If the pundits are to be believed 2012 will see the full effect of government cut backs, tax increases and higher commodity prices taking money away from the pockets of the consumer. At least inflation is predicted to slow from its current high of nearly 5% to nearer the Bank of England target of 2% within twelve months, giving the consumer a little respite. So how do you prepare your business for the worst?

Obviously it will be essential to minimise overheads without sacrificing efficiency, and to maximise the return on every GB£ invested, but how?

If some of your workforces are mobile, performing customer visits or maintaining plant ‘in the field’, or are employed in the supply chain, or in logistics, Codegate can help. Our unique software and hardware solutions enable our customers to beat the competition by:

• Minimising invoice disputes through open and transparent business transactions
• Avoid Service Level Agreement penalties by providing undisputable evidence of compliance
• Providing on-line transaction history and viewing of progress, minimising return visits
• Increase efficiency by reducing the employee’s administration overhead, allowing more visits per man/day
• Reduce mobile inventory by showing what stock is available and where
• Minimise employment costs through “where’s my nearest…” web portal view of staff availability
• Ensuring employee protection by including “lone worker” reporting concepts
• Minimising your corporate carbon footprint by integrating navigation and optimising routing instructions
• Providing evidence of corporate compliance with Health & Safety and Working Time Directives

As you can see this isn’t just about saving money, it’s about creating and maximising profit at a time when profit will be hard to come by. By enabling your staff to become “trusted experts” with their customers, loyalty is increased, making it more difficult for the “cheapest price” competitor to match your add value proposition. As a result, you win more competitive bids, increasing profits.

Imagine increasing your market share while your competitors contract, staying profitable while they make losses, expanding – against the trend. For sixteen years, companies employing mobile workforces to ensure they can monitor and measure field operations, enabling managers to maximise efficiency and minimise costs to give a better bottom line, have used Codegate’s software. That’s what makes our customers talk about us the way they do, but don’t take my word for it, read their words here.

Do you have a better plan for beating the competition and maximising your return in what may be the second dip of a recession?  If you have I’m interested in your thoughts, leave a comment below. Of course, if you’d like to discuss a possible mobile computer soultion for deployment in your business, drop me an email or call the office on +44 (0)845 345 0808.

Which gets me thinking about just how these last minute orders are fulfilled, or more specifically how many times a package’s barcode label is ‘read’ from the time it’s applied to the time we take delivery. We’re all familiar with the courier’s consignment number being scanned when it finally arrives at our door, but have you considered how many barcodes are scanned as a result of your one product purchase? Let’s have a closer look!

So you’ve bought your Aunt Ethel Terry Wogan’s autobiography entitled “Is it me?”, online from Amazon (other biographies and on-line retailers are available) and they’ve vowed to deliver it within three days. I must confess I don’t have any inside information about how Amazon fulfils its orders, but here’s what I suspect happens next.

In the triple shift, 24 hour warehouse one of the picking staff is swiftly racing around the warehouse picking orders from the multitude of shelves. The display of his rugged mobile computer is telling him to go to isle 16, shelf 12, bin location F11. He denotes his arrival by using the mobile’s integrated barcode scanner to scan the shelf edge barcode label, if he’s scanned the correct code, the display now shows him the product, “Is it me? Autobiography – Terry Wogan, Qty = 1”. As he picks up one copy he scans the book’s ISBN barcode, his rugged mobile confirms it is the correct item.

Once he’s collected the optimum number of picks, his rugged mobile will direct him to the packing/dispatch area where he leaves all the goods for the packers to work their magic. The packers each have a list of orders to dispatch, they use a tethered barcode scanner to scan the item they’re about to pack and the label printer attached to their display spits out the consignment label for this product detailing the recipient’s name and delivery address. Once Terry Wogan has been securely packed, the label is applied and the consignment barcode scanned to confirm it’s ready to go. Then the package is whisked along a conveyor to the transport area.

The label is scanned again as the package is loaded onto the truck which delivers to the designated courier’s sorting depot where, you guessed it, the label is scanned again accepting it into the depot. This is a high tech sorting depot with automatic holographic scanners switching conveyors depending on the destination of the package. The package is likely to be scanned an average of four times in this depot before being scanned onto a trunk vehicle.

The trunk vehicle transports packages to the area depot where it is again scanned in, confirming receipt of the goods. Here it is again routed to a scheduled courier van where it’s scanned on to the van. Finally, it arrives at your door, where the courier again scans the label before asking for your name and signature on the display of his rugged mobile.

