Rype :: Book, Do, Charge, Collect.

It is an interesting time in the world of mobile phones, smartphone use is increasing as numbers of consumers move to a phone capable of browsing the web, email, and of course the now growing desire for apps. Thanks to our friends at Apple the world is now mad keen for next to useless apps on their devices. Now that is probably a bit harsh of course but of all the people I know they use about 2 apps (maps & directories) regularly the rest are cute little apps.

Google's “Android” operating system is certainly getting it's fair share of rosy coloured predications lately. The latest comes from an analyst at Gartner who predicts that Android will overtake the iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile within 3 years:

I received an email from an online accounting system the other day…one I have been following for sometime now (winweb.co.uk).

We were pleasantly surprised to notice a new source of traffic in our web tracking stats recently. A new service  had published a directory in the mobility space of which we were included.

SoftwareShortlist.com is a service to help small businesses find the right software. The website www.softwareshortlist.com has a smart selection tool that allows you to build a shortlist of suitable products based on your specifications. This is in addition to a series of directory listings where you can browse comprehensive lists of products.

SoftwareShortlist takes an independent perspective on your business, conducts robust reviews of available software globally, and helps match you up with a shortlist of relevant solutions.

I was very pleased this morning when I read that Palm's new WebOS platform is selling well (http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9899/palm-reports-q1-fy-2010-results/).  In comparison to the same quarter last year, Palm has more than doubled their quarterly unit sales to 823k since the Palm Pre went on sale.  When you consider that this next quarter should see Palm selling in the United Kingdom and Europe with both CDMA and GSM versions and that Palm has just began selling the Pre in Canada, these figures may well double again in 3 months, putting Palm well and truly back in the smartphone game and on the way to financial recovery.

Simultaneously there's a dark cloud hanging over Windows Mobile at the moment, with companies  like Motorola and HTC shifting their emphasis to Android.  It's not hard to figure out why.  Android is a responsive and cutting edge operating system with a modern web browser, whilst Windows Mobile feels like it hasn't really improved since 2003.   I wonder if this quote from Bill Gates is haunting Microsoft at the moment:

“In this business, by the time you realize you're in trouble, it's too late to save yourself. Unless you're running scared all the time, you're gone.”

Microsoft were clearly not running scared before the iPhone was released.  I bet they are now.
I have no doubt that Microsoft will respond to the challenge that Apple, Google, Palm and Nokia are presenting, but it's probably going to be late 2010 before Microsoft will have had time to react with Windows Mobile 7.

The situation is a bit frustrating to us here at Rype because our key mobile platform at the moment is Windows Mobile.  Windows Mobile will return as a strong contender, of that much I have no doubt, but in the mean time we'll need to find ways to reach out to users who simply don't want Windows Mobile on their phone.  We are putting strategies in place so expect some news on this soon.

I'll end this post with another Bill Gates quote:

“Life is not fair; get used to it.”

Over and out.

The manufacturer of Blackberry phones, Research in Motions (RIM), recently acquired software developer Torch Mobile. Torch Mobile develops a mobile web browser called Iris, which is based on WebKit, a leading browser rendering engine. The significance of this is that software developers should finally be able to deliver a feature rich browser based experience to Blackberry users, should they bring the Iris browser to these devices.

We are pleased to annouce that Rype desktop versions will support Snow Leopard, Apple's latest update to it's MAC OS X.

15 years ago you would have bought an early generation windows application that had been migrated from DOS. Also around this time was the introduction of the entry-level cashbook & accounting systems. The computerised accounting software market is now some 15 years old in the modern PC environment (i.e. Windows & Macintosh).

Google's recent announcement that it was developing its own operating system (OS) based on Linux has been received with mixed reviews. According to Google, the OS will focus on speed, simplicity and security and will initially be targeted at netbooks, with its primary objective of allowing users to run a browser to access their online services. Importantly, it will be free to end users and be released as open source, allowing anyone to contribute to the project.

Zoho (a saas applications provider) has released their long awaited integration between their Mail and CRM products. Users have been requesting this feature via the Zoho forums for months (us included).

The integration allows users to send and receive all email without leaving Zoho CRM, it also includes a threaded view of all email conversations linked to the contact. The integration adds an email tab within CRM, meaning that users don't need to leave CRM to manage any of their email. Another interesting aspect of the announcement is that Zoho has enabled integration with any third party email system that supports POP, such as Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Google is playing nice with other tools that they know that business owners are already using...smart.

For Rype, this is fantastic! We are already Zoho CRM and Zoho Mail users, so it means that we can now easily keep track of all email conversations without the ugly copy/paste ritual. As a result it will increase the quality of our communications as the entire Rype team will be able to easily see a threaded view of all previous email conversations.

Congratulations Zoho on a major milestone!