Introduction

Strategic product marketing refers to the set of processes that are required to place products, services and overall solutions to ensure long term profitability and growth. Typically, a company’s product management department performs strategic product marketing with the assistance of the marketing and sales organizations. Strategic product marketing is not selling, or marketing research or product marketing per says. It is the strategic placement of products, solutions and services to lock in the market and thus keep competition in check while ensuring that the target market evolves in such a way guaranteeing long term demand for the supplying corporation’s solutions and services.

This article explains the organizational and procedural requirements required in order for a company to be market driven and ensure strategic product marketing. Although the article uses the telecommunication/information industry as a target example, the article’s concepts and thoughts can be applied to almost any growth industry.

Organizational requirements for a market driven company

There are many ways to organize a company so that it can be considered market, rather than product driven and any good text on organizational structure and organizational behavior can be referred to for this. What concerns us here is the functions that are required within a market driven organization in order to achieve long term profitability from strategic product marketing. We therefore define three necessary functions of marketing, strategic product management and sales that must function and interact properly in order to allow strategic product marketing. This article refers to functions rather than departments or units because we are not per say concerned with organizational structure of efficiencies. For the purposes of this article it is irrelevant if these functions are within the same unit, or within separate units. What is important is that these functions exist and interact properly. Where they are placed is a question of organization efficiency that has to do with the corporate culture of a particular company.

Definition and interaction of Marketing, Product management and sales functions

Marketing

Imperative to any market driven company is a strong and effective marketing department. The marketing department, aside from performing marketing research and trends analysis with the goal of identifying new potential market areas and the phase that these areas are currently in, has also the burden of interacting with particular customers and identifying this customer’s need (there may a debate here whether needs exists or are created, or both, but this debate does not concern us here).  The identification of a particular or set of customer needs must be at a level of abstraction to allow flexibility in choosing ways to satisfy this need that is, any market communication activity that identifies needs should refrain at all cost from mentioning a way to satisfy this need (ex: mentioning of products or solutions) since this will limit the possibilities of offering the imaginative and cost effective solution that will indeed cover this customer’s needs. Simply put, the marketing function is to understand the customer’s wishes and communicate those wishes in an effective manner to the organization.

Product/Solutions management

Upon identification of the customer’s needs, then the goal is to put together and deliver a feasible solution whose benefits cover the needs of the customer in question. This is the role of the product/solutions management function. Note that the input to this activity is basically the marketing communication that was mentioned previously. Good marketing input will give the product/solutions management function enough understanding of where the particular customer wants to go in order to be able to conceive (perhaps with the customer’s help) a solution whose

benefits fulfill to a large extent the customer’s wishes. Again, if the marketing information was at the right abstraction level, and did not consider or base itself on any particular solution, this gives ample flexibility to the product/solution management function to use all the available information at its disposal including competitor information and information pertaining to new technologies and product trends including strategic issues important to the company (information that may not be present at the marketing stages) in order to both satisfy the customer and keep in tune with the suppliers long term interests.

Sales

This simply said and done with great difficulty is to convince the customer that the proposed solution will meet their needs, and at the same time minimize the customer’s cognitive dissonance [1], which always occurs after a solution is purchased/installed. In order for the sales function to be successful, the solution must properly communicated to the customer and the customer must be convinced that this solution is what they were looking for. Obviously for sales to be successful, the needs of the customer must have been properly communicated to the organization (the marketing function), the solution must have been developed based on those needs (product management and design) and this solution along with the right price tag must be communicated and agreed with the customer with the usual public relation efforts (ex: wining and dining). The after sales support function, that is, supporting the products that were sold should not in any way be underestimated since again this function makes a customer feel that the supplying organization is serious and responsible about supporting the products/solutions that it thrusts to the target market. Again this all has to do with minimizing the cognitive dissonance a customer feels after a purchase. A happy customer always comes back and the 20 percent customer base does 80 percent of business, which are usually return customers.

Now that we have established the necessary functions we can focus on the product/solutions management function and the process of strategic product marketing.

The strategic product marketing process

Upon receipt of the marketing requirements, the product/solution management function will conceive the overall solution and prepare the technical requirements required in order for the relevant design departments , manufacturing and deliver channels to design and deliver the said solution at an acceptable costs in order to allow competitive pricing.

