Thursday, February 28th, 2013
Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor
There’s still time! To participate in our survey regarding international data roaming.
Here are some early results about international Wi-Fi roaming services: how valuable they might be and how they might change data usage.
Chart 1: The majority (over 60%) view International Wi-Fi Roaming as valuable.
Chart 2: Even while subscribed to an International 3G Data plan, consumers still opt for Wi-Fi as the first choice where it becomes available.
Please provide your input to our survey and you will be entered to win a new iPad.
Early results on international Wi-Fi roaming survey >>
Wednesday, February 27th, 2013
Tom Truong, Product Manager
Dear Wi-Fi,
I’m sorry I ever doubted you. Please take me back.
With undying devotion,
Tom
It all started with a little SMS.
“Tu saldo es inferior a 2eur.” I understood after a bit of a double take: I had less than 2 euros on my mobile account.
Well, I certainly felt less than content when I got this notice a few hours after buying a prepaid sim here in Barcelona. The brochure had advertised 1 cent a minute to the US, so I figured 10 euros would be enough for a couple days of text and voice calls back home.
Back I went to the cellular store and the guy there shrugged his shoulders and said something vaguely about the fact that he “only activates these for different companies and sometimes it’s more expensive…” I’m paraphrasing generously here. He wouldn’t look at the account detail to explain how I used up $10 of credit with only a few texts and a handful of quick calls, and told me to take it up with the operator. “The speak English yes!” he assured me. After 5 mins of trying to find the English option, I gave up there and went to go create an account so I could better understand the relationship with my new mobile operator.
I had a bit more luck with the operator’s web portal–they offered English right on the first page, but kept defaulting back to Spanish every time I clicked on something. There was something about a tarifa, mi tarifa, that sounded promising…oh look what I found: listado de llamadas:
So up to the point where I thought buying a local sim would be even better than Google Voice and VOIP over Wi-Fi, I didn’t realize things could get so pricey without mobile data in the picture. There was probably some kind of fine print in the prepaid terms about how they’d charge me, but I’m pretty sure my lesson was cheap compared to others.
$1 for a single SMS
$2.50 for 3 misplaced calls
You can see how $10 was a drop in the ocean when you’re roaming internationally. What led me to even go down the prepaid sim route was the thought that perhaps someone couldn’t reach me in real time as I roamed with Wi-Fi. I’ve previously mentioned the decent iPass Wi-Fi coverage here in Barcelona—the next couple days have been even better because my phones started auto-connecting on their own to networks I’d visited, including a few free ones that I manually connected to previously.
So I think Wi-Fi might have forgiven me my temporary indiscretion. Earlier today, when I took a walk near the Museum of Art, I naturally took a few photos, and guess what showed up? More iPass networks.
So check out the moment I was able to share with my friends back home. Pretty amazing, right?
Part 1 of 2 parts…
Dear Wi-Fi…[part 1 of 2] >>
Tuesday, February 26th, 2013
Tom Truong, Product Manager
Remember when I had a hard time choosing which tablet to bring with me to MWC 2013? Well Samsung just made it even harder with their just announced Galaxy Note 8”. How is it different from the recent Galaxy Note II? I got a hands-on this morning at the Samsung booth and here are my initial impressions. While the original Note had a solid “oomph” and weight for a phone, the Note 8 seems to be a bit too light for a tablet–the plasticky feel is even more pronounced with the wider bezel design. Other phone makers are going for a ‘right to the edge’ screen, so the Galaxy Note 8 feels like a bit of a step backwards in design. What do you think?
On the other hand, the software and hardware on this device are definitely improved from the original Note–the S pen finally works the way a real pen should (no lag, no need to hold the pen at a special angle) and it feels natural to the jot down notes, diagram some ideas–all very slick. Still a bit awkward is how one is supposed to use the S Pen. There are about 8 or 9 apps to showcase the S Pen–I was able to jot notes, edit photos, annotate, and share. Some of the apps are more of a novelty, and my general sense is that it feels like it should just be a single notepad app that prioritizes basic functions and lets users discover more advanced capabilities intuitively and on their own.
