Especially when it comes to GPS-equipped devices, the lines between portables and embedded devices gets blurry; mapping technology is available both as a stand-alone handheld, or as a technology feature integrated with your automobile’s navigation system. Furthermore, we are beginning to see wirelessly enhanced appliances—ranging from networked refrigerators to microwave ovens and washing machines that have wireless capabilities embedded. Surely, we are just beginning to see the many uses of wireless technologies at the device level. Last, there are other embedded devices that users rarely interact with, such as wireless payment gateways that are built into vending machines and transmit inventory and operations data to the machine’s owner or operator.

What are some of the strategic courses of action device manufacturers have at their disposal? First, manufacturers must focus on making their appliances easier to use while adding features and functionality that further drive adoption. Especially in the United States, wireless devices have not yet reached mass-market status which is partially due to the incompatibility of competing carrier network technologies that, for example, until very recently prevented users of one network from sending short messages to subscribers of another. Another reason for the slow adoption of data services include confusing rate plans, some of which offer a flat billing per month, whereas others charge by the megabyte of data transferred. How is the average consumer to know how large—in kilobytes, mind you—a text file or a digital photo is? As long as consumers have to evaluate a multitude of competing billing plans for voice, and now also for data services, confusion will curb uptake.

Taken From : Enterprise Guide to Gaining Business Value from Mobile Technologies

Filed under: Generate Money

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