Sidewalk Chalk Blog

For the fifth year, Elearning! Magazine has polled its readers to find out what the best-in-class solutions are.  Mobile Learning was one of the sixteen categories. 

In an interview with the magazine, Jody Glidden, Chalk’s Director of Product Management, said “last year was a real breakout year for us, so we’re definitely starting to get noticed now.  That, I’m sure, played a big part in us winning this award.  The big features that set us apart are our automatic push to the hand-held — so people can take training if they’re out of coverage — and ease of authoring.”

Back in December we reported that (per IDC), despite the economic downturn smartphone shipments are still expected to rise in 2009.  

Recent reports show that not only are smartphones being used more, they’re doing more – and increasingly starting to replace personal computers for internet use.  A May ComScore study showed that mobile users in the US are accessing the mobile web 35.5% of the time, compared to 27% for voice and 22.7% for SMS.  Per Juniper Research, there are 634 million mobile web users today, and the predicted growth rate over the next two years is 60%; you do the math.         

Case and point: Wikipedia Mobile launched earlier this month.  The layout, controls and functionality are similar to the desktop version, but easily viewable on a mobile device.  You can check it out at m.wikipedia.org. 

What are the corporate implications of this trend?  With on-the-move employees leaving their laptops at home more and more, mobilizing important training content and resources is increasingly important.  Not only does mobile learning (mLearning) positively impact training completion rates, training and follow-up costs, performance, and productivity, it also addresses the new generation of road warriors. 

To learn more about mLearning, on your smartphone – but of course, check out the definition of mLearning on Wikipedia Mobile: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLearning.  To see examples of what’s possible, feel free to explore our BlackBerry® simulator.

RIM's 2009 Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES) ran from May 4 - 7 in Orlando, Florida.  With over 5,000 attendees from around the world and over 125 BlackBerry applications featured in the Solutions Showcase, WES is undoubtedly the largest BlackBerry event of the year.  

CIO.com was "in the trenches", per usual, learning about the various BlackBerry application vendors and culling their favorites.  Chalk / Mobile chalkboard made the "WES 2008: My Five Favorite New BlackBerry Products and Services" list last year, and is thrilled to be on the 2009 list as well. 

Winners included:

• Cellcrypt
• Chalk Media
• Giesecke & Devrient GmbH
• Google
• Gwabbit (Technicopia)
• iLane
• LogMeIn
• OtterBox
• Viigo
• Xobni

For the full article, click here. 

Elearning! Magazine, the publication that recently presented Chalk / Mobile chalkboard with a Mobile Learning award - as part of their Best of 2008 Readers’ Choice Awards - yesterday published a list of the Top Ten Reasons for Mobile Learning. 

Although this list is geared towards Higher Education (vs. Enterprise), it has some very valid points.  To read the full article, click here.  Enjoy, and if you have any questions or would like to learn more about mLearning – email us.

Ten Reasons for Mobile Learning

1. Stop turning out technology-disadvantaged alumni - By using older technologies (like portal-based systems), students are being taught with archaic technologies. Yet they are using cutting-edge technology for all other parts of their lives.

2. “The network ate my homework.” - By sending information directly to a student’s mobile device (or a teacher’s), there is no system to crash or network traffic overload to stop the information from being transferred.

3. “Services Not Available” - By transferring information directly from mobile device to mobile device, there is no problem with overload, even during peak times. All you have to have is someone making sure the network is working.

4. Cost to re-format content for online use - When materials are stored on Web portals, all of the content must be converted into Web page files (HTML). Based on a project done for the U.S. government, there is a 60 percent addition to cost by having to convert everything to HTML.

5. Poorly informed campus community - A major problem with using traditional Websites or portal environments is that they require students to check in to see if something has been updated. Instead, by using a mobile paradigm a notification would be sent directly to the user.

6. Speed learning impossible - Network latency guarantees 50 percent reduction in students consumption rate. This can be seen in an example of a teacher who had been given broadband but still had to download everything on the computer due to the lag time on the network.

7. Learning system induced labor - Systems that force students and teachers to upload and re-enter content into the learning systems are a great waste of student and instructor time.

8. Partial brain learning - Creativity is limited when teachers and students must comply to learning system methodology to conduct learning activities.

