…buried in yesterday’s Pew Internet report, “Understanding the Participatory News Consumer” it appears that Ballmer has cleared a way to score a future goal. The survey indicated that more than half of US consumers already get news and other real-time information wirelessly via laptops. This is a field which Steve still has a lot of control.When Ballmer’s boys release Windows 7 for the Mobile it is likely to improve the links between the desktop and the the PC. Not only making the OS more attractive for business but also for those who want news on the move. It is starting to look like Windows 7 will be able to mimic a lot more PC behaviour on a mobile and thus Steve can use established behaviour on the desktop and put it onto mobile by offering similar capabilities.

Consumers should be able to sync capabilities and their behaviour from mobile Windows desktop to Windows Phone. “On-the-go-news consumers” are a better demographic for Redmond than say the iPhone user. According to Pew Internet: “The typical on-the-go news consumer is a white male, age 34, who has graduated from college and is employed full-time.” It is the same demographic which is likely to buy a bleeding edge phone.

Apple’s demographic is much younger and less interested in news or anything other than shiny objects and listening to Coldplay.

The original title on this post at Fudzilla is somewhat of a misnomer. Or perhaps it was done like this as as an attempt to draw traffic (we all do it don’t we?).

However, it does bring up one good point.

Microsoft has had success in mobile longer than what most give them credit for. Where am I clipping this from? What am I using?

I am at a Starbucks three hours from home… and I am on my Windows Laptop.

More than we would like to admit… Microsoft already has many of our hearts and minds while mobile. Some (at least more than 50% of you) are also reading this from a Windows desktop or laptop.

How many of you are reading this on a laptop? Away from your desk? Away from home?

We should never underestimate the sleeping giant… no matter how many missteps it takes it is still there and close enough to get back into the game.

Or am I wrong?

A new report published yesterday by the UN indicates that 67% of the world’s population, or two-thirds total, are mobile subscribers- far outweighing Online access.

67% of the world’s population represents around 4.6B people, up from only 1B in 2002, indicating staggering continued growth.  In developing nations, however, the uptake is even more substantial with 57% of the total population in these nations being mobile subscribers, even though other technologies are scarce.

What’s your Mobile Strategy?

Regardless of what you do… you need to think through this. How does it affect your business? Your constituents? Your congregants? Your members?

You don’t have to be a business to have a strategy… you just need to understand that you have them right there. They all have mobile devices … what are you going to do about it?

What’s your call to action?

‘Economists, said John Maynard Keynes, should think of themselves as humble specialists, on a par with dentists. But his advice has gone unheeded. Over the past 50 years, economics and its jargon have penetrated every corner of human life. Decisions to marry and inject heroin alike are explained in terms of utility maximisation. Doctors, priests and scientists are lumped together as service providers or rent seekers. Schoolteachers are urged to “add value” to their pupils. The pig philosophy, as Thomas Carlyle called it, has become all-embracing.

Of the many harms inflicted by economics on the English language, “human capital” is the most grievous. Coined by Chicago economists Jacob Mincer and Gary Becker in the 1960s, it refers to the stock of personal skills and qualities that constitutes a worker’s economic value. Such skills and qualities are often costly to acquire and yield returns only over a long period of time, so are readily thought of as a kind of capital. Mincer and Becker’s work has provided the intellectual rationale for the huge expansion of higher education in recent decades. In an economy dominated by the knowledge and service industries, with personality and expertise at a premium, “investment in human capital” is the name of the game.

The phrase “human capital” is now so thoroughly naturalised that we seldom pause to ponder its implications. What is capital anyway? Capital is not a particular kind of good, but any good viewed in relation to certain interests. A donkey is capital to the wood-carrier. A derelict church is capital to the restaurant entrepreneur. Capital, in short, is wealth viewed not as an end in itself but as a means to more wealth. The phrase “human capital” insinuates that human beings too are to be viewed in this light—as instruments of the productive process. We have all of us attained the status which Aristotle reserved for slaves, that of living tools. What a triumph for the dismal science! Keynes naively supposed that economic growth was for the sake of personal cultivation. His modern successors have put him right: personal cultivation is for the sake of economic growth.’

Brilliant. ‘Human capital’ shall not pass my lips again.

Neither will it cross my lips (I hope).

So are your employees assets? Capital? Furniture?
Are they only a means to an end? That end being making a profit for your shareholders… for you?

How you view your employees will determine how well they perform for you and how difficult a new implementation will be. If they feel valued and taken into account they will take ownership of the work and the new tools you are providing for them. If it is mobile technology… how will it help them? Will it improve their workflow? Their work-life balance?

