It’s been another busy week in the mobility space. One particular story hitting the papers this week that caught my eye was how major high street retailers like Sainsbury’s and Asda are focussing on mobile payments; allowing customers to ditch their wallets from next year. The centricity of the mobile device in our everyday lives has never been more apparent.
This week we take a look at the key industry announcements, along with the latest news:
- The concept of the traditional office is dead, and we’ll all soon be working from coffee shops… at least according to O2 business’ recent survey. Over a quarter of respondents said they’d work from their local coffee shop if their employer encouraged flexible working, with nearly half (46%) stating they feel more productive in this environment. O2 Business clearly has mobile enabled business efficiency front of mind, after announcing a £20m million investment this week to help small businesses go digital and build bespoke, single billed services to suit their needs.
- The Wi-Fi alliance has made hotspot roaming safer and even easier with the new Passpoint certification programme. Certified devices will be able to automatically discover and connect to networks, whilst also benefitting from WPA2 security. The programme will deliver a constant automated connection so users won’t have to constantly keep entering passwords. Such a programme will hopefully mean Wi-Fi users won’t unwittingly give up their firstborn child when logging on to public hotspots… sometimes fact really is stranger than fiction!
- Finally, it’s now official that we’ve reached the tipping point of there being more mobile devices in the world than people. Data from digital analysts GSMA Intelligence shows there are now 7.22 billion devices compared to 7.19 billion people, and many of these devices only communicate with other machines. Gadgets are multiplying at five factor rate, compared to the 1.2% annual population growth. On UK soil this is reinforced by recent research from Ofcom that shows that the number of tablet owning 5-15 year olds has increased by a fifth in the last five years to 34%. Talk about digital natives!
Let us know your thoughts on this week’s mobility news roundup. Is your company encouraging employees to work flexibly? How much of your business is done on the move and will enhanced security encourage more mobile working? Let us know by commenting below or tweeting me personally at @GrahamFranklin or Cisco at @CiscoUKI.
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