One important issue that will be tackled during the initial solution conception phase, and this is one of the primary roles of solution management, is to design a solution that first of all includes an evolution roadmap in order to secure future income from this solution, and in addition monitor/influence the customer’s network evolution in such a way that will first of all benefit the said customer, but in addition will not misalign the target customer’s installed base vis a vis the supplier’s  products. Of course this means that first of all the supplier’s technology must be state of the art, secondly that the supplier influences industry standards so that future technologies are compatible with the supplier’s  produce, but in addition that the network evolution of the customer is monitored to ensure that placed items do not produce a discontinuity with regards to products that are imperative to first of all lock out competitors, and more importantly ensure a smooth evolution to future revisions of the suppliers products.

A common approach to securing the above is to have a thorough model of the target environment that the solution is to be implemented in, before development of the solution begins. In the case of a telecommunications operator, the supplier will have a detailed model of the customer telecom operator’s target network where the solution will be implemented. Such variable as network node load as well as signaling load, billing mediation systems as well as customer care, and node load should be well defined and understood since those areas are considered of strategic importance to any operator and thus need to be addressed by the relevant supplier.

A strong understanding of the target environment implies that areas can be identified that are crucial to be addressed by the supplier in order to ensure future revenue. If we return to our telecom operator above, if the particular supplier is in the core business of selling billing systems, then it is perhaps in the interest of this supplier to have good information on what kind of billing equipment the operator has, what sort of billing mediation equipment is included in the network, and how all this is connected to the customer care units of the operator.

Another requirement for a supplier and its strategic product management function is to include roadmaps for core products that address the issue of product evolution towards a target technology while at the same time protecting present and past investments. Thus, a particular customer that invests in a particular installed base will be assured that their investment is protected as long as their network evolves in the right way.

With the above in mind we can define the following procedure:

1.        The solution management function receives from the marketing function the needs of a customer. It is assumed that these needs can be satisfied by a solution that relates to the core business that the supplier is in.

2.        A detailed copy of the customer network exists, and an analysis is performed to identify the area of the network that the solution is expected to play, as well as an anticipation of the evolution of the part of the network (as well as related parts) that relates to the present and future supplier core business.

3.        Taking as input the customer’s requirements (including budget and competitive information such as pricing, or related aspects of pricing such as network dimensioning) and the network analysis plus the anticipated network evolution to future technologies (for example evolution of a 2G wireless network to 2.5G and then 3G) a solution is drawn . It is imperative that this solution first of all satisfies the customer’s full needs including features and financial, but also contains a roadmap that coincides with the anticipated technological evolution of the customer network.

4.        When the solution is considered adequate, a financial analysis is made to see if this solution is worth pursuing. This financial analysis will of course include the cash outlays that are required to product this solution and in addition the incomes that will be received by achieving and installed base, but more importantly the future cash revenues resulting from the evolution of this solution towards future technologies as anticipated by the solution and the product roadmaps.

5.        If the result of point 4 is a decision to pursue the business, then requirements can be drawn and sent to the appropriate departments in order to design, deliver and put a final price tag on the solution, or the solution can be abandoned and other more favorable business opportunities can be pursued.

It should be noticed that the decision to go ahead or not is made in step 5. The only costs that have been incurred so far are the necessary pre-sales costs that come with marketing efforts. The said solution is only on paper and has not been communicated to parts of the company (example: R+D and design) that will develop the solution (and thus incur the costs). Rather, steps 1 through 5 dictate that a solution should first of all be developed if there is a need (and not vice versa ie. develop a product/solution and then try to find a customer), secondly that any solution should be viewed in terms of initial cash outlays in order to develop and achieve an installed base, and then revenue income initially from the installed base and future upgrades of this base.  The solution should be assessed by the initial cash outlay, the income received from the installed base, and the future income that will be received from upgrades that will evolve the solution towards a target technology. This evolution is ensured by the adherence of the roadmaps of the products that make up the solution to industry standards as well as overall technological evolution. By using the right financial assessment model (example: Net Present Value) a decision can be made whether to pursue the business or not.  Also note that taking future income in account will deter an erroneous decision from being made with regards to restrictive initial outlays. For example, it may be that the costs and received income from producing and delivering a solution result in a negative profit. However, if future income is also taken into account that the right rate of return, then the accumulate present value of the profit may turn positive thus reflecting the solution’s strategic value to the corporation. If of course the solution has a future cash discontinuity which result in a negative present value then either this solution has an inadequate roadmap that guarantees future cash flows, or the break in cost is simply too high and can never be recovered.

