Smartphones
Essays

Google's dominance of the search market globally continues despite the aggressive launch in 2009 of Bing, a new search engine, by Microsoft. To date, Google is still the most preferred search engine globally, with a commanding market share lead (Grensing-Pophal, 2012). Both of these search engines are financed through advertising revenues, with Google's AdWords being the most profitable online advertising platform globally today as well. Microsoft's Bing advertising strategies have gravitated towards paid search and more traditional forms of online business models (Grensing-Pophal, 2012). These have been somewhat successful in raising the profitability of the Online Division of Microsoft, known as one of the least profitable in the entire company (Vance, 2012). Google on the other hand continues to be one of the most consistently profitable businesses in the high technology sector, often surpassing revenue and profitability targets on a consistent basis (Cho, 2009). The intent of this analysis is to evaluate each of these companies using the marketing mix, which is comprised of product, price, promotion and place or distribution. Place will be interpreted as their actual website and location online.

A Pestel and Innvoation analysis are used on Sony's Playstation. Discussion of Pestel indicates that - as the technological précis shows, technology can be a double-edged sword. The more developed the technology, the more complex it becomes and, ipso facto, the more problems it can introduce. Sony, as does its competitors, attempts to sharpen and innovate on previous technological models, but the more developed the design, the more likelihood it has for problems to occur exposing the company to more likelihood of setbacks and to even greater and more agonizing falls. Technological marvels thoguh offering greater opportunity, likewise open the company up to greater risk.

In today's world of technology, it is imperative that you stay current with what is new in the IT world. What makes this particularly challenging is the pace of change in IT systems, and the continual need to make sure they align to a department, division and in the case of the City of Elizabethtown, an entire city. Never before has it been more critical for government municipalities to get the most value possible out of their IT investments. With continual budget costs and an orientation to judge investments purely on short-term cost reduction, investments in IT must be seen as atypical and worthy of much greater focus and effort to integrate the into municipalities. This is to first increase the value delivered, second to ensure the hard-earned taxpayer funds used to buy and upgrade equipment, operating systems, networks and applications are put to the best possible use, and third, to make absolutely sure they deliver the greatest value necessary in order for the City of Elizabethtown to get the greatest value. Those are the foundational elements of this proposal and the values it is based on. As the migration of 250 workstations across 10 departments and 5 locations has a budget of $100,000 and the performance gains possible from transitioning their operating systems form Windows XP to Windows 7 is expected to be significant, the cornerstone of this proposal centers on delivering excellent public service ultimately to the citizens City of Elizabethtown. As Microsoft has also recently indicated they will be permanently discontinue Windows XP support on April 8, 2014 according to the Microsoft website, the urgency to get this upgrade completed accurately, completely, and with precision is clear. It seems like every six months something new is coming out. While it is true you do not need every new gadget out there to stay current in the IT world, you do need the most recent operating system to ensure the compatibility, security, scalability and long-term Return on Investment (ROI) of IT spending. I work for the City of Elizabethtown as the Network Administrator. While a Network Administrator's job is mostly configuring and maintaining servers, I also manage all the workstations and make sure they are getting the most recent updates that are on the WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) server. I am also in charge of preparing budgets for these workstations and purchasing them. I have been with the City now for 5 years and we have running Windows XP SP3 on all workstations. With all the new threats out there and with Microsoft ending their commitment to support Windows XP in 2014 I have decided to upgrade to Windows 7. The reason I have decided to go with Windows 7 instead on the upcoming release of Windows 8 is simply because Windows 7 was released 2 years ago and most of the bugs and kinks are gone and there is stability in the program. Microsoft has also been able to get much greater levels of software support for their 64-bit versions of the Windows 7 Application programmer Interface (API). The current Windows 32-bit based applications on the XP systems throughout the city will eventually become obsolete, some as early as twelve months from now in 2013. The message is clear from Microsoft however; they have made Win64 API-based development a strategic priority, investing heavily in Independent Software Vendor (ISV) relations efforts with their strategic partners. Microsoft has also modified and improved the device drivers for Win64-based systems so that the network security, speed and precision are also significantly enhanced. While Windows NT, XP and Windows 7 are all based on the Windows NT Kernel shown in Appendix 4, Microsoft has greatly expanded the Windows 7 kernel to support a more multiplatform-based strategy than ever before. The Windows 7 kernel can be seen in Appendix 3. Microsoft will make a major announcement later this year with Windows 8 support for the Windows Phone, and will also seek to bring the Win64 API to the Apple iPad via Apple iOS 6. This Apple operating system will most likely bring Microsoft Office to the Apple iPad. Current discussions with Microsoft indicate that any servers running Windows 7 components will be able to support non-Microsoft devices. As the City of Elizabethtown begins to adopt smartphones and tablet PCs including the Apple iPad with increasing regularity, the IT department will need to also consider the platform requirements for supporting these devices. This tend in IT is called Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). Departments in City Hall, the Elizabethtown Police Department, Fire Stations, Gas Department and Public Works all could significantly increase the effectiveness of their workflows by integrating smartphones and tablet PCs into their workflows in the future. While these are not core requirements of this transition from Windows XP to Windows 7, 64-bit edition, it is another consideration that needs to be kept in mind. The transition from XP to Windows 7 will enable our IT department to better serve the entire city in the future and set the foundation for eventual adoption of mobile devices. It is not a matter of whether this will happen, only a matter of when. Another aspect of the transition of the 250 workstations is the versioning of their applications and the significant potential speed increase they can attain when they are migrated form Win32 to Win64-based versions. This speed increase has, according to Microsoft and its ISVs (development partners) been as high as 60% on calculation-intensive applications including Microsoft Excel, SQL Server and other database applications. This speed increase is due to the result of applications using memory more efficiently and also having greater support for multithreading, which is literally the ability to have an application complete several concurrent, even potentially conflicting tasks, at once. The transition from Windows XP to Windows 7 will certainly require a hardware upgrade for workstations, and if the architecture of the workstation cannot support the minimum requirements of the operating system, another will need to be purchased. This is also the case with software licenses for all applications that are today running in Win16-based API Mode, by far the most prevalent and popular API that Microsoft has developers supporting. To see where the Win16 API fits into the architecture of these operating systems please see Appendix 4, Windows NT Kernel Architecture. An application written to support the Win16 API will also run in Windows XP, Windows 7 and 8. As the kernel architecture shows in Appendix 2, Win32 APIs dominate the XP framework. Fortunately Windows has designed in Win16 to Win32 API migration and compatibility, and is working to ensure applications written on both of these standards will work with Windows 7 and beyond. What all this means for the upgrade of systems is that the planning steps need to pay very close attention to standardizing on Win64-based applications to gain the full performance boost form upgrading the systems with hardware to make them capable of running Windows 7. The hardware upgrades and fine-tuning will only be as valuable as the operating system-level and most importantly, application-based upgrades completed. In conclusion the primary goal of upgrading the systems to avert obsolescence needs to be balanced with potential to significantly increase and improve speed over time.

