The SMB Tech Report

EFI Releases PrintMe Mobile System

Digital printing system developer EFI has announced PrintMe Mobile, an app designed to support printing from tablet PCs and smartphones. more

Fonality Study Tracks Mobility Trends for SMBs

Fonality’s State-of-the-Market 2011 Report: Mobility Trends in SMBs finds 50% of SMB employees work outside the office and with as many as a quarter of staff out of office at any given time. These employees can have difficulty accessing critical business applications. The study recommends SMBs provide unified communications on a mobile platform and estimates that by doing so an average company with 137 employees (including 67 mobile workers) could recoup $700,000 annually in measurable staff productivity gains--more than $10,000 per mobile employee. more

Trend Watch: Mobile Wallet

Seems more and more people are getting accustomed to the idea of carrying around less in their pockets and purses and letting their cell phone do more for them than facilitate communication. The whole idea of the mobile wallet is appealing to many cell phone users today, according to a new Retrevo study. While the idea is still a novelty to most people older than 50, men are more interested than women.

Study Highlights

• 40% of iPhone owners are the most likely to want NFC (mobile wallet) compatibility in their next cell phone, compared with Android owners (24%).
• 75% of people older than age 50 were not at all interested in a phone with a mobile wallet.
• Men are more interested in a mobile wallet (27%) than women (15%).

Retrevo asked cell phone owners which company they would trust to provide a mobile wallet:

• 36% Google,
• 33% Apple,
• 32% Visa, MasterCard, or American Express,
• 26% AT&T, Verizon, or their cell phone carrier,
• 33% None of the above.

Our Take

Mobile wallets are a technology innovation too simple for many people to resist. It may take a while for the technology to make serious inroads, but men younger than 30 will probably be the first group to embrace the benefits of the technology. Thus, if your business lies in serving this demographic group, then keep an eye on the trend development so you can spot business opportunities ahead of the crowd.

About Retrevo

Retrevo.com is one of the largest consumer electronics review and shopping sites in the world, helping people decide what to buy, when to buy, and where to buy. Retrevo uses artificial intelligence to analyze and graphically summarize more than 50 million real-time data points from across the web to give shoppers the most comprehensive, unbiased, up-to-date product information they need to make smart, confident purchasing decisions for electronics.

AT&T Announces Webinar on Using Mobile Technology in Small Businesses

AT&T will present a free Webinar with technology expert Mario Armstrong on using mobile apps and smartphones to increase business productivity on April 14 at 1 PM EDST. Armstrong will discuss why mobile technology can be a game-changer for SMBs, how mobile apps can boost productivity and increase ROI, which apps are most effective for various business functions, and how to access important business and customer data and information while on the road. more

Microsoft Offers Office Mobile for Windows Phone 7

Microsoft has announced Office Mobile for Windows Phone 7, allowing users to edit and share Office documents on Windows Phone 7 smart phones. The software allows users to create, edit, and share documents, speak, type, or snap a photo note, and view PowerPoint presentations on their Windows Phone 7 smartphones. more

ZTE Peel Lets Sprint Customers Call and Text Using the iPod Touch

ZTE Peel from Sprint is a sleeve for the second-and third-generation iPod Touch that connects it to Sprint’s 3G WiFi network. The sleeve gives the Touch the ability to use Sprint's 3G with Line2’s service, which replicates the iPhone features, including conferencing, call waiting, visual voicemail, and carrier-grade SMS texting. The service costs $29.99/month for the PEEL plus $9.95/month for Line2. more

Hewlett-Packard Offers Unlocked Palm Pre 2 to Small Businesses

According to a report in PC World, Hewlett-Packard has announced plans to sell the unlocked version of its Palm Pre 2 smartphone to small businesses as well as to mobile application vendors. The term “unlocked” means the phones will be sold directly by Hewlett-Packard and not through a cellular carrier and will not be “locked” to any carrier's service. The purchaser can buy a data plan for the phones from the carrier of his (or her) choice or use the phone without carrier service as pure PDAs that connect through WiFi hot spots only. The company is already selling the Pre 2 through French mobile operator SFR and has announced plans to sell it through Verizon Wireless in the United States and through an unannounced carrier in Canada. The unlocked version of the Palm Pre 2 will work on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) networks, the 3G variant of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) used by AT&T and T-Mobile USA in the United States. more

Jupiter Report Maps Future of Smartphone Market

The latest report from Juniper Research forecasts that global smartphone sales will exceed 26 million by 2015, driven in part by the increasing popularity of the Android operating system. The report finds that Android, an open system OS, is gaining popularity in part because of the tight margins in the PC industry. more

Juniper Predicts Huge Growth in Mobile Phone Payment Use

The just-released Mobile Payments for Digital and Physical Goods report from Juniper Research predicts by 2014 half of all mobile phone users worldwide will use their phones to pay for digital and physical goods. This is a growth of nearly a billion users from 2010 levels. more

Microsoft Releases Embedded Windows 7 to Device Manufacturers

Microsoft Corp. has announced release of Windows Embedded Standard 7 to smartphone and other handheld mobile device manufacturers. more

RingCentral Survey Shows Impact of Smart Phones on Business Communications

A survey by RingCentral of its small-to-medium size business customers shows smart phones have become an integral part of daily life; 40% of respondents say they cannot live without their smart phones and 79% cited smart phones, as opposed to office or home phones, as the phone they used the most to conduct business. more

Vonage Offers VoIP on Android over T-Mobile and AT&T

Vonage Holdings Corp. has announced expansion of Vonage Mobile to Android smartphones running on the AT&T and T-Mobile cellular systems. The Android application can be downloaded from www.vonage.com. Vonage already has applications available for iPhone, iPod Touch and Blackberry devices. more

Palm Releases webOS Plug-In Development Kit Beta

Palm has released a public beta version of the Palm webOS Plug-in Development Kit through the Palm Developer Center. The new kit complements the webOS Software Development Kit, allowing developers to mix C and C++ with Web technologies seamlessly in a single app. more

AT&T Announces Plans to Add Five Android Smart Phones

AT&T announced plans to add five new Android devices from Dell, HTC, and Motorola to its smart phone lineup, which also includes the Apple iPhone. It also announced a major initiative to expand mobile applications beyond smartphones to more mobile phones and to spur future app development for the small business and enterprise workplaces, emerging consumer devices, and its U-verse TV platform. more

Google Unveils New Cell Phone and New Approach to Buying a Phone

Google Inc. has introduced its new Nexus One Android mobile phone and a new model for consumer cell phone purchases. The new phone combines the latest hardware from HTC Corp. with the newest version of the Android operating system. Google is selling this phone directly to consumers and small businesses, rather than through one or more cellular carriers, in its new Web store at www.google.com/phone. Purchasers can take their phone to any GSM carrier's store to contract for a service and get a SIM card to insert into the phone, or they can buy a service from one of Google's operator partners. more