The important thing to notice in these steps is that an opportunity is assessed in terms of breaking into a business and ensuring future business and growth, rather than pirating in just to make a quick buck. An enterprise is assessed (in the same way that stocks are assessed ie. future dividends) not by its ability to make a quick buck, but to convert this buck into future business and of course employment.

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Conclusion

Although this article is primarily written with the telecommunication/infocom industry in mind, its concepts can be expanded to other types of business. It is imperative to understand that in today’s world where standards dominate industrial models, in order for a corporation to ensure its future viability, strategic product marketing must be considered as a necessary process that insured, and is measured by long term investment as defined by net present value analysis. The thoughtful reader or financial officer may object citing that net present value is a tool that is used to assess the viability or rationality of project undertaking ie. the assurance that a project is financially viable. The aggressive marketing of solutions and services should be assessed in the same way since long term growth is not assured by placing a box here and there, but by entering a market in such a way that the initial cash outlays due to different pre-sales activities should be measured vis a vis long term cash inflows which can be achieved only by strategic product marketing whose roadmaps guarantee evolution in favor of the corporation’s future products / solutions and services thus effectively locking out competition in the long term.

Finally, emphasis is given to the fact that strategic product marketing will never work if the products/solutions and services of a particular organization lack quality, cost effectiveness, time to market, and simply do not satisfy the customer’s need. As the market rewards thoughtful strategies as mentioned above, it thus punishes players with questionable tactics whose results are poor products and policies that endanger the credibility of the overall business environment.

Oggi parliamo di come utilizzare il nuovo servizio di condivisione online OVI e di come  signare facilmente e veloce i programmi per S60 3rd con SIGNsis-GUI by Nokia

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Fonte: TecnoPhone

A Nokia e a Vodafone fizeram recentemente um acordo que permitirá integrar os serviços da Vodafone e os Nokia Ovi num grupo de telemóveis fabricados pela companhia finlandesa em exclusivo para a operadora.
Com esta parceria, os clientes terão um acesso mais rápido aos serviços de Internet da Vodafone e poderão optar por uma grande variedade de sistemas de comunicações e opções de conteúdos em telemóveis 3G.
O Serviço de Internet Nokia OVI pretende juntar num só portal os diversos serviços existentes da Nokia, entre eles o Nokia Music Store, N-Gage, Nokia Maps, e todos os outros que possam surgir no futuro...

Fonte:Experiencemobility

Nokia oggi ha presentato Ovi, il nuovo brand per i servizi Internet della società.
Con il lancio di Ovi, Nokia si sta espandendo da un focus sui dispositivi mobili a un’ampia offerta di servizi Internet.
Ovi, che in finlandese significa “porta”, permette agli utenti di accedere facilmente alla propria rete di contatti (social network), alle community e ai contenuti, fungendo al contempo anche da porta d’accesso ai servizi Nokia.

Come parte dell’offerta Ovi, Nokia ha presentato Nokia Music Store ed N-Gage, due servizi che permettono facilmente di scoprire, ascoltare, provare e acquistare musica e giochi, a scelta tra i maggiori artisti e editori, oltre a contenuti in esclusiva. Attraverso Ovi sarà disponibile anche Nokia Maps, un servizio di navigazione che mette a disposizione mappe, guide e molti altri contenuti direttamente accessibili dai dispositivi compatibili. Nel corso dei prossimi mesi, Nokia prevede di integrare Ovi con altri servizi internet.

Nel suo discorso in occasione dell’evento Nokia Go Play di Londra, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Presidente e CEO di Nokia, ha presentato Ovi e i nuovi servizi Nokia per i consumatori e ha illustrato i progetti futuri della società che come Internet company: “Il mercato sta convergendo verso l’esperienza Internet e Ovi rappresenta la proposta di Nokia per fondere in un’unica soluzione Internet e mobilità Nokia è leader nel mondo nel settore dei dispositivi portatili: in futuro offriremo straordinari dispositivi integrati con esperienze e servizi internet coinvolgenti, che permettano agli utenti di sfruttare appieno e in modo semplice le potenzialità della Rete.”

“Abbiamo intrapreso questa strada all’inizio di quest’anno con i servizi di navigazione e ora stiamo unendo tutti i servizi disponibili sotto un unico marchio: Ovi by Nokia. Nell’arco del prossimo anno procederemo a integrare Ovi con nuovi elementi di interfaccia utente, suite di servizi e comunità web” ha aggiunto Kallasvuo.