For sixteen years, Codegate’s software has been used by warehouses, couriers and logistics experts to ensure they can monitor and measure the supply chain, enabling managers to maximise efficiency and minimise costs, resulting in a better bottom line.

So how many scans did you guess? This was a single item shipment with a simple delivery route and yet fourteen barcode scans were recorded before it got into your hands. Now scale that up for the impending festive madness which is swiftly approaching, a mind boggling thought for sure!

Not bad for a forty year old piece of technology! The mighty barcode battles on and remains a staple in the Auto-ID diet!

Did you guess right, or do you have inside knowledge of how specific on-line retailers fulfil orders?  If you have I’m interested in your thoughts on this topic so please do leave a comment below.

Of course, if you’d like to discuss a possible mobile deployment for your business, feel free to drop me an email or call the office on +44 (0)845 345 0808.

All the demonstrations I’ve seen ask Siri ‘What’s the weather like today?” or “Will I need an umbrella today?” Then they add as an after thought, “in San Francisco?” and miraculously Siri returns with the spoken response “You’ll need your umbrella today in San Francisco.”

The demonstrations are clever but whilst Siri is still in beta, it isn’t claimed to be Artificial Intelligence (AI) although it does understand conversational concepts and will link previous requests to the current. It also knows where you are, from GPS co-ordinates and from your diary what your schedule is, so by asking what’s the “Weather like today?” without adding “in [place name]” it can give you the forecast for your current location.

Like many of Apple’s best technology introductions, Siri isn’t new. It began life almost a decade ago as a cognitive learning exercise by the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), part of its Department of Defence. Dubbed the Personal Assistant with Learning capability (PAL), its objective is to help the user complete tasks on-line, particularly in a mobile context.

Is Siri a search engine? Well no, it’s not. It’s presenting the results of searches derived from your request and putting them in a contextual way, giving you both a graphical and audible response. You can ask which cinema is showing a particular film or which is the most highly recommended Greek restaurant and, if there is an application to support on-line booking, it will book the table for you.

Siri integrates a few dozen Application Program Interfaces (APIs) from well-known applications that enable it to simultaneously interrogate several web servers to obtain the answers the user is looking for. This isn’t Google, it doesn’t present many pages of answers, rather it learns what you prefer and offers recommendations.

We’ve recently discussed how different interfaces, like styli and touch-screens, have been brought to the Auto-ID and data capture industry’s rugged mobile computers, each changing the way workers interface with their mobile computers. Could Siri be the next big interface?

Could it be used to help mobile workers, interrogating back office systems to obtain the fastest delivery or cheapest price product for their customer? Yes it probably could, but it would most likely be complete overkill, because its skill is simultaneous, multiple queries. Siri has taken ten years and millions of dollars to develop; it has voice recognition (although it isn’t dependent on it), cognitive learning abilities, time and space awareness, plus an understanding of context and conversational structure and that’s just the public beta version…

When the late Steve Jobs presented the then new MAC with the revolutionary mouse in 1984, it also wasn’t ‘new’. What was new, however, was how he integrated it with MAC OS and a graphical user interface. The mouse became the pointing device of choice for countless millions of computer users.

I’m certain that Siri will similarly become ubiquitous, especially in the iPhone/iPod/iPad/Mac world, with millions of users becoming reliant on it to perform ever more complex searches and queries, in the simplest of ways. And just as the Auto-ID industry has adopted other ‘new’ interfaces in the past, it will also benefit from a ‘Siri-esque’ product in the future.

Have you already seen a Siri demonstration, or perhaps had a play with it yourself? Whilst I await collection of my iPhone 4S I rely on you, my readers, to share your real world experiences of Siri so far…

If you have I’d really like to know your thoughts, so please feel free to leave a comment below. Of course, if you’d like to discuss a possible mobile solution for your business, drop me an email or call the team in the office on +44 (0)845 345 0808.

Back in the bad old days, we entered everything through the keyboard, and on hand held rugged devices it was tough, sometimes involving three key depressions to input one alpha character. Then came a mini version of Microsoft Windows complete with a touch screen and stylus. The display became more graphic, the drop down selection boxes and menus became more fiddly, hence the ingenious stylus. Using the stylus meant you could be precise about your selection, double tapping to confirm. But, the stylus was often difficult to find!

