MOBIQPONS Launches Free Environment-friendly Mobile Coupons Application for Blackberry Storm – MobiQpons announced the release and availability of its “Coupons for Shopping -MobiQpons” application for Blackberry Storm via Blackberry App World. This is in addition to its applications for iPhone and Android smart phones

MobiQpons Inc. today announced that its Mobile Coupons application “Coupons for Shopping -MobiQpons ” is now available for consumers to download from its website http://mobiqpons.com/

Mobile Marketing Coupons Gain Popularity – Tucked inside newspapers across the country this Sunday, SmartSource, the coupon insert, will tell readers in 68 million households how they can send a text message to get coupons sent to their mobile phones

Brooklyn Center-based Caribou Coffee used a mobile marketing couponing company called Cellfire to send coupons this year for its new Acacia Organic Blend and Northern Lite Latte.

“We looked at mobile marketing as a way for us to drive store traffic and gain trial for a new product launch,” marketing manager Jake Miller said. “If we can get trial, we know there is a good chance that guest will come back again.” He declined to give details on the results but said Caribou would use mobile marketing coupons again.

MixMobi, a Plymouth mobile marketing startup, is launching a technology platform that lets retailers build coupons that can be “tweeted” on the social media site Twitter, which appears on cell phones as well as computers.

MixMobi co-founder Lisa Foote is letting small marketing agencies experiment with the technology to work out the bugs before the launch. Sprout.mn in Minneapolis designed a coupon for the Seward Co-op advertising 50 cents off at the deli this weekend.

“I think the consumer definitely wants mobile couponing,” she said. “I think people are really hungry for deals, and more than 90 percent of Americans carry cell phones.”

To be sure, technologists have heralded mobile marketing coupons for several years with little effect.

But a sudden surge of interest by big- name retailers and packaged-goods companies, coupled with better technology, is creating buzz for the mobile marketing coupon this year.

Only 3 percent of consumers used a mobile marketing coupon in 2008, but more than half of them knew about them, Forrester Research, a technology consultancy, reported this year.

The recession has advanced coupon usage in all its forms, including online. Digital coupons were the fastest growing Web site category last November, with visitors to coupon sites up 32 percent over October 2008, said comScore Inc., another technology research company.

Put it all together, and advertisers see cell phones as 277 million tiny electronic billboards in every pocket or purse.

“It’s a big area of interest these days. I’ve been getting tons of calls about this,” said Evan Neufeld, a senior analyst for mobile communications for comScore Inc.

Mobile marketing coupons have become a buzzword inside the big packaged-goods companies, Neufeld said. “They all say they want a mobile strategy,” he said. These companies will insure consumers see more ads, he said.

The popularity of smart phones, with their larger, made-for-the-Web screens, is driving the trend, too. Coupons look better on bigger screens, marketers say.
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Save Money with Mobile Coupons – The new mobile coupon program can transform the average joe into a savvy shopper by saving time and money.

Looking for ways to save money during tight times, but don’t want to spend the time searching through the newspaper looking for coupons? Well you’re in luck… The future of coupons has arrived in an easy, organized application that can be downloaded straight from your Smartphone.

Target has announced the first ever scannable coupon program for mobile phones. The program will send coupons to your mobile device that can be scanned at checkout. The opt-in program will provide Target shoppers with a customized webpage on their mobile phones, with all offers scannable at checkout via a single barcode.

Target is the first to venture into the coupon program, but there will be many to follow. Coupons will benefit businesses and customers alike–promoting spending while saving money for consumers. In addition, the convenience and “Green” factor of digital coupons, particularly mobile coupons, make them especially appealing to consumers today.

Toshl is an expense tracker with a twist. With Toshl, you can easily track spending on your Android or Nokia Maemo phone. We plan to launch an iPhone app soon. Entering expenses is easy and streamlined, but it’s also incredibly versatile because it uses tags instead of predefined categories. But while collecting data is best done on the go, visualising, understanding and exporting your expenses is much more handy and comfortable on your computer.
Sync with the Web, have fun with your data
That’s why you can sync with the Toshl.com web service that helps you analyse and visualise the data. You can compare different types of expenses, see how they change through time and even toss around balls representing your expenses to release the tension. Toshl makes you see your expenses in a brand new light, pointing out where you spend too much and helping you save money. Understanding your finances has never been this fun.

