Smartphones
Essays

This paper provides a review of the relevant literature to provide a definition of going green with information technology and present an analysis of the impact of going green with information technology on the environment. A discussion concerning the pros and cons of going green with information technology is followed by a description of some ways to go green with information technology. Finally, a summary of the research and important findings are presented in the conclusion.

This paper is about the Decathlon in China case from the Ivey School. The issue at hand is the company's social media strategy in China. The case writeup contains extensive internal and external analysis that helps Decathlon to understand the customers it is targeting with the strategy, and how best to reach them.

Amazon's remarkable ascent as one of the top online global retailers can be attributed to the foresight they had in creating a comprehensive distributed order management, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and e-commerce series of systems. The many other e-commerce sites that rose quickly with massive infusions of venture capital just as quick exited the market, flaming out due to a lack of system and process scalability, lack of understanding of customer dynamics, and a complete loss of focus on scalable business models. All of these factors are what caused competitors to Amazon to exit the e-commerce market either through acquisition, merger or complete exist from the market. When starting Amazon, Jeff Bezos invested heavily in the distributed order management, ERP, SCM and e-commerce integration points to book distributors initially, and then expanded into a broader product mix. This allowed the enterprise to quickly scale as volumes increased during the first five years of the company's existence. Having creating this reliable, scalable and secure platform, Mr. Bezos and the Amazon founders concentrated on creating an analytics layer throughout their architecture that could quantify customer, distributor, dealer and even competitor activity on the site (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012). This reliance on analytics also gave Amazon executives and technical staff the insight they needed to launch quickly into entirely new product categories, get the complex and often confusing task of localization right, and also create a highly popular and profitable Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform and hosting platform for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications (Mitchell, 2012). From a technology standpoint the performance of Amazon today can be directly attributed to the insightful decisions made in 1994 and 1995 when the company founders prioritized the development of enterprise-wide platforms and a strong focus on analytics over spending all their time on the front-end website and its façade (Lindic, Bavdaz, Kovacic, 2012). As Jeff Bezos would later remark in interviews, by investing to create a truly world-class enterprise back-end system first, his company was freed up to fast track the actual user interface of the e-commerce sites globally at a pace that left comp[editors far behind in terms of functionality and product breadth (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012). Mr. Bezos chose in 2007 to also institute a culture of metrics that also capitalized on the nearly two decades of investment in their infrastructure (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012). Combining the global e-commerce, enterprise-tested infrastructure and the most robust set of analytics that any e-commerce provider had, Amazon was ready to begin expanding their product strategies, start offering greater options in their Amazon Web Services initiative which today is expected to be a $1B by 2015, even by conservative forecasts (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012) and also invest heavily in their state-of-the-art recommendation engine technology that seeks out products and services customers may be interested in and present them during shop[ping sessions in real-time (Sun, 2012). It's important to appreciate just how vast of an e-commerce infrastructure Amazon has in completing this analysis of their e-strategy. They have greater agility, flexibility and capability to execute than any other online retailer globally today. How they choose to use these technologies to attract new customers and keep existing ones loyal, a point the case study makes in greater detail, is predicated on the ability to get the most value from this infrastructure while still staying focused on delivering a world-class customer experience in each transaction. Based on the analysis undertaken for this case analysis, it is abundantly clear that Jeff Bezos and the executive management team are passionate about keeping the company as customer-focused as possible, including the continual selective use of technology to accentuate and strengthen the user experience online and off (Murphy, Narkiewicz, 2010). With these foundational aspects of Amazon defined, the seven areas of focus in this analysis are next presented. The overarching objective of this analysis is to understand the value of e-strategies in organizations, with Amazon being the organization of interest in the analysis. Specifically concentrating on the benefits of having an e-strategy at Amazon, defining how e-strategies contribute to Amazon's broader accomplishments, and an analysis of how Amazon aligns their e-strategy to the overarching organizational strategy as well., The analysis continues with an analysis of the key business factors that are the catalysts of the e-strategy at Amazon, followed by a suggested strategic plan for ensuring e-strategy initiatives at the company continue to lead to profitable growth. The final section of this analysis provides an assessment of the technical infrastructure needed to accomplish the proposed strategic plan. As Amazon has continually evolved its position as a global force in online retailing, its command of supply chains globally has also evolved very quickly. In the latest rankings of the highest-performing supply chains completed by Gartner, a leading research consultancy, Amazon has ranking within the top twenty five for five years running (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012). What this signals is that Amazon has progressed from relying on enterprise-wide infrastructure to compete and is now on the growth trajectory of making supply chain processes their competitive advantage.