Many users easily overcame the problem; everyone carried the instant stylus replacement tool, the ballpoint pen.  To the user this was an ideal, dual function, replacement for the evasive stylus, although the benefit would be short lived. The ballpoint pen left deep scratches on the sensitive touch screen and quickly made the screen more opaque than transparent. After a few weeks of this abuse the device would become unusable and the reputation of its manufacturer tarnished, through no fault of its own.

Could the latest smartphone and tablet technology provide a more effective input mechanism than the stylus? Finger swipes and gestures have replaced many selections previously  carried out by stylus stabbing, but can they be used in our rugged Auto-ID environment?

As you know it’s the operating system that provides the interaction between the user and the application software it runs, but as yet it doesn’t provide “gesture” support.  In the future Rugged/Enterprise devices will use Windows Embedded Handheld or Windows Embedded Compact. These are derivatives of the old Windows Mobile and Windows CE (respectively). The latest versions are Windows Embedded Handheld 6.5 (a rename of Windows Mobile 6.5) and Windows Embedded Compact 7.

While these future versions of the older Windows CE operating system will provide compatibility with older legacy applications, the basic input mechanisms appear unchanged. This will ensure ease of transition to newer versions but is unlikely to accommodate gestures or swiping. But is this such a bad thing?

As I’ve been pondering this conundrum and what appears to be neglect of adopting new technologies in rugged handhelds, I’ve become increasingly aware that when using gesture and finger based input devices, inaccuracies become a more common occurrence. A poorly executed gesture here or there and the device interprets data input rather than the intended gesture. Perform this a few times in any given day, completely unaware and suddenly the data captured has lost integrity.

Perhaps then gesture based and finger input solutions are not the way to go with rugged devices and their array of applications. Perhaps, with advances in OSs, we should be looking forward to accurate, hands free, voice input, rather than stabbing capacitive displays (such as those used on iOS devices and many other smartphones) with a special stylus which is less accurate or versatile than its traditional stylus roots. Lose your capacitive stylus whilst out on the road and there will be no ballpoint pen to save you!

Do you or your mobile workforce already have a smartphone solution that enjoys your gestures or do you prefer stylus stabbing?

Let me know or, if you’d prefer, leave a comment below. Of course, if you’d like to discuss a possible mobile computing solution deployment for your business, drop me an email or call the Codegate office on +44 (0)845 345 0808.

We’ve all been to the large companies where the receptionist, seated in a grand foyer, keys our details into their computer system, a local printer feeds out a smart company visitor badge emblazoned with the organisation’s logo, along with our name in prominent type. The receptionist deftly inserts the badge into a clear plastic sheath and clips it to our suit jacket, enabling everyone to see our name (as wonderful or embarrassing as it may be) as we are escorted around the facility.

But what do small companies do? Invariably, the person you are meeting shakes your hand and says “welcome” or where technological  advances have allowed, an employee writes out a multipart, no carbon required, tear-off slip, by hand! Sorry for being so sweeping but I speak from bitter experience…

The above situation was one which we at Codegate were faced with. At our 200-year-old converted Granary, we don’t have a formal reception area (or a receptionist for that matter thus making the former notion a little redundant) so we needed a cost effective way of making sure we could properly account for visitors in case of emergency. So, like many other small businesses with financial concerns at the forefront of our minds, we searched for an inexpensive way of providing professional visitor registration using every day, desktop computers along with small dedicated printers. Faced with an impasse of software options which failed to meet our criteria, we sent out a search party to find a solution… The result: V-Log or Visitor Log to give it its full name.

V-Log is a simple to install and easy to use visitor recording software system for your PC. It enables you to record and manage visitors, replacing the traditional hand written registration book or expensive multi-part slips in reception. A multi-user support feature allows the use of V-Log at multiple entrances to a building or site. V-Log even allows for touch screen self-registration where required.

Key features:

• Quickly sign-in visitors and print a quality visitor badge if required
• Keep electronic records of all visitors
• Provide immediate visibility of which visitors are currently registered on site including one-click emergency report printing
• Reception or Self Check-in Modes
• Multiple entrance recording

Our V-Log Pro version includes all the above features plus support for multiple companies within a building as well as web and mobile access to visitor lists in the case of emergency.

As V-Log has a network version, it can be installed on a server and accessed on the local area network, enabling multi-user, multi exit installations. In addition, V-Log Pro will send a full list of visitors to a Smartphone in case of emergency enabling the Fire Marshall to account for all visitors outside the building.

You can get full details of this product on our website at ’A greener way to register visitors’ where you will also find sample screen shots and see ‘how it works’.