Export & Backup
Tosh.com enables you to export the data into a plethora of different formats (CSV, Excel, PDF and Google Docs) and can also send automated expense reports each month to your e-mail. It protects you from data loss as well, because it keeps a secure backup of your expenses. If you lose your phone, or want to track expenses on another device, your data is always safely stored on Toshl.com and can be synced to your new device.

Get more with Toshl Pro
Toshl phone apps for Android and Maemo – FREE
Toshl.com standard account & sync – FREE
Toshl Pro subscription – $19.95/year

Toshl Pro subscription enables more advanced graphs, expense search, export into formats other than CSV, mail reports, editing expenses online and more.

Gartner, Inc. has identified 10 mobile technologies that will evolve significantly through 2011 in ways that will impact short-term mobile strategies and policies. Investments in mobile applications and technologies will increase through 2011 as organizations emerge from the recession and ramp up both business-to-employee (B2E) and business-to-consumer (B2C) mobile spending.

“We are highlighting these 10 mobile technologies that should be on every organization’s radar screen,” said Nick Jones, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “These mobile technologies were selected because they will evolve in ways that affect corporate strategies, significant numbers of customers or employees will adopt or expect them, or they will address particular mobile challenges that organizations will face through 2011.”

The 10 mobile technologies to watch in 2010 and 2011 include:

Bluetooth (3 and 4)
Two new Bluetooth versions will emerge by 2011: Bluetooth 3 will introduce 802.11 as a bearer for faster data transmission, and Bluetooth 4 will introduce a new low-energy (LE) mode that will enable communication with external peripherals and sensors. Both versions will include other technical improvements to improve battery life and security. Gartner believes that Bluetooth 3 will facilitate corporate and consumer functions demanding large bandwidth (e.g., downloading images and videos from handsets). Bluetooth LE will enable a range of new sensor-based business models in industries such as fitness, healthcare and environmental control and will be used by handset and PC peripherals to enable new functions, such as PCs that autolock when users move away from them.

The Mobile Web
By 2011, over 85 percent of handsets shipped globally will include some form of browser. In mature markets, such as Western Europe and Japan, approximately 60 percent of handsets shipped will be smartphones with sophisticated browsing capability and the ability to render conventional HTML sites in some manner. The growth in smartphones with relatively large and high-resolution screens will encourage greater numbers of people to access conventional websites on mobile devices, and will make it possible to deliver some B2C applications using conventional Web tools without adaptation. In mature markets, the mobile Web, along with associated Web adaptation tools, will be a leading technology for B2C mobile applications through 2012, and should be part of every organization’s B2C technology portfolio.

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Gartner, Inc. has revealed its key predictions on the use of social software and collaboration in the enterprise. These predictions focus on offerings ranging from team collaboration to dynamic social networking applications that offer rich profiles and activity streams.

“A lot has happened in a year within the social software and collaboration space. The growing use of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook by business users has resulted in serious enterprise dialogue about procuring social software platforms for the business,” said Mark R. Gilbert, research vice president at Gartner and co-chair of the Portals, Content and Collaboration (PCC) Summit. “Success in social software and collaboration will be characterized by a concerted and collaborative effort between IT and the business.”

Gartner offers five key predictions for social software:

By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.

Greater availability of social networking services both inside and outside the firewall, coupled with changing demographics and work styles will lead 20 percent of users to make a social network the hub of their business communications. During the next several years, most companies will be building out internal social networks and/or allowing business use of personal social network accounts. Social networking will prove to be more effective than e-mail for certain business activities such as status updates and expertise location.
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Gartner, Inc. has highlighted the key predictions that herald long-term changes in approach for IT organizations and the people they serve for 2010 and beyond. Gartner’s top predictions for 2010 showcase the trends and events that will change the nature of business today and beyond.

