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Field Service Mobile Working – Free Event

June 7, 2013 By Ken Eastwood Leave a Comment

Digital Nomads Director, Ken Eastwood, is presenting at Field Service and Mobile Workforce this year and we are pleased to let you know that the Ark Group are offering complimentary places to our contacts who are responsible for mobile technology in their organisations.

The event takes place on Wednesday 12th and Thursday 13th June in Hertfordshire and the complimentary pass includes access to all the two-day conference sessions, including presentations on recent mobile implementations at Tesco, May Gurney, Crossrail and Maersk, as well as to the networking dinner and drinks.

The event website can be found at www.field-mobile.com. Please email events@ark-group.com if you would like to attend and mention Digital Nomads.

 

A little more about the event from the organisers

The 11th Annual Field Service & Mobile Workforce Management 2013 is now the UK’s only two-day learning event dedicated to the efficiency of field and mobile workforces.

Here are 10 reasons why this year’s event cannot be missed:-

  • Household names such as Tesco, Maersk and Crossrail walk you through their project implementations
  • Find out the pitfalls to look out for before you embark on your project
  • Benchmark your project; is your approach as holistic as it could be?
  • Achieve several months’ worth of project implementation planning work in just two days when you meet with solution providers at the forefront of technological change
  • Gain new peer-level business contacts that you can call upon for advice during implementation
  • Assess the security of your mobile solution
  • Improve your mobile data quality
  • Learn what can be done about generational change in field service
  • All refreshments, food and accommodation are included in your complimentary place.
  • Where is mobile technology is headed? Hear from the experts

 

 

Filed Under: nomadEVENTS Tagged With: field service, Mobile

21st Century Office

January 22, 2013 By Ken Eastwood

We’re delighted to have been asked to organise a 21st Century Office event for Rotherham MBC based around their new building, Riverside House. Rotherham MBC will share learning and practical advice and show delegates around their building, incorporating new workstyles and integrating public services including a library, gallery and cafe.

 

21st Century Office Event

 

moreinformation

Filed Under: Mobile & Flexible Working, nomadEVENTS Tagged With: flexible, FM, hub, Mobile, office, Rotherham, workstyle

Evaluating Police Mobile Data

September 28, 2012 By Ken Eastwood Leave a Comment

Earlier this year the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee issued reports criticising the use of police mobile data. Research by the AIMTech Research Group at Leeds University Business School questions these findings and indicates police forces have been more successful than the reports suggest.

The recent reports by the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee on mobile policing provide clear examples of the problems that can be faced when evaluating information technology investments. AIMTech argue that three key issues cast doubt on the validity of the conclusions of the reports:-

  • the need to fully understand the context of implementations;
  • the need to fully understand what is and should be valued; and
  • a clear understanding of how these should be measured.

Understand the context

In evaluating the mobile information programme by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) and the use of mobile data by police forces both reports seem to indicate a limited understanding of the context. They seem to assume that mobile data use in the UK police service was driven by central government policy and by the NPIA programme and that very little occurred before the NPIA mobile information programme. The reality is rather different.

As early as mid-1990s police services across the UK had experimented with some form of mobile data systems with a number of pioneer forces investing in pilots and proof of concept trials of a range of devices. Services also rapidly recognised the need to share experiences, knowledge and information and had formed a Mobile Information Strategy Group reporting to the ACPO Communications Committee producing ‘Infranet’, a strategy for mobile data in 2002.

This document recognised the need for a strategic approach to mobile data and saw mobile technology as an extension of existing systems (rather than focusing on devices) and clearly identified potential areas of benefit. This was followed by PITO support and investment in mobile data trials. By the early 2000s, local investment in mobile technology was significant and the investment by forces was linked to a wide set of benefits.

In 2003-04 police services across England and Wales were focusing on the potential benefits of increased visibility, productivity, response times, communication and management control. By 2003, 47% of forces in England and Wales had invested in mobile data (in some form), 13 forces identified themselves as having made a significant investment in mobile data and a further seven were running pilots.

Only four forces did not regard themselves as active in any area of mobile data. By 2006 over 10,000 devices had been implemented across the UK with a narrowing of choice of technology: 7,322 radio handsets (sending and receiving data); 6,643 mobile data terminals; 3,633 BlackBerrys; 2,550 PDAs; and 1,447 laptops.

Two forces were in the position where they expected virtually all of their front line officers to have access to some form of mobile device before the end of 2007. Indeed by 2006, approximately 75% of the UK services had active developments and applications in mobile data. While progress in some areas was slow police services across the UK were moving forward with mobile information.