Porter Five Forces Analysis of Apple Inc.

The pervasive adoption of mobile computing devices, combined with cloud computing and the quantum gains in application software are creating a globally diverse collaborative platform. These elements taken together are deliver an exceptionally fast and pervasive level of disruptive innovation across all sociocultural and technology sectors (Bernoff, Li, 2008). The impact of this disruptive innovation is so significant that IT departments have to drastically reorder their policies in smartphones, tablet PCs and other devices that employees are using to streamline their lives (Thomson, 2012). Smartphones, tablet PCs and devices like them are becoming so pervasive today that they are considered a formable cultural and socioeconomic factor in the planning and execution of business and government strategies well into the future (Bernoff, Li, 2008). This platform of technology is so pervasive, that it requires in-depth support to enable integration of systems to supporting data and network access to ensure the stability, security and reliability of performance. All of these factors are leading enterprises to create end-to-end platforms and technologies to enable the use of smartphones and tablet PCs' integration into the most complex workflows companies have (Saltzer, Reed, Clark, 1984). The large-scale investments by Google, Microsoft and others in the area of context-based computing and algorithm development, the continual investments in a technique called cyber-foraging, which is the ability to determine a person's location and interests based on the messaging provided by their smartphone or tablet PCs are nascent yet showing very significant potential (Gaddah, Kunz, 2003). In conjunction with these technologies is the continued reliance on Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to determine relative location of smartphones or tablet PCs and interlink them with local Web servers that have potentially relevant information (Satyanarayanan, 2001). Of the many technologies used for defining relative location of mobile devices to Web and cyber-foraging-based servers, the most reliable to date has been Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) (Welbourne, Balazinska, Borriello, Brunette, 2007). RFID has also emerged as the most reliable and secured technology to build middleware components of an enterprise-wide mobile platform on (Gaddah, Kunz, 2003). Middleware is software that unites the operating systems running the variety of diverse legacy and 3rd party systems enterprises rely on for successfully running their businesses on the one hand, and the application layer of the mobile software that users actually see on their systems. Based on the analysis completed for this study, middleware is a critical component for the overall performance of any mobile network. In evaluating the role of mobility in general and specifically the technologies needed to enable it on a global scale, the need for capturing, interpreting and providing insights in real-time back to mobile devices is critical. One of the most successful approaches for accomplishing this has been developed by Nokia, which uses a cyber-foraging technology that defines relative location of a smartphone or mobile device, also capturing its characteristics and the interests of the owner (Gaddah, Kunz, 2003). Cyber-foraging seeks to capture, classify, aggregate response to and then selectively publish content of interest from localized servers back to a mobile device, all transparently and in real-time to the user. This study evaluates how much more effective users of mobile devices are when the have access to the data they need, both from a personal and professional standpoint (Bernoff, Li, 2008). There has been five years of analysis completed on how to use cyber-foraging to streamline complex selling and services tasks throughout enterprises using this technology (Emmerich, 2007). Middleware's role in the future of mobility enterprise application development and its pervasive adoption is well-documented and known, and will continue to accelerate given the interest in this area by venture capitalists globally (Blair, Coulson, Grace, 2004). This analysis evaluates the advances made in Cloud-based middleware development and its use in enterprise-wide and metro-based network architectures. The third factor this that of usability, an area that has continually be a weakness in the development of mobile-based operating systems and applications. Smaller and lower-resolution screens have made even the simplest applications difficult to use over time. There are significant implications for how the future of mobility will progress based on the development and fine-tuning of operating systems on the usability dimension. The adoption of devices based on operating system is also included in this analysis, as the impact of design and usability standards has an immediate impact on customer adoption and long-term usability. The operating systems including Apple iOS, Google Android and Microsoft Windows and others are included in the analysis. This study has determined that the greater the level of robustness in middleware the higher the level of cross-platform integration support and stability of legacy applications over time (Gaddah, Kunz, 2003). The last section of this analysis includes an assessment of the security aspects of mobility strategies and devices, including the potential of hackers to completely overtake a mobile device and capture al personal data on it. The impact of middleware on the security and stability of any mobility network is evident in how effective Apple has been in creating enterprise-level options for enterprise IT departments to immediately wipe the contents clean off of any iPhone or Ipad that may have confidential data stored on it after it has been lost or stolen (Zhang, Gao, Jacobsen, 2005). This advanced level of functionality is attained through the use of middleware functions and support.