Based on the successful merger of Orange and T-Mobile, the company is one of the world's largest mobile operators and the second leading operator throughout Western Europe. The company has over 30M subscribers worldwide, with 10M on the more profitable and long-term post-paid plans and leads Europe with over 1.5M users subscribing to the GSM 3G speed class of performance (Orange Investor Relations, 2012). As of January, 2012 the company and its subsidiaries operate in 25 nations worldwide and has an aggregator market share of 40.4% and one of the highest consistent Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) levels of 31.6, netting an average minutes per user or subscriber of 190 minutes (Orange Investor Relations, 2012). Despite these impressive statistics however, Orange is suffering for a very high level of customer churn in its core markets, is challenged with how to ramp up into the smart phone market globally (which could revolutionize their business if they succeed at it), and continual lean process improvements over time (Andlauer, Pouillot, 2011) (Orange Investor Relations, 2012). The continual consolidation of the European and global telecommunications provider industry as evidenced by rapid price declines (Benzoni, Deffains, Nguyen, Saleese, 2011) and the nationalization of telecommunications services by governments is increasing the intensity of competition (Clifton, Comín, Díaz-Fuentes, 2011). Amidst all of these challenges the potential of 3G networks and their high ARPU levels offer considerable upside revenue potential for the company going forward (Orange Investor Relations, 2012). Smartphone integration will be integral to this effort however. The intent of this strategic marketing plan is to provide an audit of the company today, an assessment of their macroenvironment, market analysis, competitive overviews, market shares of competitors, profitability analysis and SWOT analysis of the company, The core strategy of the company will also be assessed. Marketing mix decisions and control points will also be provided as part of the analysis.

The plan has been written in order to guide our mobile phone export business. Cell phones in Moldova are rapidly overtaking land phones as many cellular phones now provide Internet access and cell phone computers. SMS, MMS and broadband are becoming standard features on cell phones. Nonetheless, mobile phones are expensive in Moldova and not everyone can afford them. Furthermore, although Moldova has made great lines in improving their technology in the telecommunications area, there is still line for improvement. Cellphones need to be upgrade to a 4G level. At the moment they are ranked at 2G and 3G. Moldovan Cellular Phones can find their niche by exporting refurbished cheap mobile phones to Moldova, introducing cheap policies and incentives, and providing Moldavians with quality mobile phones at competitive prices. The potential for success is huge.

In this paper, the issue is using mobile technology (specifically text messaging) to promote health care. Patients were asked to complete a survey and then provide a mobile phone number so they could get text messages about health related issues that are important to them. The paper was designed to show whether this would be a valid way for health care providers to help their patients.

Mobile Services, Safety, Security, Usage and Acceptance:

The global music industry today is going through a series of disruptive innovations that are changing business models in the short-term and value chains over the long-term. The pervasive influence of the Internet, mobile and streaming technologies, and the shift from CD-based music to digital and online music also signals how quickly the global value chain of the music industry is changing today. Of these many disruptive innovations, the most significant is the shift from individual record labels and their relatively un-integrated approach to delivering digital music to the pervasive platforms that include Apple iTunes (Hopkins, 2011). With the number of legitimate online sources for music growing from 60 in 2005 to more than 400 in 2010 the role of the platform as consolidator in this global industry is clear (Hopkins, 2011). Of the many types and forms of global music distribution, online music is forecasted to grow at a 31% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), increasing from $5.9B in 2010 TO $7.7B in 2015 (Apple Investor Relations, 2012). Apple's internal research shows that online music subscription services will also experience very rapid growth, with one of the most well-known being Spotify, which is predicted to grow five-fold between 2010 to 2015. The Recording Industry of America (RIAA) estimates that 47% of global music industry can be attributed digital music downloads and subscription services (Apple Investor Relations, 2012). Contributing to these exceptional levels of growth are the impacts of globalization, technologies that are making online digital music sharing highly price effective and reliable, and greater clarity in the area of copyright and licensing. The global impact of piracy and free source software is also having a very significant impact on the global profitability of the music industry (Preston, Rogers, 2011). These constraints will be assessed and analyzed throughout this report.