The Public Accounts Committee has argued that ‘… the Programme has resulted in significant system-wide variation, in: the number of devices in use, (some forces have no devices, whereas others have sufficient for all officers and supporting staff); the amount of business change activity undertaken; and, the amount of additional efficiency savings made on top of the additional officer time spent out of the station. This variation has limited the amount of cash and efficiency savings resulting from the £71m invested’.

The reality seems to be that the variation was in the policing system before the implementation of the Mobile Information Programme. The variation can be linked to different strategic objectives, different business needs, different legacy systems, different technological capabilities and hence different suppliers. They also had different approaches to the information made available and the manner of interaction with in house and national systems.

AIMTech argue that by 2008 many of the key forces weren’t naive consumers of an NPIA policy, but instead had identified where they saw potential benefits and challenges that mobile data offered. Significantly they had also identified and cemented strategic relationships with sets of suppliers and had moved some way towards building a mobile information infrastructure.

Equally, before the Home Office investment police service CIOs and senior officers had indicated that the diverse nature of Forces and their legacy systems would mean that a one–size-fits-all technological solution wouldn’t work.

Rather than seeing diversity as a negative issue we would argue that the very diversity in implementations at this stage was a positive factor which drove the competitive market, rapid innovation and benefited both the police services and technology developers.

The two reports point to the lack of uptake in mobile data in some forces as a failure. However, we would argue that uptake was much higher than the reports indicate (as discussed above). Not investing, however, should not be seen as a failure, indeed, for many forces this was a sensible strategic decision. Mobile data for many forces was seen as an extension of the existing infrastructure and the pilots and proof of concepts that they had implemented prior to 2008 had highlighted to them the problems they faced with allowing further wireless access to the system.

As one CIO reported to us after implementing a proof of concept in his force:

‘…I could never support a full roll out on our current infrastructure. Some of this is creaking under the load at the moment and if I raise expectations by trialling mobile kit  I’d either have to back off and effectively say to officers “nice isn’t it; but you can’t have it”, or spend a lot of money we haven’t got.’

Early mobile data implementation in forces had also highlighted the need for expensive and time consuming change in work practices and business processes to successfully reap the higher level benefits of the use of the technology. Significant cultural change was also needed to combat early user resistance and training to ensure that officers made best use of the technology. The cost of this was seen as very significant, far outstripping the cost of the devices and a resource which would have to be locally rather than centrally provided.

The Public Accounts Committee concluded that: ‘Only one in five forces has used the technology effectively to improve their operational processes’. We do not recognise this figure. Many of the leading forces that we visited invested heavily in business process change aligned to the deployment of mobile data. Equally the deployment of technology in many forces led to the development of new work practices and processes which were rapidly absorbed into routine activity.

For example, while many officers and police services saw the benefit of using basic applications (such as email or a web browser) for communication within the force, across the criminal justice system or with members of the community, this was limited in many forces by limited access to computing devices. Provision of low cost mobile devices either from force funds or via the Mobile Information Programme allowed wider access to these basic services and this form of mobile data is now essential to modern policing.

In terms of overt business process change or re-engineering many forces were taking a sensible approach of focusing on improvement of operational process and systems or ‘modernisation’ before considering the implementation of mobile services.

These forces recognised that the total cost of ownership was a more significant issue than the cost of devices and had a strategic vision for policing in which mobile data was one element of the technology mix which allowed them to achieve this vision. Indeed, a degree of caution for some forces seems a sensible and pragmatic response.

Know what you value

The focus of both reports seems to be firmly on cashable savings and indeed points to the NPIA Mobile Information programme objectives: to increase efficiency and effectiveness, and to reduce bureaucracy. While cost reduction may have been one of the overt objectives of the programme it is clear that the primary focus was on increasing visibility of police officers on the street, which will not realise any cashable savings. Individual forces had already identified benefit areas which were, for them, of greater significance than cash savings.

The picture we have seen build up over time related to benefits identification, in fact, has been quite a positive one. Broadly, benefits have been achieved in back-office processes, in the service provided to those who come into contact with the police, and for the officers who make use of the technologies in their daily lives and work.

The focus of the forces has not necessarily been solely on increasing productivity and in many cases greater emphasis has been placed on quality of service. In one force we visited, for example, while it was clear that the technology had reduced the time the officers needed to be in the station this was valued by both senior officers and by the rank and file, not only because it made them more productive, but also because it allowed officers to be more visible and have better contact with their communities.