So how did I fare with my device selection on the first day of MWC? I decided to bring a small, yet manly, hand bag which stored my iPad Mini, Galaxy Note, some biz cards, and a portable 4000 mAh battery. I pictured myself getting to a table somewhere to take notes and write another post.
WRONG.
Mobile World Congress is a behemoth of a conference with some local news stations estimating the crowd to be about 100K people. My iPhone was great at my hotel where I had iPass Wi-Fi roaming (wasn’t subjected to the free guest access that was limited to 256Kbps and 100MB transfer), but at MWC, I had to go to specific places to get on the conference supplied Wi-Fi. This meant taking my devices in and out a lot–so I pretty much left my tablet in my bag the whole day. Both smartphones were very useful for the intermittent connectivity, and I especially liked how my Android was able to smoothly transition between the prepaid sim I bought and the Skype/Talkatone app whenever I had Wi-Fi.
In retrospect, I would have kept things super light and just brought one smartphone for the first day. With decent iPass coverage in Barcelona and Wi-Fi at the event itself, I had enough connectivity to schedule meetings, send emails, and keep in touch throughout the day.
Striking the right balance with mobile devices (Galaxy Note 8) >>
Monday, February 25th, 2013
Tom Truong, Product Manager
As the smartphone product manager at iPass, the question of which devices to take with me actually comes up on a daily basis. There are usually 7 to 8 devices that manage to find a spot in my bag, but today was going to be different. I had to pack for four jam-packed days at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and space and battery life were going to be key considerations.
The phone candidates were:
- Samsung Galaxy Nexus – a good Android device that has NFC, but how prevalent was NFC going to be in Barcelona? Also, battery life would be good for 4.5 hours and then it’d be a gorgeous desk weight.
- Apple iPhone 5 (64GB) – This is my personal device, with tons of music and room for photos. They battery life seems to be worse than previous iPhone incarnations, but could still muster about 6 hours of moderate use.
- Samsung Galaxy Note – aka the Android “phablet”. Okay, so it might look a bit ridiculous with its 5.3” screen against my ear, but I barely use it to talk anyhow. Running the latest Jellybean OS, the year-old device already feels slow, but the upside is definitely its 9+ hour battery life with normal use.
Here, I went with the iPhone 5 for the storage, battery life, and the competent picture & video capabilities. However, I couldn’t resist the possibility of the phablet device possibly being the jack of all trades for all the phone stuff as well as being an e-reader for those long trips, so the Galaxy Note found a spot too.
Now was the tough choice: which tablet to bring? Consider the options:
- Apple iPad 3rd generation – My favorite tablet for much of 2012, it was also the heaviest one. The retina display on it makes it great to use remote desktop software like LogMeIn or CloudOn to easily access all my corporate resources. They battery life wasn’t too shabby either, usually lasting about 8 hours.
- Apple iPad 2nd generation – This one has absurdly good battery life, still running over 12 hours after more than a year of battery charges. Sure, it doesn’t have the retina display, but it’s also a bit thinner and lighter than the 3rd gen. One small detail that makes the 2nd gen great is that it has twice the ram as the first gen, and it isn’t finicky about needing a high amp charger like the 3rd gen.
- Samsung Galaxy Tab 7” – If you thought holding up a 5” phablet to your head was strange, then you’ve yet to see me with my Galaxy Tab. Back in 2010, I bought this 3G-enabled Android tablet with the goal of flashing the European firmware on it so I could use it as a phone too. The fact that I still have this 3 year device around is a testament how ahead of its time it was. The sad thing about it is that I haven’t had time to upgrade the OS on it, it’s sputtering along with Froyo 2.2.
- Random thought: the older Android OSes seem to actually run faster on lesser hardware and also had better battery life with the smaller batteries they packed. Case in point: this device still lasts a whole day and evening of heavy use.