Full pricing information including a special introductory price is available here

If you’re not sure about taking the plunge, fear not, you can download a free 30 day trial

Do you already have a similar computerised system or are you still manually writing out visitor details? Let me know which and we’ll pull together a quick poll on the current landscape of visitor registration or, if you’d prefer, leave a comment below.

Of course, if you’d like to discuss a possible deployment for your business, drop me an email or call the office on +44 (0)845 345 0808.

Back in March this year, my blog entitled “Windows Mobile 6.5 or Android?” questioned if the major manufacturers in our industry would utilise the Android operating system, obtained by Google in 2005, which is developed together with the Open Handset Alliance, and issued under a free software licence. To date, only Motorola’s Xoom tablet product employs Android, in this instance the ‘Honeycomb’ version designed specifically for tablets.  Honeywell have made a recent announcement launching its Developer Program for Android, suggesting it will be incorporating the OS in its new products. However, other manufacturers including Intermec, Psion and Datalogic have yet to integrate Google’s OS into their product line.

In news somewhat unrelated to the rugged mobile computer market but pertinent to the mobile phone arena and the wider software issues raised here, Samsung is reported to have hired an Android specialist hacker, further indicating the potential market impact of Google’s OS.

Given Google’s history with Android, the customer base that has grown on the back of the free software licence and the absence of an alternative from Microsoft, it’s understandable that Android has become widely adopted in the smartphone market. Many of the manufacturers, which are founding members of the Open Handset Alliance, including HTC, Samsung, LG, T-Mobile and others, have put their faith in the search engine giant’s operating system, in part because Google was not a hardware competitor. Now however, a new day has dawned as Google has purchased Motorola Mobility Inc. (MMI), one of the top five global mobile handset manufacturers. This move has instantly put Google into the hardware market, openly declaring itself a member of the competition.

So why would Google pay a premium of over 60% for the shares of MMI, if it was likely to hack off its customers and take the business into an area outside its core competence? The answer, we’re told by Google, is to protect its Android customers by acquiring MMI’s impressive patent library, rumoured to be over 17,000 strong with a further 7,000 awaiting approval. So armed, Google will be better placed to defend Android customers from patent suits originated by Apple, Nokia, RIM and HTC. Google further suggests its customers are ‘happy’ with the acquisition, and has suggested that it will operate MMI at ‘arms length’ and may even sell off the hardware business.

Some industry watchers suggest Google is really attempting to build an integrated ‘ecosystem’ for Android, copying Apple’s iPhone and iPad success through controlling the hardware, software (iOS) and delivery of applications through app stores. The concept of a Google controlled mobile with Android operating system, predominantly (one would assume) displaying a Google search screen with a Google+ social networking icon, may be attractive, but this road is littered with corpses. Given the experience of others that have tried this approach, including Microsoft with Zune and the Kin phone, RIM with Blackberry, Oracle with Sun, HP’s problems of Palm and more recently with WebOS, it’s all pointing to the difficulties of an integrated business model.

The only company that’s succeeded with the integrated model to date is Apple, although some say Amazon are hot on their heels with their Kindle product. Can Google emulate Apple and succeed in creating an integrated business model, or will they end up like Microsoft and their Kin phone?

I’m no financial advisor, but as they say in financial circles, I’m short on Google.

What do you think of Google’s acquisition, good move or, end in tears?

Feel free to leave a comment below. Or, alternatively if you’d like to discuss a possible deployment of a mobile solution for your business, drop me an email or call the office on +44 (0)845 345 0808.

Everything becomes traceable, uniquely identifiable and connectable. You’d be able to Google your WiFi connected fridge to see if you need to buy milk on the way home, connect to your boiler to increase the house temperature 30 minutes before you arrive and get the digital freesat recorder to record the first half of The One Show because you’ll be late. Or, if you don’t want the hassle, you’d use BBC iPlayer to replay it later. All this sounds very “Tomorrow’s World”, but the only thing that isn’t in place to make this happen is an affordable way of printing NFC tags…and yes if you’re a regular reader here you will know that I have written before about the need for lower cost tags.

Most homes and the majority of businesses are equipped with a wireless network and a broadband internet connection. By giving everything a unique IP address, you’ll be able to connect to anything from any internet connection. As with everything wireless, it would obviously be a good idea to install some security to discourage opportunistic enquiries from undesirables. Once tagged, asset management, product movement, supply logistics, insurance schedules, environmental control and product traceability become simple applications fed with accurate, machine readable data.