In another service we visited a neighbourhood officer noted that the technology supported him in engaging with the community.

‘If we have a bit more time out of the station then we have a bit more time to talk to people. Talking to people is a lot of this job anyway, it’s what we do, but I suppose that there is a tendency to talk to the same people. They’re the ones who you see either because they’re the nuisance kids or they’re the shopkeepers. They’re the ones you come into contact with and a bit more time maybe just means the ability to say good morning to somebody in passing and at least they’ve seen you, they perhaps notice that we are there.’

The use of mobile technology also allowed better information at the point of use allowing officers to make more informed decisions and improve productivity. Officers could access systems and undertake checks on individuals, crimes and vehicles which would not have been undertaken if access was via the radio system or in-station resources.

An example of this was provided by an officer who noted:

‘I make a practice now of checking those people ejected from the football stadium. We used to just take a name and address, take it on trust, but the sort of people who cause trouble at a football match are probably the sort of people who cause trouble in other places too. It’s just that before [access to mobile data] the radio would have been busy and so you wouldn’t have done it.’

We also noted improved data collection and management. The quality of the data gathered was higher and was available for analysis and use almost instantaneously by other teams within the force; it also eliminated data re-entry and delays in processing within key systems.

Remote access to systems also allowed officers significantly increased quality and quantity of information. While this is difficult to quantify, the benefits of the force being able to push out information (such as colour picture of a child missing from home) or of the officers being able to pull information from systems or communicate via e-mail, are self-evident.

A striking example of this is the influence of the technology on improved safety for officers as a result of better intelligence and information. We noted numerous examples of situations where the technology allowed officers to access information and more informed decisions.

One female officer noted:

“Last week I went to a job and at the address there was a sex offender who preyed on adult females. I was single crewed and nobody told me this before I went in. I only knew because I looked and checked on my PDA before I went in.”

We also noted improved ability to identify individuals leading to significant time savings and improvement in the image of police officers and the police as a group, as a result of the ability to access and deliver information for the people they come into contact with.

‘Sometimes when you deal with people they’re upset and it doesn’t inspire confidence if you have to say that you’ll go away and find things out. They wonder if you will. With this you can move things on and you can tell them. ‘I’ve done this’, rather than “I will do this”,’ said one officer.

Police forces are very different in their information technology landscape, in their business processes and in the communities they serve. This difference means that police forces have selected and used quite different technologies to support their officers and fulfil their business needs. Making use of these quite diverse technologies they have been able to provide tailored solutions to their individual policing situations and priorities and have been able to deliver a range of benefits across a number of different constituencies.

Understand how it should be measured

We are concerned that the Committee placed undue emphasis on the reliability of the figures provided by the National Audit Office. The Committee stated that: 

“During our hearing the Department claimed that the Programme would deliver around £500m cashable savings.[30] Subsequently the Department provided a note to say that it actually estimated £125m cashable savings; arising from process efficiencies in areas such as crime recording and issuing fixed penalty notices.[31] However, the 32 forces who responded to the National Audit Office survey only reported total cashable savings of around £600,000 (annually) from 2011-12.’

The National Audit Office’s Survey Data was incomplete with the financial data being provided to them by the forces in different formats and some of the data not being provided in a usable form. Extrapolation from an incomplete sample of forces where each force varies so considerably in size is deeply problematic. Given the problems with the efficacy of the data the quotation of the £600,000 saving seems problematic.

We would also question the duration of time expected for the cashable savings to be calculated. The generalisability of a calculation of cashable savings for 2011-12 from a programme that calculated its benefits realisation over a ten year investment cycle (by March 2008) is questionable. In our experience cashable benefits realisation does not occur in a linear manner.

In terms of where the benefits were measured most of the focus of the Audit Office report seems to be on ‘frontline’ officers. Measurement of benefit just in terms of activity by the users may miss secondary and tertiary effects of mobile technology and what we refer to as the ‘ripple effect’, whereby the introduction of technology leads to several intended and unintended consequence in other areas of the police work.

Thus, for example, while it may take a front-line officer longer to input data into a PDA the quality of the data input is significantly increased in terms of accuracy, currency and format of the data collected. The benefit may, therefore, be noted not in the frontline but in increased capability elsewhere and reduction of costs in, for example, back office information processing.

The second point is that while the NPIA and Government placed some emphasis on cashable savings for many Police Forces these were not a key priority. In some forces increases in productivity or reduction in cost were not seen as cashable (leading directly to reduction of frontline staff) but instead were translated into improved service quality.

