For the first six months of this year, smart phone makers shipped 119 million phones, up 55 percent from the first half of 2009, according to IDC.
But HTC and Motorola — both of which use Google’s Android  operating system for their phones — made the most gains in the second quarter compared with the first quarter, said Llamas. HTC’s U.S. market share climbed from 8.9 percent to 14.2 percent. Motorola rose from 12.9 percent to 14.2 percent.

Android is the wild card, deserving close observation for the rest of this year and years to come.  As HTC and Motorola have leapt out in front with their own respective (Android-based) devices, others such as Dell, Kyocera, LG Electronics and Samsung will soon help grow the number of Android phones on store shelves.”

The net for all businesses is to be connect and marketing to smartphone users as this will be device of choice going forward.

The maturity of cloud-based applications combined with increased networks performance and security has provided any business owner options for how they can  manage their digital information. It has become very compelling to outsource this requirement and regard this service as an utility bill. The initial cost and learning curve is minimal allowing most business owners to focus on their core competency.  Another factor to consider is new Cloud2-base systems allow integrated social media feedback to your organization, providing a compelling case for increased customer satisfaction and shorter sales cycles. Even Verizon is getting into Cloud business.

In the end, you will probably see a blend for Cloud-based solutions with traditional internal proprietary solutions. Understanding what is best for you requires long-term planning and assessment of internal budget and resources required to properly manage in regards to your business needs.

Understanding your current and future customer segments with existing financial data, customer satisfaction surveys and industry data is critical to developing a solid strategic and business plan. Consider that what might have worked 2-3 years ago will not always apply in today’s market; the days of “nice to have” products and service are long gone, and you must provide simple messaging that communicates your value as a “got to have”  in relation to your customer’s day to day business.

Last, and probably the most important, is to share this information internally to your business! I can’t tell you how many times I find companies that fail to accurately communicate customer requirements within their organization. Some symptoms to look for related to lack of understanding of customer requirements are:

• Deadlines continue to move out on critical projects;
• Customer support  = fire fighting culture;
• Missing/Inaccurate company milestones;
• Sales and profitability declines;
• Employee turnover.

Staying connected to your customer is not only critical for upfront business planning but should also be developed for ongoing customer satisfaction.  Developing an integrated social media strategy that allows your customers and internal staff to interact in real-time will also provide you with invaluable data, allowing you to adjustment your plan as needed throughout the year.

• That jeopardize your reputation with customers;
• The cost of missed opportunities when no (or delayed) decision-making occurs, hoping the human talent you have will eventually get better;
• The cost of misusing the limited human resources that exist by misplacing responsibility and accountability with under-qualified or under-performing staff.

Strong leaders not only make better decisions themselves, but also help attract other high-performing team members that think and act decisively. Together, these talented people demand the best from each other and improve overall decision making.
The more talented people you have on your team, the more (and better) talent you attract and retain. When teams have the right match of talent to business needs, there can be amazing results. Good judgment, objective decision making, and consistent action leads to exceptional results. A team of high performers who are clear about the company’s vision and direction create energy and the belief that there is nothing they can’t accomplish. By contrast, ignoring talent deficiencies in your team drains energy, negatively impacts productivity, creates a lack of respect in leadership capabilities, and often results in high performers leaving for better opportunities.
Decisive leaders are clear about the knowledge, skills and abilities that they need, and are always assessing the talent they have, making course corrections and filling the gaps to maintain a consistent level of high performance. If you don’t take the time and effort to make good decisions, you will always be catching your breath, and always chasing instead of leading the competition.

Bluetooth is a wireless standard, named for the 10th century Danish king who unified Denmark. It was originally intended as a replace for computer connections, but rapidly found a home in cell phones.

We’re now seeing the latest evolution in Bluetooth wireless technology, called “Low Energy.”   Bluetooth LE will enable a plethora of new applications – some not even possible or imagined today – in many markets including healthcare, sports and fitness, security, and home entertainment.