If we see them as assets they will only perform to their stated specifications. If we see them as collaborators in our success they will give more… much more.

If you were planning on popping a lot of location-based ads into your upcoming killer iPhone app, you might want take a peek at the latest update from Apple for developers. A rather stern note on the site reads: “If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.” Is Apple doing this to prevent abuse from advertisers, so that users won’t end up with advertisements from stores all around them? There isn’t any real explanation as to why this isn’t allowed, but it’s certainly worth taking note if you’re building an app with the intention of putting advertisements in. After all, you wouldn’t want to spend your precious time building an app only to find out that it will be rejected by Apple, right?

Interesting little tid bit. Somewhere else folks have been wondering out loud if this has anything to do with Apple’s purchase of Quattro or some other secret juicy soon to be released nugget? Unfortunately I don’t recall where or who was doing this wondering…

It certainly can’t be about diluting the App Store right? It is already flooded with loads of sub-quality apps… so what is this about?

Or I may be wrong. Perhaps they are just trying to clean up and tighten control to prevent users from being spammed with ads…

Regardless of the underlying reason why Apple is doing this it is for the good of the industry. It does make one feel protected and looked after doesn’t it?

The new tools allow Google Apps Premier and Education Edition administrators to manage enterprise smartphones directly from the Google Apps control panel, without having to deploy additional third-party mobile device management software offered by vendors like Sybase iAnywhere and Good Technology (formerly Visto).IT administrators can lock down and remotely wipe data from lost or stolen mobile devices and establish more complex password administration protocols. Google Apps Premier business customers pay $50 per user per year, while educational institutions receive the service free.

Google Apps supports almost every device on the market today, including RIM BlackBerry with the introduction last year of its Connector for Blackberry Enterprise Servers. However, interestingly, Google has yet to produce enhanced security and mobile management support for RIM BlackBerry or even its own Android phones like the Droid and its recently unveiled Nexus One.

When it comes to entering the enterprise, Google’s moves, so far, appear deliberate and calculated. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported Google plans on launching an online business software store packed with third-party applications that seamlessly integrate with Google Apps, which may replace today’s Google Solutions Marketplace. Google would not confirm the plans, saying only, “We’re constantly working with our partners to deliver more solutions to businesses, but we have nothing to announce at this time.”

The company also remains mum on when it will commit fully to an enterprise Android strategy. A Google spokesperson told Channel Insider, “To date, Android-powered phones have been targeted toward consumers. Future versions of Android will introduce more functionality for IT managers to deploy enterprise devices, which will be of particular interest to our Google Apps customers.”

Google’s silence is not stopping some business-to-business software developers and VARs from supporting Android, however. DataViz, the creator of Documents to Go and RoadSync, is experiencing substantial success in the Android Market, telling Channel Insider that it is close to reaching 500,000 downloads of its introductory version in the Android Marketplace. The company’s software also comes preloaded on RIM BlackBerrys, and supports Symbian-powered phones and iPhone.  DataViz also offers an enterprise version of its software, complete with volume licensing. The company has a variety of resellers like CDW and Insight.

Good Technology, a provider of enterprise mobile security and device management software as well as mobile e-mail and collaboration software, recently announced its support for Android. Good faces an uphill battle as its offerings are slowly being challenged with the release of the ActiveSync protocol and bundled versions of mobile device management and security offerings by Microsoft and Google.

Enterprise mobile application and platform provider Antenna Software supports Android as well, and sees the growing pervasiveness of Android in the enterprise as key to its business.

“Overall, we believe very much that device diversity is a wonderful thing—people love choice, and the fact that Google is creating choice is great for the market. We see a good amount of interest and pull for Android from our customers,” says Jim Somers, Antenna’s chief marketing and strategy officer.

The mobile OS wars continue to provide sport and plenty of blood-letting for those interested, and the fun is only beginning. Apple and Microsoft are facing a massive threat with the increased adoption of Android and Google Apps. Apple CEO Steve Jobs thinks he knows what Google wants, telling employees recently, “Make no mistake, they want to kill the iPhone.” Jobs continued, using an expletive to describe Google’s “Don’t Be Evil mantra,” which the search giant quietly dropped last spring.

Time will tell, but if Google’s early 2010 moves are any indication, the mobile enterprise is set clearly in the company’s sights.

Google is not going to ignore enterprise mobility. It is too big an opportunity to pass by.

As a Google Apps user I welcome any and all improvements to the Google Solutions Marketplace which is not very user friendly or intuitive. In fact it is the main reason I haven’t really extended my Google Apps beyond the basic stuff.