Like many silly articles and videos we hate, XenMedia Solutions has it’s own view on this new app and is normally different from other so-called pros.

If you don’t know what “Siri” actually is, it’s a is a personal assistant application for iOS. You basically speak voice commands into your new Apple 4s (Siri app) and it follows your instructions.

For example, if you ask Siri where the nearest Chinese restaurant in town is, It will instantly display a result based on consumer feedback and scores to bring you a top 10 and will actually speak the result (which is kind of star treky don’t you think?).

There’s no doubt that this voice recognition personal assistant software is groundbreaking and will change the landscape in the years to come, but I think it’s an extension of the options available to the consumer and I still feel natural search (you typing a query into your favourite
search engine) will still have its place.

You Need To Adapt And Change Your Marketing

Where I can see a difficulty though, is for small local businesses not willing to adapt and change their marketing mix.

It’s now not enough to have a nice looking website with a few testimonials dotted around here and there. Small business owners will now, more than ever, have to really engage with their clients and encourage to leave feedback, rate their services, “facebook like” their site and “retweet” any decent content they like. For most, this will be a major shift in their multi channel marketing activities and will even be a game changer for those willing to put the effort in now to gain that early mover advantage.

For more advice and help with this, get in contact with XenMedia Solutions and stay ahead of the crowd.

Their potential Ipad 2 beater tablet only shipped a measly 100,000 in the 3rd quarter of 2011. Bearing in mind that Apple sold over 17 million Ipad devices for the exact same period.

So why am I so unimpressed with their new offering. Unfortunately for Motorola they don’t have a decent USP which separates them from the competition. Strategically, they’re not doing anything different from the other players in the marketplace. In my view, I can see the new Motorola Xoom 2 being offered at a discount in the New Year period due to lacklustre sales at Christmas.

Will It Beat Both Apple and Amazon

Even though Google now own Motorola, the tablet needs a better offering in the App market and also streaming services. This is where the Apple Ipad with their itunes platform and the new [textAd1] from Amazon come to the fore. Consumers are not just looking for the next best shiny object. They’re also looking for a tablet that they can interact with and being able to use as many useful services available. This is where their competitors have the marketing edge.

What’s the lesson learnt?

If you’re bringing out a new product, make sure it either exceeds or equals the expectations of your client, otherwise they’ll choose your competitors product or service every day of the week.

Quantas are in the process of rejigging their operations in Australia. It has unveiled plans to launch two brand new airlines in Asia and is also looking at purchasing new planes.

Their plans are to launch a new premium, Asia-wide service whilst setting up a budget carrier focusing on the profitable Japanese market.

They reported that 1000 jobs would be effected by the changes.

How has the grounding of their planes effected their brand?

Employee – Employer Relations Have Been Damaged

Industrial action isn’t pretty at the best of times and this is one that started to build momentum after the announcement of the company’s plans in August 2011.

I understand that their national market in Australia isn’t profitable and that they need to make structural changes, but surely they should have notified the unions and worked out a settlement instead of announcing the roll-out to the media and the world.

Having bad relations with staff serving your clients is a bad idea and I can only see this getting worse unless the dispute gets put to bed quickly.

Existing Clientele Relations Damaged

It’s my understanding that clients were lft stranded in over 22 different countries while Quantas grounded 447 flights. Their brand equity with these customers has been damaged and the bad press will hurt them for years to come. All of this is due to a communication break-down.

Get Clients Back On Side

Since they got their planes back in the air, there’s been no official announcement to reimburse those that were left stranded by Quantas. They didn’t come out and offer discounted flights to for new clients to drive sales during the period and going forward. I predict they will lose a lot of sales due to this bad PR management and the competition such as Virgin Australia will benefit.

These new phones will run Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system which isn’t the first tie up between these two juggernauts in the tech industry.

Chief executive Stephen Elop presented the new flagship handsets at the Nokia World 2011 conference on Wednesday, saying “Lumia is a new dawn for Nokia”. He also took the opportunity to take a friendly jab at other Windows Phone manufacturers.

“The Lumia is the first real Windows Phone,” Elop told the audience in London. “We are signalling our intent, right now, right here to be the leaders in smartphone design.”

These new phones will support Windows Phone Mango native features such as live tiles and Microsoft Office integration, which allows the user to gain access to documents actually held on corporate servers as well as locally, which is a nice touch.

More importantly, the phones will have a fully integrated Office application which means, along with 16GB of internal memory, the user will be able get the standard 25GB of free storage on the Windows Sky Drive cloud which is pretty cool.