- Apple iPad Mini 8” – While this one is definitely thin and light with a 10 hour run time, I haven’t found an ideal time to pull it out over a phone or a full-sized tablet yet. Not having a retina display could be part of the reason I don’t reach for it as much. That said, it’s still a great screen and size for reading books.
- Microsoft Surface RT 10” – I love the idea of having a keyboard and kickstand built into a sleek slab. This may be the work tablet for the economy class flyers like myself. Having Microsoft Office and USB ports is a breath of fresh air in the world of mobile devices. I haven’t found it to run any longer than 6-7 hours, but it seems to be the low end of what is acceptable for battery life.
Considering all this, I decided to give the Surface RT a shot. Perhaps I could even use it as a laptop replacement. I also found room for the iPad Mini. I’m not a fan of typing on it since the keyboard takes up so much of its screen, but its size, weight, and battery life won me over.
All right, with four devices, it may not seem like I made any real decision, but for me, this is a personal best in terms of slimming down. Hey, 4 out of 8 ain’t bad. I’ll follow up with another blog entry as I push these devices to the limit during my trip to Mobile World Congress.
Which mobile devices should I bring along to Mobile World Congress? >>
Friday, February 22nd, 2013
Chris Witeck, Director Product Marketing
I recently read this article on how BYOD saved VMWare $2 Million, and a couple of things really stood out as interesting to me.
The first item that was interesting to me is that you have a large organization detailing just how much they saved with a BYOD policy. Why is that interesting? Mainly because when you talk BYOD with many people there is a general lack of consensus on how to measure savings, if any.
Often times you will hear the analysts at Gartner and Forrester warn about the hidden costs of BYOD and that organizations falsely assume that just because they push choice and management of devices to the user, that costs will go down. they also warn to be aware of hidden costs as employees start to look at how they can expense back the costs of their personal devices for work related purposes. There is also the risk of BYOD, that if employees are responsible for all costs, they will prioritize personal usage over work usage and you lose productivity gains that mobility provides, which in itself is another cost.
But with VMWare they found a solution that generated costs savings. How they did it? It’s best to read the article. However, one aspect that I want to stress is that they sat down and developed a policy around BYOD, which was the second point I found interesting. They looked at historically what groups were entitled to an IT-managed smartphone and basically came up with a model where there was three levels of smartphone management. Those entitled to an IT-managed smartphone, those entitled to expense back $250 a month for mobile-related expenses and those entitled to expense up to $70 a month. Some costs are managed by IT, some are pushed back to the departments. All based on a structure that matches need to a user’s role within the organization.
In the most recent iPass Mobile Enterprise Report we found that while 81% of organizations allow personal devices (BYOD) into the organization, a smaller amount (54%) have an actual BYOD policy. We also found that most organizations (53%) don’t compensate employees for mobility costs from a personal device.
I think as BYOD continues to evolve within most organizations we will see the VMWare approach become the norm, where organizations develop a well thought-out BYOD policy with a structure on how mobility costs are compensated. Not doing this may seem to some organizations as an easier path — just have the employee get their own device and take care of the cost. But I believe that lack of structure will cause issues when it comes to clearly communicating employee responsibility as well as discouraging productivity. If the employee pays for their own device, they are less likely to prioritize work usage over personal usage. The VMWare model is a tiered approach with different levels of responsibility that is communicated broadly where the cost burden is not placed just on the employee- and they are still demonstrating costs savings.
Is the VMWare model going to be the norm? I think so, but I think we’ll see plenty of differing but similar approaches as we get there. Now this does have implications to vendors such as iPass that sell mobility services to organizations. In this model, instead of just one buying center there may be many, as mobility decisions are pushed into the departments. But that is a wave we believed we would be facing for quite some time and we have spent quite a bit of effort to allow granular reporting down to the department level, as well as flexibility for multiple payment options within a single organization.
For more on Mobility Spending and Device Penetration, read our new Mobile Enterprise Report
BYOD Cost Savings >>