Equally, as discussed above, forces saw benefits from the mobile data in terms of attitude (image of the Force, value placed on staff), officer safety (less injuries, less dangerous situations, better knowledge of risks) and new capabilities (such as checks when they would not have been done or the sharing of images).

The third point is that in contrast with the National Audit Office Report in our work with forces we have seen significant investment by police services in quantitative measurement of business value. These range from the utilisation of existing force key performance indicators or by utilising the mobile technology to monitor change in officer behaviour (using, for example, in car or person based GPS). The forces, however, have measured processes and work activity that they value rather than those imposed from central government.

The fourth point that we wish to raise is that while the number of devices seems to have been focused on as a key performance indicator (with the target of getting a further 30,000 devices out) for many forces this was irrelevant. As one CIO noted:

‘It’s not that the PDA itself can reduce bureaucracy. Yes, if the PDA does change things, if the systems are right, it will reduce bureaucracy; but if you’re just making a mobile version of the systems in place then that will not.’

The final issue is the difficulty attached to the problem of untangling the technology from process change. When you change the process and gain efficiency changes and this is enabled by the use of technology where do you attribute the benefit: to the technology or to the change in process?

In some forces this was overcome by focusing on the shift in the process change (for example, modernisation) against the force key performance indicators rather than attributing a change in performance directly to the mobile data terminal.

In many of the leading innovators mobile data has now been embedded into routine activity. They have deployed the technology and have seen considerable benefits. While many of them may find it difficult to articulate the benefit in terms of cashable savings they could not now function as efficiently without the technology.

Indeed, mobile technology is an indispensable element of modern day policing and provides a platform for new generations of applications such as social media. Rather than evaluating the influence of the NPIA Mobile Information Programme against a limited set of criteria, it may be more effective to establish how the programme influenced the uptake and direction of mobile data. Our research points to the programme supporting forces to attain significant benefits; encouraging innovation; and speeding up the implementation of mobile data in the UK.

In understanding how police services use mobile data it would perhaps be more effective to talk to and observe officers using the technology, to meet with the forces to understand how and why they deployed mobile data and how they judged the success of the technology.

The benefits we have identified in this article by doing this, however, may not be the benefits that suit a particular central government perspective.

 

The authors are: Dr David Allen, Dr Stan Karanasios and Dr Alistair Norman from the AIMTech Research Group in Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds.(www.aimtech.org).

This article is based on evidence gathered from over 30 studies undertaken in police services across the UK from 1998 onwards. These have included longitudinal qualitative studies of single forces, national surveys and comparative studies.

Data in this paper has been drawn from the following sources:

Allen, D.K., Norman, A., Wilson, T.D, Knight, C (2004) Mobile data systems in Police Forces in England and Wales Report Produced for the Police Information Technology Organisation February 2004 pp1-88

Allen, D.K., Norman, A., Wilson, T.D (2006) National Mobile Data Survey Produced for the Police Information Technology Organisation July pp1-78

Norman, A (2009) The effects of mobile technologies on the work of front-line police officers in a UK Police Force. PHD Thesis

Leeds University Qualitative data used in this report was gathered as an element of the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project An Investigation into Information Behaviour and the Use of Mobile Information Systems for Information Management in Police Forces in England and Wales, Grant No. 119261

Allen, D. K (2011) Information Behaviour and Decision Making in Time Constrained Practice: A Dual-Processing Perspective. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (62)11, 2165-2181

Allen, D. & S. Karanasios (2011), Critical Factors and Patterns in the Innovation Process. Policing (Oxford): a journal policy and practice, 5(1): p. 87-97

Allen, D.K., Wilson, T.D., Norman, A.W.T. and Knight, C. (2008).  Information on the move: the use of mobile information systems by UK police forces. Information Research, 13(4), paper 378. (Paper presented at ISIC 2008  Villnius, Lithuania 16-19 September 2008 and published by the conference organisers in Information Research)
[Available at http://informationr.net/ir/13-4/paper378.html]

Allen, D.K. and Shoard, M. (2005). Spreading the load: mobile information and communications  technologies and their effect on information overload. Information Research, 10(2) paper 227
[Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/10-2/paper227.html]

Allen, D. K. and Wilson, T.D. (2004) Action, interaction and the role of ambiguity in the introduction of mobile information systems in a UK police force. In Lawrence, E, Pernici, B., Krogstie, J Mobile Information Systems: IFIP TC8 Working Conference on Mobile Information Systems. (pp. 14-37)  New York, NY: Springer.