Introduction In the research information presented in this chapter, the author will map out issues with regard to mobile networks and their use in marketing in hotels. A literature review, research objectives, the research problem and research questions are listed as well as the research methodology and the directions for more research in application development are mapped out in detail. Chapter Two-Literature Review The Importance of Mobile Media in the Hospitality Industry Multiple mobile networks and mobile channels are becoming a way of life, wherever people go, including while they are on the move and staying in hotels. This is clearly a responsibility that is under the administrative purview of e-managers in hotels. In such a case, unclear strategies for channel usage, lack of expertise and technical challenges can hinder the effective deployment of this technology. In this vein, in a recent survey in the online magazine Gleanster found that 94% of their interviewed top performers view an "increase return on marketing investment" as the top reason to deploy mobile marketing ("How top performers," 2011). So, what is driving this reliance upon the technology? As usual, it is the consumer in an industry and the hotel industry is no different in this respect. Hoteliers are therefore required to respond to it since the mobile has become an important travel planning and booking channel for 67% percent of travelers and 77% of frequent business travelers who use their devices locally. This is important because hotel consumers demand instant, real time access where ever they are in order to further refine the trip. Further, the trend is to more connectivity with more hoteliers fitting mobile sites into their budget planning (37.5% in 2011 vs 25.9% in 2010) and mobile booking engines (37.5% in 2011 vs. 22.4% in 2010) (Starkov, 2011) . Certainly, hospitality marketers have a major issue in connectivity of their channels with these phone applications, regardless of technology upgrades in terms of the hotel applications and the phone software. New technology is of course the key. This is particularly the case with smartphones which will cover 50% of the U.S adult population by 2012 (ibid.). Applications on cell phones are becoming very important in this mix. Of the smartphones that Americans have, the largest market is Android OS with 36%, followed by Apple iOS 26% and RIM Blackberry OS 23% (Getting started —, 2011, 3). All of the technology is wonderful, however, the key questions that marketers in the hospitality industry need to know how to apply mobile marketing, what the benefits of mobile marketing are for hotels and what the issues are that need to be considered in the application of mobile marketing in hotels. As mentioned above, connectivity with the customer's phone application is critical. So as not to be caught up too much in specific technological niches in this short essay. However, it is critical to also retain some kind of access point, especially for hoteliers with small budgets who are being priced out of the mobile marketing market. Indeed, as we see in the Starkov piece, 38.4% of hoteliers in 2011 vs. 32.8% in 2010 planned no mobile marketing at all. Starkov even went so far as to suggest that hotels do not require a mobile application if they are single-property, independent hotel (Starkov, 2011, 2). However, while the new gadgets causing a hospitality revolution, the bits of interacting everything together competently is central to the equation, regardless of hotel size. This is where social media comes to play and customer tweets fly around the world in order to gauge the direction of our research study. According to travel blogger Clay Shirky who maintains that media is now digital and is moving to the Internet, instantly becoming a universally available, interactive environment where everyone is a participant, creating their own channels, media, messages and processes that deliver the travel information ("The future of," 2012). Social media has been extensively studied of late at the early stages and a recent study published in January 2011 examined Facebook and Twitter in a study of Italian tourism websites. The relationship of the social media was analyzed with regard to total visits and the performance of those online social networks as referrals were also studied. The study showed a clear correlation between social media and travel websites visits (Milano, Baggio & Piattelli, 2011). Much of the above applications will be increasingly powered by extensive web analytics such as Google Analytics to make sure that the hotel is being found and how to track. This would also help in tracking which hotel websites are being visited and when (Measuring the success, 2011, 1). Briefly also, we should consider the phenomenon of Google Maps and Google Earth which are empowering tourists to interactively exchange information about each regarding travel. Of course, the beauty of these applications are that they are completely compatible with the Google Android Smartphone ("Android market: ," 2011). Chapter Three-Research Methodology Problem Statement The main objective or purpose of the research is to find applications, benefits and issues to be considered during the implementation process of the mobile marketing in hotels. Central to this effort is how to make mobile marketing work in hotels, particularly small ones, which were the focus of this studies research methodology. As emphasized above, many small hotels have neglected mobile marketing altogether. For this reason, there is a pressing need for research into the ways that small hotels can effectively use mobile marketing in their promotion efforts and how to increase customer connectivity and the ability to find the hotel on the web and to interact with the sales and marketing staff dynamically in order to capture customer brand name loyalty and to leverage more market share. In the past development, mobile phone applications were based simply upon search on a map on the mobile terminal device display. Application technology development methodology allowed simple adaptation and implementation with via cooperation with the operators of mobile phone systems. Customers are demanding additional functionality users regarding tourist resources, information to the users about other local objects and activities, including the ability to completely personalize the applications by users (Perakovic, Jovovic & Forenbacher, 2010, 66). It is safe to say that hotels use mobile marketing as a communication tool in order to inform customers about new events and specials and to increase traffic to their Internet website through booking functions inside the application. An interesting area where there is room for further research is tied in with social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook that seem at least at first glance are more effective. Social media seems to be a leveler of the marketing playing field for small hospitals. This is potentially has exciting potential in combination with Google Maps and Google earth because it is directly compatible with the Android smartphone. They could provide the extra, dynamic and customizable features that customers would want and would attract them to stay at small hotels. As mentioned above, there is a direct social media cbetween social media use by hotel guests and the travel websites they visited (Milano, Baggio & Piattelli, 2011). Research Questions How do hotels apply mobile marketing? What are the benefits of mobile marketing for hotels? What are the issues to be considered the in application of mobile marketing in hotels? Foundational Issues In the explanation of these research objectives, it needs to be stated that the objective is to explore the ways hotels apply and benefit from mobile marketing from the various applications and also to find out the issues that need to be considered during implementation the implementation of mobile marketing. The author has chosen case study methods as the research methodology to do this job. For this purpose, data collection was performed in 6 small hotels (5 of them being 4 star, with one of them being a 5 star hotel). Analysis of the data was done by within-case and cross-case analysis with regard to the mobile marketing applications. Within-case analysis allows researcher to analyze the interview data from hotels against the previous research or literature, boiling down a large amount of data into readily digestible and easily understood segments. Afterwards cross-case analysis is implemented to compare all cases to each other in order to find common patterns or themes, which also makes it easier to conclude the research. In general, case study methodology requires multiple sources of data. In the case of this study, the observation of mobile application, Internet website and mobile website of interviewed hotels was central to the research. Some hotels also provided the author with some artifacts that are also considered as sources of data (such as a flier and chocolate bar which had QR code on them). Conclusion In this chapter, the author has mapped out issues with regard to mobile networks and their use in marketing in hotels. A literature review, research objectives, the research problem and research questions were listed as well as the research methodology and the direction for more research was mapped out in detail.

Eastman Kodak has been facing difficulty external environmental circumstances for nearly two decades, as the digital photography revolution has severely impacted Kodak's business. The company's revenues have declined…