I get closer and closer to the 10-year mark, I’ve been thinking more and more about the predictions that the house had and evaluating just how much has come true.  The truth is that most of it has come true . . . just not in the way they envisioned . . . and none of it was done by Microsoft. The purpose of the house was to show how a day-to-day life could truly be augmented and improved by technology.  The tech could be broken down into four segments:  calendar, connectivity, tracking, and interface. The house would track the movement of almost everything that came through its doors through RFID chips implanted in everything.  Walmart was a huge proponent of this technology and the prediction was that as Walmart does, everyone else will follow.  Take groceries as an example.  Once a gallon of milk was put in the fridge, the house would track its expiration date and notify you when you needed more.  If you put it in the trash, it would also know that you were out and it could automatically order more.  If you put it on the counter, it could tell you all of the things you could make with it via LED readouts imprinted on the surface. The house would know your schedule via your Outlook calendar and could warn you when, say, your daughter has a soccer game the next day and you haven’t washed her uniform since her last match. It could help you plan your financial life as you could receive bills, pin them to a board, and have the house pay them with a single swipe.  It could enhance your personal life by enabling your friends and family to take pictures and upload them to web-enabled picture frames hanging around your house. Most of this came true.  Actually, this came true and much, much more, but not because of anything Microsoft did and definitely not in the way they envisioned. The structure of the house they created mirrored Microsoft’s philosophy on technology.  Just as they create software that runs on hardware made by another company, which then makes other software programs possible, the house assumed an evolution in technology would take place that brought innovation from many different organizations together to create a single system for the household to use.  This technology would reside in the products we buy, in the walls of the house, in the computers running it, in the appliances that were installed, and in data centers at remote locations. The reality that eventually came to be part of our collective lives packed this technology and the same impacts on our lives into a single device that resides in our pockets at all times.  Of course I am talking about our mobile devices and the vertical integration of this technology.  Brilliant move by Steve Jobs?  Eh, I don’t know that I would give him that much credit, but placing it into our hands makes it much more accessible along the age and socioeconomic spectrum, as well as gives us the ability to bring it with us wherever we go.  I’m very happy to see that it ended up this way as it enabled the birth of mobile marketing, and the rest was history.

Report: mCommerce On Ch...

Only two days after Christmas the numbers related to purchases made on mobile devices are beginning to roll in. IBM has already announced that the dollar amount for purchases made over mobile devices on Dec. 25 alone was up 172.9% over the same day last year.  Even more impressive, IBM reports that 7% of all online purchase for the day were made on an iPad while Forbes reports that 6.4% of all online sales came from iPhones.