Filed Under: nomadNEWS Tagged With: benefits, Mobile, mobile working, police

Mobile downloads for BBC iPlayer

September 5, 2012 By Ken Eastwood Leave a Comment
BBC iPLayer Image

Commuters wanting to catch up on the latest episodes of BBC programmes on the way to work will be able to download BBC iPlayer content to their mobile phones or tablets.

According to the BBC, the app update will initially be for iOS devices and will offer a 30-day window for watching downloaded content.

Previously, the app required a 3G or Wi-Fi connection to be able to watch catch-up content, making watching content on the move challenging.

 

“You can now load up your mobile phone or tablet with hours and hours of BBC television programmes”

 

“With mobile downloads for BBC iPlayer, you can now load up your mobile phone or tablet with hours and hours of BBC television programmes, then watch them on the road, on the tube, on a plane, without worrying about having an internet connection or running up a mobile data bill,” said Daniel Danker, general manager of Programmes and On-Demand for the BBC.

Once a program is started, viewers will have seven days to finish watching the show. The app can be downloaded in full or upgraded from the iTunes App Store.

The initial services will be for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices, but an Android app including the download option will be available soon, the BBC said.

“We are working on Android,” said BBC digital rights staffer Andrew Livingston in his Twitter feed. “We started both at the same time. At one point it looked like Android might have shipped first.”

 

Filed Under: nomadGENERAL Tagged With: app, bbc, iPlayer, Mobile

Mobile Local Government 2012 Leeds

July 24, 2012 By Laura Fox 3 Comments

Rosebowl featured image

Last Thursday we hosted our first Local Government Goes Mobile 2012 Event in partnership with Public Networks, at the Rose Bowl, Leeds Metropolitan University.  Despite the downturn in public spending, we had 35 delegates registered to attend from 16 different organisations, which made for a good quality set of round table discussions and question and answer sessions.

The main points I learned from the event were:-

1.    Mobile and Flexible works, and what’s more, there are hidden benefits!

Successful implementations are really beginning to gather pace in Local Government now. The examples discussed and demonstrated by speakers from Wigan and Bolton clearly showed delegates in a ‘no-nonsense, matter of fact’ style, how mobile technology has not only reduced costs, and improved service delivery, but it can also give tangible benefits in other areas.

Imagine at the outset of a waste management project someone had said “Hey, you guys in the Council Tax Service, our Waste Management Operatives are going to increase your revenue by using mobile technology!”  Can you imagine the puzzled looks on their faces? But that’s apparently what’s happened at Wigan, simply through the better collection and exchange of information.  No more shirking council tax if you want your household waste collecting at Wigan!

Similarly, their ‘triage’ style ‘eyes and ears’ inspections of business premises is not only making efficiency gains on the costs of regulatory inspections, but the well managed businesses are benefitting from less ‘interference’ from the regulators as resources are targeted to the highest risk areas more effectively.

2.  Guess what…. projects fail!

It’s certainly not new news to me that some projects fail.  I’ve been there.  But…. Hallelujah!!  It’s ok to say that they fail (bit radical maybe!?) but you know why? It’s because we know WHY they fail, and we can all learn from their failures. Well, that’s a bit of a  ‘no brainer’ really perhaps?  But isn’t it refreshing to hear people freely admitting that some of their projects have failed?

What I really found interesting and encouraging is that although some mobile and flexible working projects fail, there is still an appetite to carry on with implementing mobile and flexible working, because it makes good business sense.  The rewards of successful implementations are testimony to that, and the business cases continue to stack up.  If that wasn’t the case, none of us would even consider spending any of our precious time on them would we?

The reasons why so many projects fail leads me onto my next learning point…

3.  The technology works, we need to focus on the people.

Since my initial involvement with introducing technology for service transformation some 7 years ago, the focus was very much on whether the technology would work.  Could it really be as reliable as a pen and paper? Would it wither on its fibre vine due to a whole host of technical issues that would prove simply too difficult to fix?  Presentations I gave or attended focused very much on demonstrations of applications (live demos if we were feeling brave and adventurous!), and questions raised were all about the speed of the data transfer, or “what do you do if the system goes down”? etc.

Yesterday during one of the presentations, we saw a live demonstration of Bolton MBC’s Flood Risk application.  No-one batted an eyelid or questioned whether the system worked effectively at all.  Now I may be being naïve, and I’m sure anyone who attended the event and reads this will correct me if they think otherwise but… it seemed to me that there was a complete acceptance in the room that the system worked. Discussions I had during the day with experienced officers all confirmed that they were convinced the technology worked.  The main hurdles were either the people or risk averse IT departments.