* losely resembles the existing MeeGo-powered Nokia N9 in appearance
* 3.7-inch Amoled touchscreen display
* an 8-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics at the back
* 1.4GHz single-core processor with hardware acceleration and Internet Explorer 9.
* The 3.7” screen offers Super AMOLED resolution
* weighted at just 142g
* There’s no front camera on the Lumia 800
* A Music app provides pre-arranged playlists, for people who would like a radio substitute

An analyst at Strategy Analytics, Neil Mawston, estimated that Nokia was paying $15 to Microsoft for each Windows smartphone it produced, less than the estimated $20 other handset makers must pay.

The new Windows phone lineup, he said, has the potential to help restore Nokia’s fortunes in the smartphone market.

“One thing I have learned in this business is to never say never,”

As per usual, the proof will be retail sales which strategically Nokia’s October launch comes in time for the the Christmas holiday period. We haven’t received a conclusive price point either. This will play an important role in the decision making process for the consumer.

“Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) — Amazon.com Inc.’s escalating pursuit of Apple Inc. squeezed its profit forecast for this quarter, prompting investors to erase as much as $20 billion from the company’s market value in late trading.

Amazon’s operations could lose $200 million in the fourth quarter as costs mount, the Seattle-based company said yesterday. Last quarter’s profit also disappointed analysts, missing estimates by 42 percent — the biggest negative surprise of any technology business in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.”

Investing For The Future

What Amazon have done is invest heavily in their main infrastructure and are also going head t head with Apple by bringing out there new Kindle Fire tablet computer. Amazon realise that the future of reading books via your tablet and streaming movies to a mobile device is the future and are prepared to put their money where the mouth is by backing this project to the hilt. This is a brilliant strategic move for the company, but not so good for investors in the short term, hence the title.

Wall Street Are Downgrading Amazon Stock

Many on Wall Street are downgrading the stock and selling up since the company ha had profit squeezed. However, what they fail to recognise is the strategy at play here. Amazon want to gain market share is extremely lucrative market early on, and with their powerful back-end service of product delivery, distribution and digital services, sets this up to be the play of the decade.

What Can We Learn?

As a small business owner it’s worth investing in the latest technology or even new equipment if it meets your long term objectives. If it will improve productivity or make your systems more efficient it’s always advisable to invest now for the future

The latest insolvency index from information services company Experian shows 196 firms went bust in the region last month out of a total of 1,732 nationwide.

The figure represented 0.1 % of all businesses in the region.

Nationally, smaller firms bore the brunt with over 1,000 insolvencies among those employing 50 or fewer staff. Business services, building and construction, leisure and hotels, non-food retailing and property were the sectors with the most failures.

North East micro businesses worst hit for insolvencies

Micro businesses employing only 1 or 2 people in the north east experienced the largest rise in annual insolvencies last month, according to business data group Experian.

The volume of micro firms to hit the wall increased by 25 % to 258, representing 0.06 percent of the nation’s entire business population.

The business insolvency rate in the UK is calculated by comparing the amount of businesses that failed with the total business population of the nation. Across the board, the north east remains the region with the highest rate of corporate insolvencies that is in line with a small nationwide increase throughout 2011.

Over the entire UK business population, the pace of insolvencies increased with 0.09 % of British businesses failing in September, up from 0.08 % year-on-year.

Scotland maintained the smallest insolvency rate in the UK with only 0.07 % of businesses insolvent, as the West Midlands experienced the most worrying increase of insolvencies from 0.08 % to 0.11 % year-on-year. Probably the most financially stable businesses within the UK last month were oil companies, while food retailers performed the worst in the report.

The managing director of Experian Business Information Services in the UK and Ireland Max Firth, said: “While larger businesses bucked the trend in September, our analysis underlines how important it is that companies understand the financial strength of their customers, suppliers and business partners.

However, its dominate position is under pressure falling from a market share of the tablet market of 96% to 67%.

Even though there’s been an increase in shipments by a whopping 20% in the past three months, it’s share of the global tablet market has declined due to growing competition from other tablet makers (including Android slates).

(Credit: Strategy Analytics - "Click To Enlarge")

“It is clear that the iPad is experiencing slowing growth,” observed IDC analyst Tom Mainelli in a research note today.

If you’re a small business owner and looking to produce apps for the Ipad, it may be worth producing a second app for android powered tablets in addition. If these stats are anything to go by, Apple Ipad’s dominance is declining at a considerable rate, which means you need to focus your efforts on the current and rising stars in this marketplace.