The missing link is affordable wireless (NFC) tags.

A privately owned UK company, Additive Process Technologies of Market Harborough, Leicestershire has come up with a possible solution as reported in NFC World. APT’s Allan Goodman is quoted in the article:

“Our process takes a lot of the cost out of the tag manufacturing process, taking away the plastic (inlay), the expensive conductive adhesive and expensive inks, using the lowest cost materials to produce a tag instead, in one efficient step.”

This sounds exactly like the breakthrough needed to bring the benefits of unique identification within economic range, i.e. less than 5 pence a tag, removing the last barrier to mass proliferation…price!

Once critical mass is achieved and NFC equipped mobile phones enable consumers to ‘read’ the tags electronically, applications will emerge to facilitate everything from electronic wallets to monitoring your heart through the NFC ‘patch’ stuck to your chest. Your mobile phone will become the key to your car, your front door and will act as your proof of identity for benefit or taxation purposes, all protected by biometric, finger print or iris recognition via the inbuilt digital camera.

With everything uniquely tagged it will be much easier for police to identify goods stolen by looters/thieves, giving the Courts irrefutable evidence of guilt. The potential benefits to manufacturers tracing a batch of products with a faulty component, or determining the maintenance history of an air conditioning plant, would be considerable. Even established bar code applications, like the NHS blood bag marking, livestock, “farm to fork” and food traceability applications could be significantly developed and enhanced to eliminate manual keying errors.

UTOPIA! Well it is to an Auto-ID evangelist like me.

Do you think we’ll ever get to the stage where everything is tagged or is it a pipedream?  Feel free to leave a comment below. Or, alternatively if you’d like to discuss a possible deployment of a solution for your business, drop me an email or call the office on +44 (0)845 345 0808.

Mobile wallets, the ability to electronically pay for things by waving your mobile phone in front of a payment terminal, isn’t relevant to our Auto-ID world, or is it? There are many examples of hardware features appearing in the consumer mobile device which subsequently arrive in our more rugged enterprise focused mobile devices. Digital cameras are the most obvious example, and are frequently used in Proof of Delivery (PoD) applications to prove a delivery was attempted, usually by taking a picture of the front door. But it’s also true of GPS, Bluetooth, accelerometers and digital compasses, they’ve all appeared in rugged devices after the mass consumer market adoption brought down the cost of manufacture.
So how will the Auto-ID arena use NFC? The answer is in many ways. Unlike the much talked about, but little implemented, general Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) market, NFC will become mass market as consumers will be using the technology daily, forcing mass market adoption and therefore making the technology ubiquitous. We’ll see NFC’s introduction in applications as varied as; Asset Tracking to Security Guard Route checks, from Ticket Validation to Airline Check-in at airports… But wait a minute, wasn’t the same claimed for RFID back in the 90’s? Yes it was, so I feel I’d better explain why I think NFC will succeed where RFID has failed.

Both RFID and NFC depend on modulating and demodulating a radio frequency transmitted through an antenna and usually received via a hand-held reader. With NFC this device could simply be a mobile phone, but with RFID it’s often a separate hand-held gun type reader or a large add-on accessory to a rugged hand held terminal. The main barrier to adoption of any RFID application is cost. The RFID tags are expensive, depending on whether they incorporate a battery (active), or not (passive), they are unlikely to cost less than £0.15p and in some cases can be as much as several pounds per tag. Whilst the tag cost can quickly add up, each of the devices required to read or write to these tags cost several hundred pounds.

Now compare that scenario to NFC: The tags are likely to be passive and thus low cost, add to that the savings created through mass production, and the physical reduction in the size of read/write hardware to single integrated circuit chip form, the cost is minimal by comparison. If NFC chips fit within the existing, physically very small, mobile phone casing, the add-on cost for the manufacturer will be equally small. These chips will be made in the millions to fit within mobile phones from manufacturers including, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, HTC and even Apple, and our Auto-ID manufacturers including Motorola, Intermec, Honeywell, Datalogic and Psion will incorporate the technology in their rugged devices soon.

The result should be the mass adoption of NFC in Auto-ID applications, because the main barrier to implementation has been removed – cost. NFC will succeed where RFID has failed because NFC will provide a speedy return on investment thanks to a much reduced capital cost from the off.

Do you think NFC will fill the gap which RFID failed to fill?
Will NFC evolve to replace current functional deployments of RFID?
Do you have a scenario where you could see NFC solving an issue which RFID has never fulfilled?