At the start of the day, NDL gave us some input from the results of their latest annual survey.  Not surprisingly, the issue of ‘culture’ was cited as the main barrier and was a close second on reasons for project failure (top being data network).

It’s not surprising then that the Leeds presenters who talked us through how they have successfully introduced their business change model to ensure ownership of the problem, the solution and the outcome were extremely well received.  We were reminded that 9 out of 10 project failures are people related, so this is clearly an area which needs most attention. There were some very ‘no-nonsense’ messages delivered, including “Employees don’t need to like change management, they just need to be engaged”, (when thinking about the amount of change management resource to put into an area) “Match resource to the level of resistance, not to the number of people in that service area”, and the Leeds strapline: “work is something you do, not where you go”.

Anyone who was following our Twitter channel (#lgmw12) during the day may have picked up on a couple of useful links during this presentation, which Nick Hill from Public Networks helpfully tweeted:

West Yorkshire Change Toolkit

MacLeod Review

On the ‘flip side’ of this presentation, it was good to hear a different perspective from Bolton MBC who are taking a smaller scale approach through producing small rapid development ‘taster apps’ to encourage enthusiasm and buy in from staff. With 50 apps developed already and £72,000 saved from the first implementation it seems the relevance of mobile working has been well and truly proven in that authority.

So, my ‘learning point’ from this was more of a confirmation really  (having just completed an MSc assignment on Change Management which included a mobile working implementation case study) – change management continues to remain crucial to the success of implementing new methods of working.  My action from this? I’m convinced that we need to pull together a show-case of successful change management practices specific to the mobile and flexible working agenda.  If we can manage to throw in a few horror stories too which we can all learn from then so be it.  Watch this space!

4.    ‘Sausage Finger Technology’!

Reading back on my tweets about the event, I was pleased to have captured these two great snippets from Simon Roberts at Wigan Council which I’ll keep reminding myself about:

“You need to understand what you want to get out of it”

“Don’t implement anything you wouldn’t feel comfortable using yourself”

I also picked up on Simon’s reference to ‘sausage fingers’ – a reference to designing solutions that are simple and easy to use.  I really do think ‘sausage finger technology’ could become a catchphrase!

There’s a lot more I could write about from the day, but I’ve already rambled on for quite a while now, so I’ll close with saying a big thank you to all our sponsors (NDL, Kirona, Capita, Box Technologies and Spirit Data Capture) and to our speakers (NDL, Leeds CC, Bolton MBC and Wigan MBC.  Alan Blundell from Wigan took both Ken and myself back to our Regulatory Services roots and made us both feel a little nostalgic.

A big thank you too to Nick Hill and to my business partner Ken Eastwood who wasn’t feeling well on the day but soldiered on regardless (what a guy!)

Resources from the event including presentations and documents shared by delegates post event, are accessible to Local Government colleagues here.

Laura Fox. Digital Nomads Director

Filed Under: nomadEVENTS Tagged With: event, leeds, Mobile

2012 Mobile In Focus

February 24, 2012 By Ken Eastwood Leave a Comment

According to the latest research from comScore in its global 2012 Mobile Future in Focus report, the UK leads the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Canada in terms of smartphone penetration (51.3%).

Smartphones have gained rapid adoption among consumers, and comScore highlighted mobile social media in Europe as one of the key drivers, with social media accessed by 48.4 million consumers – an increase of 76 per cent since past year.

 

Google Android saw significant gains in the EU in the race to deliver smartphone platforms, unseating market leader Symbian in 3 out of 5 European markets measured. Apple’s iPhone4 and iPhone 3GS lead as the year’s most acquired devices, but Nokia still accounted for the largest share of total mobile handsets in use (feature phone and smartphones combined) across four of the five EU countries. That plays to Microsoft as it rebuilds its platform share through partnership with Nokia.

Despite all the talk of tablet devices breaking through in 2011, in the EU only 8.3 percent of all mobile subscribers reported having a tablet. comScore however believes tablets herald “a shift to an increasingly multi-device lifestyle that is becoming the norm for many consumers” who it names ‘digital omnivores.’ Despite accessing the same content, comScore believes each device – smartphone and tablet – has very different peak usage times throughout a typical day, highlighting varying use cases to the digitally-connected consumer.

 

Filed Under: nomadGENERAL, nomadNEWS Tagged With: 2012, Mobile, smartphone
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