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Tag Archives: Communication

Nokia outsells both Android and iPhone

By Cheryl | Posted in Mobile, Twitter at 12 | September 29, 2010 – 12:09 pm

NokiaNokia has been getting rather a hard time of late and we think it has something to do with a couple of little products called Android and iPhone… bullies…

Here at QuadroNation we thought it was about time to become a bit of a peacemaker and look at what is really happening with a brand that still sees itself as a world leader in mobile phone industry.

There’s been a lot of talk about numbers lately with Apple claiming the iPhone ships around 80,000 a day while the Android claims to sells a staggering 200,000. A lot of people expected Nokia to fall way below this line, but it turns out this isn’t the case.

Nokia’s EVP of Markets, Niklas Savander, had the following to say at Nokia World 2010:
“We’re not going to apologise for the fact we’re not Apple or Google or Samsung, or anyone else. We’re Nokia. Our market is the world, and when it comes to our customers we know that just one device will not satisfy all of them.”

Good for you Niklas!

And he continues to back up his claims.

He added that they are now shipping around 260,000smartphones a day, which is likely to increase with the N8 model already nearing the 50 million mark.

But Niklas couldn’t get through the event without taking the occasional shot at Apple, the highlight being: “They perform, day-in, day-out… no matter how you hold them.”

Oooooo! Pass me a handbag!

With Apple just offering the single device it’s looking like a two horse race between Google’s Android and Nokia’s Smartphones if you ask me, as they both currently offer many different models.

To finish with a quote from the EVP, “Today is about three words, Nokia is back.”

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Can Bebo make a comeback?

By Cheryl | Posted in Entertainment, Internet, Twitter at 12, website | September 20, 2010 – 11:43 am

Bebo was launched in 2005 and with 34 million users and 7 billion monthly page views, it became a huge hit. The site allowed users to customise their profile by posting blogs, music, videos, photographs and questionnaires.

AOL acquired the site at its peak in 2008 for $850 million, but was soon overtaken by other sites, most notably Facebook. After interest continued to wane, AOL announced in April 2010 that it was planning to sell or shutdown Bebo, eventually selling the site to Criterion Capital Partners for an undisclosed sum (rumoured to be less than $10 million…ouch!).

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong had this to say about the deal:

“The deal will allow Bebo’s users to remain within the social platform that they know and love, while enabling a new owner to bring new possibilities and experiences to bear. Criterion Capital Partners are specialists in facilitating growth plans and turnarounds and are well placed to drive Bebo’s effort to strengthen its foothold within the highly competitive social networking arena”.

Despite over a 50% drop in unique visitors in the span of a year, CCP believe that they still have a strong user base, with the UK currently being home to their largest number of users.

Can Bebo’s luck be turned around?

Can CCP turn around a company that has a declining user base and ad revenue? You don’t see it happen often so it’s very much a hit-or-miss situation, especially as it would be in direct competition with Facebook (and their 500 million users). With details of how they plan to rejuvenate Bebo’s fortunes not yet released, people continue to wonder what they can possibly do to drive people back.

Will it work?

With social network giants such as Facebook and Twitter, I don’t fancy its chances…

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Mobile phones through the ages

By Jemma | Posted in Mobile, Twitter at 12 | September 8, 2010 – 12:04 pm

Mobile PhonesDid you know that there are currently more than six billion mobile phones in the entire world?

Mobile phones are a must these days with everyone from grandparents to young teens having one. Times have changed when it comes to phone technology, and mobiles have improved a lot since the early days.

Where did it start?

It was back in 1946 when the Swedish Police used the first mobile phone. The device ran off a car battery and worked the same way a two way radio would except via a telephone network, with the car battery lasting a measly 6 phone calls before it died.

In the early 80′s, the Motorola company brought the first actual mobile phone to the public market, it wasn’t anything fancy with just incoming and outgoing calls available. The phone reception was poor at best and had a storage capacity of just 30 numbers and a one hour battery life.

Mobiles of the 90′s were a lot smaller than original model from 1983, with advanced batteries and generally more reliable systems. By the late 90′s, there were different styles of mobiles making there way on to the market as they were gradually becoming more popular.

The year 2000 brought us the infamous Nokia 3310, this popular phone sold 126 million models and was the beginning of an amazing era of mobile phones. It came with advanced messaging, picture messaging, games, vibration feature and voice dialing.

Nowadays, there are a countless number of mobile phones available to us and the technology is incredible, with the iPhone unsurprisingly voted the current mobile of choice in 2010. This comes with most industry-standard IMAP and POP mail systems, ipod, ibooks, imovie and many more applications.