A conference featuring Bluetooth LE will be held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Santa Clara, CA on March 2nd,  providing developers and press the latest updates and product announcements.  It’s a must for anyone in the wireless market wanting to expand their customer reach.  We’ll be there:  will you?

Understanding what your business core competency is and what can be outsourced continues to drive all companies on a global basis. As more business disciplines are outsourced, the critical requirement to communicate unified goals and the management of outside resources is creating many a sleepless nights for department heads and HR managers. It is important to evaluate your complete Business Lifecycle Management approach when developing strategic planning for the next decade. If not properly managed, this can be equated to having one master contractor for a project vs. managing multiple sub-contractors. Having department heads or HR managers chasing down these sub-contractors is like herding kittens; it’s a lose-lose proposition.

Unless you like herding kittens.

In order for any business to effectively operate, all business disciplines must have a clear unified direction with goals clearly defined to all internal stakeholders. By documenting and communicating these milestones and discussing your current business symptoms you will be able to identify root challenges for business discipline. What was once perceived as a “sales problem” can be diagnosed as:

• non-competitive product offering
• incomplete product literature and positioning
• outdated website and corporate presentation
• poor customer service
• no social media strategy
• poor product and sales training for internal and channel partners

In this economy, the need for effective operation and communication is more important than ever.  As outlined above, though, you’d better know what it is you want to communicate as a strategy of knowing what it is you want to achieve.

The sheer numbers never fail to surprise me, although I guess I shouldn’t be.  The report says we, as Americans, went through an average of about 34 gigabytes of data every day, ranging from “old” media (like newspapers and books) to “new” media (like satellite or Internet radio and web-based games).  And the report doesn’t even include data that we consume at work.

So where is the data coming from?  Almost 55% of the data comes from Americans playing streaming computer games, according to the report.  TV accounts for another 35%, with everything else accounting for the remaining 10% or so.  In all, the UCSD report says about 3.6 zettabytes of data was consumed last year, 12 times the amount estimated in an IDC report two years ago.  Put into perspective, a zettabyte is a million million gigabytes.   Put another way, if you took every home computer in the state of Minnesota, multiplied that amount 1,000 times, then multiplied that number by another 3.5…you’d get some idea of the amount of information and storage we’re talking about.

As professionals, we need to pay careful attention to these numbers:  customers are increasingly demanding information that’s delivered to them via the Internet, and delivered real-time with no interruption.  And when they want to save that information, they want a reliable place to save it.  (We are, you know, saving everything:  it wasn’t too long ago that terabytes were spoken of in hushed, reverential terms.  Now, you can buy a 1TB external drive for less than $100.)

The lessons are pretty clear.  The concept of Moore’s Law is alive and well in terms of escalating data usage.  Those companies that fail to understand this, and plan for it, risk being left behind in short order.  Storage hardware and software companies need to plan, of course, but so do networking companies, and Internet providers, and content providers like TV stations and newspapers (yes, newspapers), and customers who’ll ultimately consume all this information.

Patents are also valuable for generating interest and investment in new and growing businesses. This is particularly important for companies attempting to establish themselves in high-tech industries. Start-up companies are often based on the development of a specific new, sometimes potentially ground-breaking, technology. Without securing rights for our technology, we may find ourselves unable to obtain sufficient resources to bring that technology to market.

Patents may also be licensed to other parties allowing these parties to exploit the invention in exchange for royalty payments.

Finally, a patent serves as a readily accessible public record of the innovative developments made and owned by the patent owner. The existence of a patent may serve as a warning to competitors to stay clear of a protected technology. In addition, a patent stakes out a patentee’s technological territory, precluding others who develop technology at a later stage from attempting to claim or patent that technology as their own.

Well I hope I didn’t bore you with my “Benefits of Patent Protection” analogy but it is a critical step in the evolution of any company. That’s it for this week kids—-this is the CFO signing out.

Frank