Ovi: una chiave per aprire ogni porta.
Ovi (http://www.ovi.com) è la porta d’accesso ai servizi internet Nokia, che include il Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps e i giochi sulla piattaforma N-Gage. Inoltre permetterà di entrare nelle comunità web, dando la possibilità alle persone di accedere ai propri contenuti, comunità e contatti da un singolo punto, direttamente da un dispositivo compatibile Nokia oppure dal PC. Il lancio della prima versione del sito Ovi.com in inglese è prevista per il quarto trimestre 2007 mentre funzionalità e lingue aggiuntive saranno disponibili a partire dalla prima metà del 2008.

Nokia Music Store: tutta la musica del mondo in tasca
Nokia Music Store (http://music.nokia.com) offre milioni di tracce musicali dei principali artisti, etichette indipendenti così come una vasta gamma di artisti locali di tutto il mondo. Lo store è accessibile da PC oppure direttamente dai dispositivi compatibili Nokia, come il Nokia N81 o il computer multimediale Nokia N95 8GB che consentono di navigare alla ricerca di musica, acquistare o selezionare una traccia musicale da scaricare in un secondo momento. E’ possibile trasferire semplicemente le canzoni acquistate sul proprio dispositivo mobile e grazie al lettore di musica integrato, creare playlist e gestire la propria collezione musicale dal cellulare.

Nokia Music Store offre la possibilità di ascoltare i brani in full track sul PC, nonché di acquistare singole canzoni o album completi. Attraverso il motore dinamico di brani consigliati e la generazione di playlist create sul momento in base al genere musicale, premette di vedere anche i brani ascoltati da altri utenti. Il servizio Nokia Music Store sarà disponibile sui principali mercati europei a partire dal prossimo autunno, con il lancio successivo di altri store in Europa e Asia nei mesi seguenti. In Europa il prezzo di una traccia singola è di 1,00 euro, gli album partono invece da 10,00 euro e l’abbonamento mensile per lo streaming su PC costa 10,00 euro.

N-Gage: l’esperienza del mobile gaming
N-Gage offre un modo semplice per cercare, provare e acquistare giochi di elevata qualità direttamente sul proprio dispositivo compatibile Nokia. Attivando l’applicazione N-Gage sul proprio dispositivo, è possibile vedere in anteprima i giochi disponibili, collegarsi con gli amici, leggere le recensioni o scaricare una versione di prova gratuita. Acquistare i giochi è semplice: con carta di credito, oppure tramite addebito sulla bolletta telefonica mensile. Società del calibro di Electronic Arts e Gameloft stanno già mettendo a disposizione alcuni dei propri titoli più noti per la piattaforma N-Gage, che potrà essere scaricata dal sito http://www.n-gage.com a partire da novembre.

“Sappiamo che gli utenti desiderano una modalità di accesso integrato ai contenuti più ricercati senza dover necessariamente stare davanti al computer o alla TV. Con i servizi Nokia Music Store e N-Gage tutta la musica e i migliori giochi sono disponibili direttamente attraverso i computer multimediali Nokia Nseries” ha dichiarato Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President e General Manager, Multimedia, Nokia. “Prevediamo che il dispositivo mobile diventerà la piattaforma più diffusa, il cosiddetto “quarto schermo”, per la fruizione di contenuti digitali. Ovi da vita alla nostra visione di servizi Internet, dove utensile persone possono creare, condividere e fruire fatti, sensazioni ed emozioni, in qualunque luogo e in qualunque momento.”

Nokia ha annunciato inoltre una serie di nuovi dispositivi e accessori, che amplieranno ulteriormente la gamma di tecnologie e design a disposizione degli utenti.

Fonte:Nokia

The world has hot phone hardware. Fast carrier networks. And phone software that continues to enable more functionality and experiences. The promise of wireless innovation and scenarios that people imagined back in the dot com era is real, and today we’re seeing the emergence of connected apps and integrated experiences, and it’s why we’re fired up about what we are building at Dashwire.

The mobile phone is constantly recording life – and people take it with them everywhere because it connects them to family, friends, information and helps them capture what’s important. People are also spending a lot of time online, as the computer continues to play a more important role in connecting people and information. Morgan Stanley’s recent web trends report indicated that approximately 40% of global time spent online is for communication and social networks. There is an intersection that’s taking place – and a huge opportunity - to seamlessly bridge these two worlds by integrating mobile and web content and communication, and making it easy for people, and that’s what we’re focused on at Dashwire.

