Nick Jones

A few impressions from Gartner’s Sydney Symposium which finished on Thursday. Firstly, APAC hasn’t suffered anything like the recession that Europe and the US have undergone, so our attendees here were on the whole cautiously optimistic. Technically speaking Australia didn’t actually have a recession, there was only one quarter of negative growth, and the central [...]

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Yesterday morning here at APAC Symposium my colleague Robin Simpson and I debated whether Apple was (or could ever become) an enterprise vendor. This was a light hearted session where I took the position that Apple products are suitable only for price insensitive fashion victims and Robin claimed that Apple was a serious enterprise vendor.
Whether [...]

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Is someone about to buy Palm? I don’t have any inside information on the topic, but I certainly do have some opinions. One of the rumours flying around is that Nokia might be a suitor. Would this be a good thing? I don’t think so; maybe a year ago it would have been sensible, but [...]

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I’m now in Sydney and almost unbelievably staying in a hotel that doesn’t have internet access in all its rooms. Worse still, the rooms which do have internet have wired internet; yes, honestly, wires. For younger readers who may have grown up with WiFi and embedded 3G a word of explanation may be in order. [...]

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Our Q3 mobile handset market numbers have been released and there are few surprises. Smartphone sales are growing, over 12% up on the same period last year despite the recession, with Apple overtaking RIM in Western Europe. That’s impressive, but it will be more of a shock to RIM when Apple overtake them in the [...]

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In retail matters I am a typical disorganised male. I have a low tolerance for shopping, I get despondent if I can’t find what I want in the store in five minutes, and I usually start my Christmas shopping two days before Christmas. So I really resent the fact that although we’re not yet half [...]

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Edwin Land is reputed to have said “marketing is what you do when your product is no good”, and while I might not go that far, I certainly feel that marketing is something you do when your product is undifferentiated. This is an observation, not malice; I’m hardly guilt-free because I used to work for [...]

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European Symposium finished yesterday and I have a few days free before heading out to Sydney for APAC Symposium. So this seems a good moment to reflect on  some of the mobile themes from Cannes.
I noticed a real difference in sentiment between Cannes and Orlando. In the USA there was a lot of buzz and [...]

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Symposium this year has moved up-market and we have a lot more CIOs attending than in the past. As I chat with them I’m seeing a number of different attitudes towards mobility and consumerisation. So here are a few (very slightly exaggerated) samples of CIO opinions from the US and Europe.
The only safe place for [...]

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One of the themes emerging from attendees here in Cannes is the growing problem of employee-owned devices. An informal poll of the audience at yesterday’s mobile scenario presentation showed around 50 percent who expected they’d have to support more employee-owned mobiles accessing corporate systems in the future. User demand for consumer devices like iPhone is [...]

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