The computer industry is characterized by rapid technological change, intense rivalry and an increasing trend towards commoditization of key inputs. Apple has succeeded in this industry by adopting a differentiated…

Not everyone in the world visits social media networking sites, or uses sites like Facebook, but millions of people do, and for the most part, those users find Facebook to be a helpful way to stay in touch with friends…

This paper is about Apple. Most of the paper is focused on a financial analysis, mostly trend analysis and ratio analysis. There is also a little bit about the company's strategy, benchmarking and things like that. A brief competitor analysis versus Microsoft and Google is also provided with this paper.

Apple Computer, Inc. is a multinational corporation with its roots in the United States. It designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers (Shetty, 2011).

Xiameter's success as a subsidiary of Dow Corning is predicated on the successful differentiation of an entirely new business unit based on the concept of reducing operating expenses and passing on the savings to the customer. The Web-only, highly automated approach to order fulfillment, complemented by a reduced product lien footprint and terms of sale that stressed velocity over complexity were also what many customers of the company were looking for (Bloemhard, 2012). Where Dow Corning succeeded and others have failed with e-commerce strategies revolved around the key factors and decisions that shaped the business model and marketing strategy for Xiameter. The advantages of needs-based versus end-user based segmentation are evident in the success of the Xiameter e-commerce strategy. These advantages o being needs-based are analyzed in this paper as well. The rapidly changing nature of the competitive environment is also discussed in the context of Xiameter's product and pricing strategies. These specific aspects of product and pricing are evaluated in the context of Ron Fillmore's greatest question in the case, which is whether the company should modify its business model or not. This analysis concludes with a series of recommendations and advice for Rom Fillmore as to the future direction of Xiameter. He has ample reason to be optimistic as the case alludes to, as the future of chemical purchasing will increasingly be mobility-based, a perfect transition for Xiameter to selling on smartphones and tablet PCs including the best-selling Apple iPad (Bloemhard, 2012). All of these factors speak to the efficiency of innovation processes within Dow Corning and the exceptional level of upper management support for the innovation process (Bacheldor, 2005). The determination and support shown by the CEO and senior management team are pivotal in the success of Xiameter. Analysis of Key Factors and Decisions that Shaped the Business Model and Marketing Strategy Galvanizing all aspects of success of the Xiameter business unit and its many implications on the Dow Corning supply chain, pricing, distribution, selling and service is the steadfast support of its senior management team. Making it clear that Xiameter was not to be taken lightly and the company would not fail, the CEO set a very solid foundation of change management early in the process. This commitment took even the most difficult factors and decisions and put them into a context of achievable challenges, defining a tone of determined effort. The decision to move forward with the Xiameter was extremely risky as Dow Corning was departing from its core strengths of a high service-based, high priced model of delivery of products. Dow Corning at the corporate level has long been seen as a trusted advisor in the chemicals industry, one capable of leading innovation and adoption within any new product area (Hunter, 2002). The decision to move quickly into a price-drive marketplace, supported by senior management, signaled that the top leaders of the company from the CEO down realized that pricing pressure and competitive threats were successfully attacking their core business and they would need to address it.