We believe cross platform open (meaning building our solution to work across as many smart phone platforms) solutions offer the biggest value creation opportunity in the industry. Dashwire works today for Windows Mobile 5.0, 6 and 6.1 phones and soon will work on Symbian and BlackBerry, increasing the number of people that can realize the full value of our service to over 150M+ in a market that is continuing to grow rapidly, and according to IDC, is expected to have an install base of 1B by 2011.

There are very few companies who aren’t 800lb gorillas in the industry today with cross platform connected service offerings for consumers because it’s expensive and difficult (server and mobile code), many were too early and flamed out, and VC investors have largely shied away over the past few years as a result of what they saw with investments they or others made in the past. Apple set the new bar with the mobile browser, and as it continues to improve, many companies will just build inexpensive browser apps, but believe a native thin-client app is a base requirement, and software that goes deep into the phone operating system and integrates to solve customer problems and deliver superior offline and online experiences across platforms will be the major creators of value for mobile connected services.

Companies looking to deliver value as part of the next wave of mobile should be focused exclusively on building experiences for smartphone users (Windows Mobile, Symbian, BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, Linux) with the understanding that a) consumers not businesses are driving growth in this market; b) these users are more likely to have a data plan; c) if you really want to go through the pain of getting your app to work on feature phones, work with the mobile operators to include your spec into their device maker requirements document to get the broadest coverage; and d) the phone is being replaced by users approximately every 18 months, and at that point there will be more smartphones to choose from, and people aren’t necessarily going to be brand loyal in their next purchase, so cross platform support enables you to have a more likely chance of keeping them as a customer.

The big dogs have started moving their ships in the right direction toward connected services – Nokia, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo – and have resources and the ambition to build the future. When these companies bet billions on the next wave, both technically and with business development and marketing dollars to drive awareness, user adoption and growth, companies that deliver value on top of the platforms and services they are building will be poised to bring experiences to life in new ways for hundreds of millions to several billions of users. And that’s where companies like Dashwire come into play. I will be posting on a few cool start ups in addition to Dashwire that are helping to drive mobile services in a future post.

Below is a quick breakdown of what the 800lb gorillas are pulling together from a services perspective, and why their moves today are setting in motion the future of phone services:

I. Nokia

Last August, Nokia unveiled its OVI brand and strategy, and believe the vision shared publicly is the most compelling of the 800lb club in terms of focus on connected services for mobile phone users. OVI is a group of services for S60 users that offer PC, web and mobile experiences. Even with 40% of the global phone market and devices like the N95, Nokia recognized that selling hardware alone into mobile operators and direct to consumer was no longer going to be enough to maintain its market share against the software companies invading its turf, and that raising the bar with a new strategy of connected services would enhance the value of the overall communication and mobile experience.

Nokia has invested big dollars to back its move to become a services business and assembled a promising line up with OVI around media sharing (Twango), maps (NAVTEQ and gate5), music (Loudeye), and gaming (N-Gage) for its S60 phones, and expect them to roll out on S40, and if really smart, non-Nokia platforms to leverage its services infrastructure. Vodafone and Orange are the two heavy hitters who have announced support for OVI, the Orange news coming a few days after Vodafone acquired ZYB, a potential asset Vodafone can use to compete against OVI, so we’ll see how it plays out.

II. Microsoft

(disclaimer – I used to work in Windows Mobile and believe will continue to gain market share). Microsoft, like BlackBerry, has nailed the enterprise server value proposition of connected mobile services in bringing email, calendar, contacts and tasks to the phone. The value that business users have enjoyed is something that consumers would enjoy too, but they don’t have an IT manager or use Outlook.

The recent acquisition of Danger with its mobile client and carrier-grade server infrastructure is a sign that Microsoft is serious about connected mobile services, and that they are finally going to shift toward consumer. They have to. Competing against BlackBerry in the enterprise space with Windows Mobile is great and they should do it, but even BlackBerry is focused on expanding its market to consumers with Pearl and Curve, and Symbian still commands about 70% of the global smartphone market. Microsoft’s device maker partners are working over-time to differentiate on top of the phone operating system to deliver more consumer experiences - the HTC Touch Diamond being the most recent and best example of a clear push to deliver unique value for consumers.

Windows Live Local, Windows Live Mobile, SPOT on phone, are cool apps and good start, and highlight efforts by the Windows Live team to deliver for Symbian and BlackBerry as well as Windows Mobile. Expect the trend of supporting more platforms to continue for Microsoft, and will be interesting to follow whether the Danger deal translates to compelling services for consumers.