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Fact Friday – The Cost of Technology

By Jemma | Posted in Fact Friday, Mobile | September 3, 2010 – 3:31 pm

Mobile phone evolutionThe cost of technology – how digital cameras once cost consumers more than £16,000

Most people own a gadget of some kind whether it is a games console, camera or mobile phone.
In fact, statistics releases yesterday revealed that Britons spent a staggering £50.5m on gadgets during our current recession.

Purchasing items such as iPads, laptops and a Blackberry is not cheap as modern day technology prices continue to rise; especially if you want an item the moment it hits the shelf.

But has it always been this costly?

The answer is yes.

Can you believe that back in 2003 a Sony DVD player would set back the average buyer around £2,438! Just seven years on, you can pick one up in your local Argos for around just £50.

And if you think that’s bad, in 1973 when the first ever mobile came out (also known as ‘the brick’) cost a whopping £2,563!

For the avid music fan, when the MP3 player first came out in 1998 they were priced at around £250 and nowadays MP3 players are everywhere and can be had for less than a tenner.

But the biggest reduction has to be when it comes to photography.

Nearly everyone now has a digital camera and you can get a good one for a hundred pound or less. But back in 1990 the first ever digital camera was…wait for it…valued at £16,039!!!

It’s fair to say technology has moved on a lot since then and it is continuing to change and progress every day. There is always a new advert popping up on the television or at your nearest bus stop that is promoting the latest Xbox, Blackberry, mp3 player, etc.

Despite a recession, people still have money for a gadget and those working in technology always have new ideas.

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Clash of the Titans

By Cheryl | Posted in News | August 9, 2010 – 10:17 am

mobile phonesIt’s like Alien vs Preditor, Freddy vs Jason…except without the blood, guts and gore. The world of mobile phones is a tough market and there are three companies that are vying for the top spot.

The sales for the last quarter are in and they make for interesting reading…

Android sales
The Android phones have taken a huge surge in sales and are beginning to surpass the iPhone in the US market. Placing behind both the iPhone and Blackberry at the start of the year, Android has pulled itself back to become the leader of the pack.

Android sales are also popular on this side of the pond and sales have more than quadrupled in the UK during the most recent quarter and have skyrocketed from 3% at the start of the year, to 13.2% in the current quarter.

With a current handset activation rate of 200,000 per day, it looks like Android’s enormous growth will soon push it ahead of most handsets on the market.

Blackberry Sales
In Q2, US sales of Blackberry devices surpassed the iPhone by 6% but fell 5% short of Android.

When the Blackberry was first released it was aimed at business types on the go, so it came as a surprise that as each model was released, it was becoming popular with teens and young people alike.

After a small drop in sales, Blackberry seems to be selling a steady stream of devices and have a firm hold on the market place.

iPhone sales
Recent predictions about iPhone sales in the UK had 1 in 10 people using the device in 2010 and an estimate of 9.4 million total devices in 2015.

Although sales seem good in the UK, in the US it’s a slightly different matter. Sales of the iPhone have dropped in the last quarter and this has meant they have fell behind both Andriod and Blackberry in the current standings.

As we know, Apple always has a tendency to catch up on its competitors so we’ll wait until the end of the year to pass judgement.

Some facts…

Current estimate of sales in US in Q2 -
33% – Android
28% – Blackberry
22% – iPhone

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QuadroNation – Getting the word out there

By Cheryl | Posted in Design, PR, website | July 21, 2010 – 11:39 am

We’re here, we’re a leading developer of all things web, get used to it!

QuadroNation was launched this week and already we have received lots of great feedback and applause (well I was clapping…!)

Sending our media release to as many sites as possible, journalists around the country have finally given in and posted it on their blogs and websites. Below are just some of the results.

Click Liverpool

How-Do

PR Fire

The Drum

Liverpool Daily Post

Digital Point

Merseyside acme

Liverpool Vision

PR Week

Gather

If this doesn’t make you want to choose us for PR, I don’t know what will!

(Sales pitch alert)

PR is all about getting your brand noticed by the right people, whether it is in print, broadcast and online. We combine traditional PR, such as media releases and topical opinions pieces, with newer online activities such as blogs, email marketing and social networking to maximise your efforts, in the form of results that can last a lifetime.

