Apple unveiled their new iPad Mini family of tablet products today along with a variety of updates to other Apple products including the Mac Mini and the fourth generation iPad.

So after all the hype settle down, does any of this matters for corporations around the world?

Yes. The Consumerization of mobile IT marches on. Here is one more product and form factor organizations must support. The iPad Mini also provides a form factor more conducive to many enterprise mobility tasks, which will continue to the seepage of Apple products across the modern enterprise.

Apple highlighted many corporate milestones with this announcement: 100 million iPads sold, 80% of the U.S. high school education curriculum available as iBooks, 2500 schools using iPad and iBooks.

All of this means that mobile products like the iPad Mini are on course to become as ubiquitous as paper. The new iPad Mini form factor is easier to carry, easier to put away, and capable of blazing fast LTE Internet connectivity. Flight attendants and pilots may find iPad Mini more suitable to their job than paper or the growing number of full-sized iPads for flight plan replacement options. Students ...

As I mentioned in a recent post, I just returned from Manila where I did a half-day workshop on building the business case for mobile financial services and had a couple speaking slots in the main session. Incidentally I’ll also be at Mobile Money Canada next week facilitating a panel on mobile payments in Canada.

Background

While in the Philippines, we met with the Central Bank of the Philippines (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) to discuss the regulatory and legislative changes they’ve made over the years to enable such significant mobile payments innovations.

The Philippines were the first to offer mobile banking back in 2004 with Globe Telecom’s GCASH. And although sometimes overshadowed in the media by Kenya’s M-Pesa, the Philippines continue to innovate and grow adoption. GCASH added an ATM card option to their mobile wallet. Competitor SMART, launched their wallet,

I’m on my way back from speaking at the Mobile Financial Services Asia Pacific summit in Manila. The Philippines created mobile money in 2001 and they continue to push financial inclusion forward with initiatives like Banko – which connects a mobile wallet to a real bank account.

Real innovation is happening in most markets. Unfortunately often the development is in a vacuum. The Developed world is completely missing out on financial inclusion efforts of the developing world. And the Developing world is missing out on the differentiating products the developed world is creating for its customers.

Financial inclusion promises to create new bank customers. But developing world banks are neglecting their paying customers to help the poor. Developed world banks are neglecting the poor — and the promise of new customers — but many are providing compelling mobile products. Similarly, mobile payments is nearly non-existent in the west but widely available to the remote poor in Asia and Africa.

In the end, mobile payments in any market won’t get traction unless it fundamentally transforms the shopping (or remittance) experience.  For the very poor this means a better user experience that requires far less ...

Today is America’s Independence Day. It’s the pinnacle of summer and we Americans celebrate our country and our heritage with fireworks, cookouts, and possibly a trip to the lake or the pool.

I think of today is the world’s Independence Day too, since the US Constitution has become the model of free nations around the world. All of us consultants at Mobile Strategy Partners are Americans, but we all have spent time outside the US. Our tag line is “The Global Leader in Mobile Commerce.” About half our consulting revenue comes from outside the US and I expect it to only increase. In fact, I was in the UK this time last week.

As a result, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be both an American and a Citizen of the World, and ultimately, how global developments in technology, politics, and various economies affect our practice and our clients.

We have a global focus and strive to share the best practices from around the world and across vertical industries. In some ways, this is intensely American. However, what many Americans overlook is that the rest of the world is doing ...

Mobile line busting improves the retail shopping experience by letting customers pay faster while keeping associates on the sales floor with customers

The mobile industry often delimits efforts between B2E “Enterprise Mobility” and B2C “Mobile Commerce” initiatives. This may have been a valid distinction in the past, but it’s short sighted to think of mobile separately.

A successful mobile strategy requires a holistic approach that looks at everything from employee usage, customer usage, mobile marketing and third-party mobility.

Similar forces are acting similarly on every type of mobile initiative. A rapidly changing mix of devices must securely access an increasing number of legacy enterprise systems in a secure and user-friendly way.

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is bringing the lightning-fast consumer device replacement schedule to the enterprise. BYOD is also rapidly breaking down enterprise IT rules against supporting certain devices. Apple and Android devices are now commonplace at many companies and RIM BlackBerrys are fading away. iPads in particular are finding uses across the organization adding further pressure for IT to not only support iOS but the tablet form factor.

A rapidly ...