These predictions were selected from across Gartner’s research areas as the most compelling and critical predictions. The trends and topics they address this year speak to the changing balance of power and focus in IT. Gartner analysts said last year’s themes of shifting ownership and revenue flows continue, becoming more pronounced and more sharply focused. As the macro-economic environment adjusts to a new balance between supply, consumer demand and regulation, the focus of this year’s top predictions has expanded to encompass shifts in the way that users interact with IT.

“As organizations make plans to navigate the economic recovery and prepare for the return to growth, our predictions for 2010 focus on the impact of critical changes in the balance of control and power in IT,” said Brian Gammage, vice president and research fellow at Gartner. “With greater financial and regulatory oversight for all IT investment decisions, few organizations will be unaffected.”

“For many organizations, the economic and budgetary challenges of 2009 drove important changes in the general governance of IT investment decisions, accelerating the trend toward greater accountability and transparency,” said Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and chief Gartner fellow. “With a strong emphasis on business-case justifications, chief financial officers (CFOs) assumed a more active role. Although most organizations enter 2010 preparing for a return to growth, this financial oversight is unlikely to be lifted anytime soon. For IT leaders, greater fluency in the language of business has become a requirement.”

Gartner’s top predictions are intended to compel readers to action and to position themselves to take advantage of coming changes, not to be damaged by them. Gartner’s top predictions for 2010 and beyond include:

By 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets. Several interrelated trends are driving the movement toward decreased IT hardware assets, such as virtualization, cloud-enabled services, and employees running personal desktops and notebook systems on corporate networks.
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Mobile manufacturers Apple has revealed that its new Apple iPad device will be going on sale in UK stores from late April, a few weeks later than previously suggested by the American giants.  – Mobile phones users will have the ability to purchase both Wi-Fi only and Wi-Fi and 3G accessible iPads towards the end of next month, with the latter version likely to cost significantly more with the option of connecting to 3G services on public transport where there are very few Wi-Fi hotspots.

Competition to secure the ranging for the Apple iPad is expected to be fierce, with Orange a potential frontrunner at present. While the Apple iPad does not allow for mobile phone calls, its expansive 10” touch screen provides users with the ability to view web pages, video and digitised newspapers and magazines – making it a leading mobile working device.

Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, said: “The iPad is something completely new. We’re excited for customers to get their hands on this magical and revolutionary product and connect with their apps and content in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before.”

The sheer mass of mobile accessories related to the Apple iPad will make this a very unique and interesting device to use. With over 150,000 applications available from the Apple App Store and completely remodelled iWork software the ability to create word documents, spreadsheets and presentations on the move has never been easier.

New Fixed Networks research report from Business Monitor International is now available from Fast Market Research – With a estimated 73.544mn mobile subscribers in the Philippines market at the end of June 2009, penetration rates in the country had reached 80.5%, which was up from 76% in 2008.

In contrast 2008 reported a 12.41 percentage point increase in its penetration rate, so that growth in the mobile sector appears to be slowing down. Indeed, during Q209, there were just 1.68mn net additions. This was significantly lower than the 3.808mn reported in the previous quarter, and compared to 3.829mn net additions in Q208. The slowdown in mobile subscriber growth was due to Globe Telecom, which had begun to discount inactive subscribers from its base in Q209, following its 120-day rule. Read the rest of this entry »

The smartphone will be delivered in black and silver. Blackberry Storm2 is available at T-Mobile. The handset Blackberry Storm2 for £35 per month contract over 2 years that includes 600 minutes, 500 texts, unlimited internet and Blackberry internet included. T-Mobile have already declared that the RIM BlackBerry storm 2 9550 will be available in February ,embedded in the announcement is also Phil Lander, T-Mobile account director at RIM, confirming that RIM will launch their official Twitter client soon.

The manufacturer went with the smartphone, no new roads, because that unit has been further optimized and large experiments was largely abandoned. The errors of the first Storm are now a thing of the past, the new Storm not only offers an improved SurePress technology, but also WLAN, HSDPA, GPS, Bluetooth, a 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash as well as 1 gigabytes of internal memory.
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