If you need an app developing, don’t forget, XenMedia Solutions can help you get your idea off the ground for both Ipad devices and Android enabled devices.

Some may even say that people with larger areas of the brain for social skills may have a higher  than average Facebook count.

Are You Confused Yet?

Confused? This is based on research from the University College London who crunching the numbers after finding a connection between brain structure and actual Facebook activity.

This study (published by the Royal Society B) was taken from MRIs of a select group of 165 adults who were asked to report the number of Facebook friends they have.

Here’s an extract from the result:

“Taken together, our findings show that the number of social contacts declared publicly on a major web-based
social networking site was strongly associated with the structure of focal  regions of the human brain.

Specifically, we found that variation in the number of friends on Facebook strongly and significantly

predicted grey matter volume in left MTG, right STS and right entorhinal cortex.

These findings survived whole-brain correction for multiple comparisons and replicated in an independent sample. Moreover,
we found that the grey matter density of the amygdala, which was previously shown to be linked with
real-world social network size, was also correlated with online social network size”. said study leader
Prof Geraint Rees, director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL,
whose study was published on Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.”

Image courtesy of Flickr, Patrick Denker

These guys are experts in bottom line cross-selling balanced by an  decent increase in selling products including broadband and telephony to existing customers.

Hey, Where’s The Slump?

Industry experts were expecting a massive slump in this sector and indeed many companies have seen massive drops. However, when you’re the dominant market leader in your marketplace, economies of scale and tapping an existing client bank gives you significant example.

It’s this ability to squeeze its existing client bank that makes this company a force to be reckoned with.

Deal Falls Through

Bear in mind, BSkyB was in the process of being taken over by its largest shareholder earlier this year (Newscorp) until that dreadful phone-hacking scandal broke. This deal broke down and allowed BSkyB the breathing space to get on with running their very profitable business.

BSkyB operating profit was reported to be £327m, a 32% year-on-year increase, this was boosted nicely by a £39m payout by News Corp for ducking out of the purchase netting them £7m in costs for advisory fees.

Economic Downturn

The economic downturn has forced BSkyB to change its culture of obtaining as many subscribers as possible and is looking to roll out a new and targeted strategy of cross selling to its existing client base. By changing strategy they managed to 26,000 new pay-TV customers in the quarter, taking the total subscriber base to 10.2 million, which is well down on the almost 100,000 added in the same quarter last year.

Here’s a quick break down of the facts:

* Sold a total of 683,000 products to customers in the three months to the end of September
* Added 103,000 customers to its HD service
* Has 3.9 million of its total subscriber base
* Broadband numbers rose 150,000 to 3.5 million
* Telephony customers rose 147,000 to 3.2 million
* line rental through BSkyB rose 212,000 to 2.9 million
* TV, broadband and a “talk” product increased by 5% to account for 28%
of BSkyB’s total customer base – that’s a whopping 29% year-on-year increase.

Now those are impressive figures!

BSkyB chief executive, Jeremy Darroch said:

“In tough market conditions our move to more broadly based growth and multiple products is serving us well,”
he said. “Looking ahead, the environment is likely to remain challenging as a result of the pressures facing
consumers in the UK and Ireland.”

With this success, BSkyB is looking to expand this format to other European countries after the pay TV broadcaster reported strong growth in first quarter profits and said its growing telephony and broadband businesses.

Shares Rose

Unsurprisingly, shares in BSkyB were the biggest riser in the FTSE 100 at 11.46 am, up 38.5p – or 5.7pc – at 713.5p.

Basically every CEO and marketing executive meets strategic marketing challenges each year that can dramatically change the future outlook for years. In most cases, these decisions are quite often made without a proper grasp of the situation at hand and therefore don’t make the correct decisions.

Making off the cuff strategic decisions reduces the rate at which CEO’s or marketing executives make the right decisions.

By far the best option is to partake in an comprehensive annual review of both your markets and opportunities. This then allows you to make strategic long-term decisions to the benefit of both you and your company. These decisions are structured in such a way to align with your short term (quarterly) marketing goals.

Just some of the questions you need to ask:

What motivates your client to choose your product / service over you competitor?
What subtle and large changes can you make to improve the service delivered to your clients?
What are the needs and wants of your client that allow them to choose your company over your competitor?
What improvements can be made to improve your client’s personal or business life?
What are the latest trends in your marketplace and how are they affecting your clients choice attraction to your product / service?

XenMedia Solutions helps companies both large or small with their strategic objectives. Your multi channel marketing partner.