A Fictitious ROI Chart

We’re commonly hired to help companies make decisions on their mobile roadmap and build the business case around the mobile initiatives.

Many execs put items on their roadmap that their gut tells them are important, but it’s difficult to calculate the ROI.

While I agree that it’s impossible to calculate the exact ROI of soft ROI initiatives, I think you can calculate the ROI enough to objectively assess your priorities.

In fact, I think it’s critical that you do so. The mobile landscape is littered with too much wasted money because of executive gut decisions that didn’t end up the way they expected.

So, let’s walk through an example:

I’m going to use mobile banking because I think it’s actually harder to calculate than retail mobile commerce in some ways. Retail mobile commerce ultimately results in a sale, whereas banking is a loyalty play. Retail is tricky to calculate because increasingly, the sale crosses channels, hiding the fact that mobile, online, or bricks-and-mortar retail affected the sale.

So, imagine a mobile banking roadmap with ten items on it but you only have budget to do five or six.

The number one item on your ...

TGI Fridays app now does mobile payments

With the annual NACHA payments conference happening this week in Baltimore, mobile payments is top of mind for a lot of folks.

I’m sure there’ll be plenty of panel discussions about when mobile payments will be mainstream. There will also be lots of debate over who will control mobile payments. Carriers, bankers, payment technology companies and others have been bickering over mobile payments for nearly a decade now – and there are few mainstream results.

I think we have forgotten the customer.

If  we make shopping easier with mobile payments, it’ll eventually happen and lots of players in the ecosystem will make money.

Tapping a phone isn’t much easier than swiping a card. In the beginning customers will still have to carry their wallet everywhere. I think they will be underwhelmed.

Scanning a barcode is easier to implement, but it’s harder for both the customer and the cashier. However, it  does work well in certain circumstances. The Starbucks application is a great example. It’s something people do habitually, and ...

Wealth Management and Private Banking are high priorities in 2012

Mobile banking and mobile commerce are now table stakes in North America.

Most institutions have at least a placeholder offering for the now majority of customers with smartphones and tablets. Retail banking, retail mobile commerce, brokerages, and P&C insurance companies all have strong mobile offerings in market.

Mobile for wealth management and insurance agents are a huge trend we’re seeing across the U.S. and Canada. However, as with early mobile banking, the first efforts tend to be timid. It’s only a matter of time before bolder offerings arrive.

Early wealth offerings focus primarily on research with some limited portfolio capabilities. Citi Private Bank, for example, is primarily for reviewing research. Bank of America Merrill Lynch offers self-directed clients a larger variety of tools.

It seems everyone is targeting the iPad almost exclusively. However, private banking executives report pressure to support a wider ...

I just returned from two weeks discussing strategy with mobile commerce executives across Southeast Asia. Despite having spent considerable time in North America, Latin America and Europe, this was my first trip to the region. I found the similarities and differences intriguing.

In North America and Europe, execs I meet often mentally write-off Asia as so foreign and different that their experience aren’t relevant. Perhaps this is true for South Korea and Japan which have very specialized markets; however, in Southeast Asia there continue to be far more similarities than differences.

For example, everyone is struggling with mobile adoption growth. Mobile is happening – and it’s happening fast – but, it’s still around 2-4% of online. Everyone wants it to grow faster, while struggling to support what they have. Many companies simply turn mobile on and customers show up with little or no promotion.

Similarly, travel and financial services lead the way. These verticals have higher adoption and the most mature solutions in each region around the world. Many of these companies are on their second or third major version of their mobile ...

Europe once led mobile

Mobile commerce was born in Europe, but Europe has lost its way.

Japan and South Korea could argue they were first. They could also argue they still lead the world. Maybe they’re right. However, European style mobile commerce was patterned around the world. Kenya’s M-PESA style branchless banking for the developing world is another pattern that succeeded and is thriving, but isn’t applicable to the well-banked around the world.

Somewhere along the success of the BlackBerry and the iPhone Europe fell behind.

For example, all the UK banks but one implemented Monitise. All the UK solutions provide nearly identical look-and-feel with nearly identical capabilities that once were ground breaking like balance inquiries and person-to-person electronic-check payments if you know the recipient’s bank routing number and account number.

New features and support for new phones is slow in coming. Even worse, talking to UK bankers, they’re not bullish on moving the needle because they think their competitors aren’t either. I’ve had similar conversations with bankers and retailers in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and elsewhere in ...