Feel free to leave a comment below. Or, alternatively if you’d like to discuss a possible deployment of a solution for your business, drop me an email or call the office on +44 (0)845 345 0808.

Conventional wisdom dictates we should cut back on everything other than essential costs – yes we should – now is most certainly not the time to be wasteful. But in comparison to creating profits, saving money is easy, you can simply turn off a light to save money (not much, but it’s a start!). Creating or increasing profit means beating the competition, justifying your sales margin and increasing customer loyalty. It can mean creating a trusted ‘expert’ advisor relationship with your customers rather than just being a supplier. But how?

Your mobile workers are visiting customers every day, writing reports of their progress and noting any specific conditions which could affect their job on site. They note recommendations they’ve made to the users, changes in the environment they visit or simply their everyday interactions with on-site staff. You probably record this in your customer relationship management system (CRM) for use in preparing for their next visit. But this information could be pure’ gold’ to your customer and if you share it with them, through a secure customer specific portal on your web site, your status with your customer will increase enormously.

What does this mean in practice? If your mobile worker has left a note recommending a specification, or environmental, or usage change, it becomes part of a record of their expert opinion. If proven justified in the future, your customer will come to rely on the information your team is providing. Your company becomes the trusted ‘expert ‘advisor rather than simply another supplier. When your competitor approaches this customer with his “I’m cheaper” offering, your customer will ask if he’s also able to be transparent in his dealings with them and can he prove his service quality will match yours. Your competitor is unlikely to be able to prove his claims and your customer will remain loyal.  A loyal customer is far more likely to recommend your services to his peers, increasing your business, creating profits!

But be warned this is not for the fainthearted; it takes guts, a lot of discipline on the part of your employees to write up their best advice and strong management to monitor the effectiveness of your new open policy. You’ll then be able to measure the results and manage the inevitable business growth.

Could you trust your employees to write the right things, would you be able to be totally open with your customer? Share your thoughts and experiences below in the comments section, I’d love to hear your views on this…

If you’d like to discuss a possible deployment of a solution for your business, drop me an email or call the office on +44 (0)845 345 0808.

Before looking a little more into the answer to my question last year, it’s worth restating some of the numbers he shared. Briefly, he told us Apple has:

• Sold over 200 million iOS devices
• Over 500,000 applications approved on its App Store
• Users who’ve collectively downloaded ‘more than 14 billion apps’

Obviously iOS devices include the iPhone range but also the iPad tablet computer and the iPod Touch, the WiFi only version of the iPhone. What’s significant is the iPhone has only been around since 2007 yet has been widely accepted by consumers and business users alike.

Many IT professionals have found themselves having to accept the integration of the iPhone into their corporate IT structure, often because the loudest proponents for its use are Board level Directors. In response to many critics of the iPhone’s security features, Apple has raised the bar by announcing the encryption of all data transferred between the device and its new on-line internet storage service – iCloud.

So back to the question, “Can iPhone 4 work for business?”, the answer is a straight forward Yes, with a surprising number of buts.

• Only if it’s tough enough for your environment
• Assuming you can find an application that works for you, or can have one written
• If losing data through a lack of back-up battery isn’t a worry
• Assuming the staff who’ll actually use it approves of the hardware, because they’ll have an easy excuse not to should it become broken
• Not if you need an integrated, high speed, bar code scanner
• Not if you’ll want to lock down the device to operate a single specific application or discreet set of applications
• If you can roll-out all devices before the next, newer, faster, slimmer model emerges

In a nutshell, the iPhone, in common with all the smartphones, is designed as a consumer product. It lacks the ruggedness required of many corporate mobile data capture devices and, had it been designed with ruggedness in mind, would not have achieved the extremely high level of consumer sales. We’ve dealt with the comparison of smartphone versus rugged device before.

Congratulations to Apple, they have achieved a remarkable feat in the volume of sales, the creation of a whole new platform and a clear leadership in a ‘post pc’ era. They’re now reportedly the biggest purchaser of NAND flash memory technology, exceeding even HP. You have to admire a company that’s come from being the target of many jokes in the PC industry, to building a capitalisation that now exceeds Intel and Microsoft combined.

What do you think, are smartphones good enough for the job? Have you experienced implementing them? Feel free to leave a comment below.

If you’d like to discuss a possible deployment of a mobile solution for your business, drop me an email or call the office on +44 (0)845 345 0808. Remember, you can always keep up with what we’re discussing by following CodegateLtd on twitter.