III. Google

The big news from Google on the mobile front over the last year has been Android, its mobile phone operating system platform that will possibly ship on at least one phone before the end of 2008, and its lobbying of the FCC to sell open spectrum.

Google has tons of cloud services (Gmail, Google Calendar, Picassa, Docs, Orkut, Open Social, Search, GrandCentral, etc) that it can integrate with Android (Andy Rubin, who runs the Android platform at Google, has services ingrained in his thinking as a co-founder of Danger) and it’s platform has been highlighted to developers as a way to easily build connected services, a contrast from Apple’s current approach with its SDK strategy. How it evolves and where advertising fits into the mix should become more evident in 2008/09.

What's interesting today is Google Mobile product efforts to deliver value across phone platforms. The Google Mobile team is similar to Windows Live in that they are separate from the core OS team (Windows Mobile, Android). Google has offerings for Windows Mobile, Symbian, BlackBerry, iPhone, and has taken a broad look at the market to deliver value. Google Maps, the Gmail client and Search homescreen plug-ins are great additions to enhance your phone, and are examples of thin clients that pull in data from the web. Like Nokia and Microsoft, even Google, who most would believe from the spectrum auction as viewing the mobile operators as roadblocks, has started to work with them, but it will only be up to a certain point unless the operators start moving faster or if Google fails to build huge consumer demand for Android like Apple has done with iPhone.

Google has also pulled together an interesting suite of mobile related companies/technologies through recent acquisitions of GrandCentral and Jaiku, and how these fit into its strategy are key questions as it looks to pull together its mobile connected services story.

IV. Yahoo

When Christian Lindholm was at Yahoo, they were able to deliver Yahoo Go!, first for S60 and then Window Mobile. That was the first real connected app that I enjoyed trialing, with mail, contact, and calendar sync to Yahoo cloud services. Yahoo Go! 2.0 moved away from native apps to a unified Java-based offering to gain consistent UI across the different handsets. To me, it became less interesting in the fact it wasn’t integrated with the native applications on the phone, but it offered some neat experiences. Where they are going with 3.0 and the widgets based offering seems like Widsets with nicer UI, but we’ll see. If OneConnect, Yahoo's online social address book, moves out of demoware state, it could be hot. Yahoo has made a clear choice to focus on the handset experience vs. unifying something for users on the web as well, an approach that believe could hurt them unless they cut deals with device makers to integrate its services into the native apps on the phone.

V. Apple

Apple gets credit obviously for iPhone and awareness it drove for smartphones and their capabilities, but it also gets credit for kicking its competitors and the industry into gear by breaking the mold and cutting an amazing deal with Cingular (now A&T Mobility) to forego the usual 200-plus page requirements document, avoided branding and negotiated the most aggressive financial terms that have Nokia, Microsoft, and Google evaluating their strategies. iTunes sync and service integration is seamless and tough to argue because it works well, and USB is still the best way to transfer 16GB of media to a mobile device, but I am waiting for Apple to have a .mac version of a connected iPhone service integrated into the device – not an if, but when question. Purchasing iTunes content including apps OTA is where everything is going with iPhone 2.0, and extending further to the cloud is the next step. The most interesting sign of change for the wireless industry is that Apple services for the wireless space are all Apple branded, something that many companies are following closely.

iPhone is on the roadmap for a Dashwire client, but we, like many other developers, need Apple to support running background apps like the leading smartphone operating systems. The fact they don’t is being masked by the iPhone halo effect, and is not only unfortunate for developers, but for consumers that would enjoy using the services those companies can imagine bringing to iPhone. Once Apple delivers on this capability for developers, we’ll build a hot Dashwire experience for iPhone users.

Conclusion

If the big dogs are betting on the future of mobile communication and services, it stands to reason that to participate in this opportunity, supporting their platforms and customers with differentiated experiences is the right bet because as we know, seeing the big ship start to move creates lots of time to speed past, build something hot, and have it ready when the ship sails. At Dashwire, we will support as many smartphone platforms with a deeply integrated mobile client to solve tough customer and industry problems and make it seamless for customers to get the most out of their phone, the data it captures, and the web and communications we facilitate in-and-out of the phone.

We’re excited to be a participant in this exciting world of connected mobile services, and expect for Dashwire to deliver big things. Stay tuned.