For more information visit http://www.quadronation.com/pr/

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Twitter at 12

By Cheryl | Posted in Social networking | July 20, 2010 – 12:34 pm

Every day at 12 we will be taking to Twitter to ‘tweet’ you the latest news from IT Answers and QuadroNation. Join us for 140 characters of fun, facts, blogs, offers and everything in between.

http://twitter.com/ITweetAnswers
http://twitter.com/NR_QuadroNation

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Get social with Yammer

By Cheryl | Posted in Social networking | July 12, 2010 – 3:39 pm

Communication is extremely important within any company, so how do you keep in touch? Email is the most popular, but have you considered Instant Messaging?

Yammer is a popular instant messenger service used in a lot of businesses. It’s simple, quick and can be used on multiple platforms and devices. It also has an integrated search facility – always useful for hunting through all those past conversations if needs be!

The idea of Yammer is to communicate and share information with your colleagues. You will only receive updates from people you ‘follow’ & from groups of which you are a member.

For people looking to communicate with others outside of the company, Yammer now provides Yammer Communities, an add-on which allows you to create networks for use with external customers and partners.

Yammer CEO David Sacks says that revenue is now doubling every quarter and that the company now has 70,000 corporate clients, and 800,000+ users. Not not bad eh?

As with most things, you have the choice of paid and unpaid packages :-

Basic – FREE
Silver – $3 per user per month
Gold – $5 per user per month

I find the Basic package perfect for what I want, which is just a simple communication tool between my colleagues.

But as the saying goes, you get what you pay for…! The paid packages include other features including custom branding, data export and the very useful SharePoint integration.

Mobile devices

One of the great things about Yammer is that you can use it on most mobile devices including iPhone, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Android mobile and even send it via SMS messaging. If that’s not enough, how about updates via Twitter, email & more?!

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To tweet or not to tweet…?

By Jemma | Posted in Social networking | July 12, 2010 – 3:18 pm

Twitter continues to remain the social networking site of choice following in the footsteps of Facebook and MySpace.

But…why is it so popular?

Businesses have found a new and easy way to interact with their customers. By focusing on their target audience, its a great way for them to listen to feedback & promote products.

We know it can have a positive effect for some businesses, but how about on a personal level?

After the positive reviews I had heard, curiosity got the better of me and I became an official “Tweeter” to see what all the fuss was about…! When I signed up I found it difficult to navigate around & wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to be doing. If I’m honest, the thought of “following” people around all day does not appeal to me. Needless to say, that was the end of that experiment!

It’s hard to believe it now has more than 100 million users worldwide and 300,000 new users everyday (…obviously I am missing something!)

“We think of Twitter as not a social network, but an information network. It tells people what they care about as it is happening in the world”, said Evan Williams who is Twitter’s CEO.

This is true, it is a good way of getting the latest news fast but I feel that this is a social networking site and people still use it in the same way as Facebook.

Market Research Firm Pear Analytics analysed 2,000 tweets over a two week period in August 2009 and were separated into six different categories. One of the categories was pointless babble and 41% of the tweets fell into this, whilst News was only 6%.

I think that if the same study was done now, the statistics wouldn’t be too far off.

I must admit, there are a lot of positives that come with Twitter. People have found its a good way to promote their business on a worldwide scale and by following other people in their field of expertise, there are always plenty of resources.

Marketing is another advantage that comes with Twitter. Posting links of new blogs or news from your website will get you noticed, hopefully leading to a lot of hits for your site!.

So there are positives and negatives to Twitter but I cannot see myself using it much for personal use in the near future.

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IT Answers teams up with provider 02

By Cheryl | Posted in News | July 8, 2010 – 3:20 pm

dongleIT Answers is teaming up with the UK’s leading provider of mobile phones and broadband O2 to offer our clients and close contacts a unique Internet offer.

We have 30 state-of-the-art USB Dongles available that can be plugged into any type and brand of laptop, which will provide you with unlimited access to the web – wherever you are.

Each dongle costs just ￡15.75 a month (limited contract is 24 months) and if you book through us throughout the month of July, we can give you a discount of three months use totalling ￡47.25.

Special features include:

  • Plug and Play design – easy to install
  • Mac and PC compatible
  • USB Modem can be used abroad
  • Automatically connects to the fastest available network speed
  • HSDPA 7.2 Mbps support
  • Dual band UMTS/HSDPA support
  • Full radio diversity and embedded antenna

A recent survey revealed that ranks highest in overall customer satisfaction among both fixed and mobile broadband Internet service providers (ISPs) in the UK.

Statistics proved that the global brand performs particularly well in four of the factors driving satisfaction: performance and reliability; billing; cost of the service; and customer service/technical support. For the full report and more details please visit our website www.itanswers.com

As an IT strategic partner, we are able to offer a full range of mobile, land and internet services. If you would like further details on these, please send your contacts details to letschat@itanswers.com

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