9. Disadvantaging the disadvantaged - The portal solution, and the forced repeated downloading it requires, makes it very difficult for students with slower connections to receive the information.

10. Cost and impact of wasting bandwidth - Bandwidth is wasted when the same information is downloaded more than once by the same user.

CTIA Wireless is the largest wireless-centric event in North America, attracting over 35,000 attendees from the telecom industry.  Last week the annual event celebrated its 24^th year with over 1000 exhibitors and more than 300,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space. 

Chalk joined RIM in Las Vegas for the event - to showcase Mobile chalkboard™ in the ‘Business on BlackBerry’ section of the BlackBerry booth.  The two words on the tips of everyone’s tongues were ‘apps’ and ‘convergence’.      

RIM President and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis helped to kick off the show by participating in the opening keynote "What does "Mobile Life" mean to you?".  He effectively stole the show when he announced the launch of BlackBerry App World™.  To watch a video overview of App World, click here. 

For event highlights compiled by industry favorites, click the links below. 

CNET

ZDNet

Marketnews

Last week the GSMA Mobile World Congress, held in Barcelona, drew over 40,000 attendees from around the globe.  This annual event, known to many as the 3GSM World Congress, is the combination of the world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry and a congress featuring prominent Chief Executives representing mobile operators, vendors and content owners from around the world. 

Chalk was there with RIM in the BlackBerry booth (along with 39 other RIM ISV partners!) and there was ample evidence that the wireless industry is alive and well.  For a synopsis of what happened at this year’s show, click here (cnet blog). 

At the GSMA's 14th Global Mobile Awards, which were announced at a gala dinner during the Mobile World Congress, RIM won two prestigious awards from the GSM Association; the 2009 GSMA Chairman’s Award, for "outstanding achievement in the mobile industry", and Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough, for the introduction of the BlackBerry Storm’s "SurePress" touch screen.     

In his presentation to RIM Co-CEO Jim Balsillie, GSMA Chairman Alexander Izosimov stated that, "RIM’s commitment to innovation has revolutionized the wireless industry and laid the foundations which shaped the thriving smartphone market of today. BlackBerry products and services have changed the way we communicate and interact, making businesses more productive and consumers better connected." 

Needless to say, attending the Mobile World Congress with RIM was phenomenal. 

While almost all industries are set to flatten or decline in 2009, smartphone growth is predicted to continue.  Albeit slower, any increase in these times is notable. 

According to Gartner, in the third quarter of 2008, 36.5 million smartphones were sold, an 11.5% increase from the same period in 2007.  Big market share winners were said to be RIM and Apple.  RIM alone added approximately 2.6 million net new subscriber accounts in the third quarter – bringing their total subscriber account based to roughly 21 million. 

Looking out to 2009, IDC has reported that smartphone shipments will rise 8.9% worldwide and 3.1% in the US.  Meanwhile, traditional mobile phone sales are forecast to slump 3.5% globally and 11.5% Stateside.  In 2010, “when economic recovery plans will have taken effect,” IDC predicts that smartphone shipments will be in the vanguard; increasing 28% in the US and 24% globally. 

So what’s driving this growth?  In these harsh economic times, it appears that affluent consumers in mature regions and major cities are upgrading to handsets with larger displays, media capabilities and expandable software. 

On the enterprise front, with employee productivity being critical – smartphones are an obvious choice for on-the-go professionals.  For field workers, smartphones are increasingly replacing laptops altogether.  This is, after all, the ultimate goal – and applications are helping to expand on the devices’ utility, especially for BlackBerry.  Given our recent acquisition news, we think it’s a fair assumption that multimedia will continue to play a big role in the corporate smartphone world.    

With competition driving innovation, ‘smart’ is starting to be an understatement. 

As part of our website redesign we have moved and improved our blog, Sidewalk Chalk.  If you tuned in to Sidewalk Chalk previously, you’d know that we covered mobile news, trends and fresh ideas; ‘the word on the street’, as the name implies. 

We are going to continue to do this here.  Our aim is to inform our clients and partners of what’s new, and start a dialogue on the crux of our company: enterprise mobility and, more specifically, using handhelds for training and impactful communications.    

Stay tuned for our 2009 enterprise mobility forecast, and if you have any suggestions or comments - please add them below.