eCommerce: Speaking my language?

Andy Wood highlights the importance of Customer Relationship Management

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is now a universally accepted concept amongst marketers. According to our research it is now at a stage of market maturity where, in 2007, the proportion of the UK’s top 500 companies with a Head of CRM, comes in at approaching half (48%) up four percentage points since this survey was last conducted in 2005 (44%). And the impression that one gets from ongoing reports on the technique is that few companies have failed to implement some form of CRM initiative.

Customers have come to expect that they will be dealt with in a meaningful and personalised fashion. This expectation has meant that when companies do talk relevantly to their customers, using the information that they have collected on their profile, their preferences and most importantly their transactions, the rewards – in terms of customer retention and increasing value to the firm, are often stellar.

In the last two years, the financial services sector, in particular, has massively reduced the amount of direct mail it sends out, but has focused the budget thus freed up on making their communications more relevant and targeted in order to vastly improve response and retention rates. Our recent research proved, for the first time, the correlation between relevant communications and customer satisfaction, itself an absolute prerequisite for any customer retention and development strategy. To put things plainly, relevant communications cement customer satisfaction; and customer satisfaction encourages people to stay and spend more.

It is worth dwelling for a moment on the practicalities of implementing effective and relevant customer marketing. To do so, one has to embrace the notion of a customer “journey”, moving incrementally from low-loyal, infrequent spenders, to high-loyal frequent spenders.

The customer journey is simple in principle and execution. It is intrinsically linked to our view that more profit from customers can be driven from four actions:

• More customers
  
• Spending more
  
• Spending more often
  
• Less attrition
  

In a further strand, the CRM phenomenon is not just a private sector one. The public sector has noticed the efficiency and effectiveness of ‘joined-up’ or – otherwise put – ‘single customer view’ communications and strategies. In the public sector, the object in view is not to increase sales and profits, but rather to understand and satisfy the citizen through better, more co-ordinated delivery of public services. The phenomenon in the public sector has retained the acronym ‘CRM’, but has renamed it Citizen Relationship Management. The technique remains basically the same, but in the public sector tends to concentrates on the most needy in society – a wealth reversal compared to the types of people who are most keenly targeted in the commercial sphere.

In any case, the notion that targeted, data-based, relevant communications produce the best outcomes, is common to private and public sector alike.

GI Insight’s latest research examines the level to which the British customer or citizen feels that the most important organisations they deal with on a day-to-day basis are communicating with them. Is it relevant? Has the organisation gathered key information on them – their circumstances, tastes, preferences and, above all, transactions? Has that information been collated and analysed so that communications, strategies, offers, service propositions, and so on, are relevant and targeted to the individual? In short, is the information held on the recipient being intelligently used? We know now that, across public and private sector organisations, the effective use of information for marketing and/or customer/citizen management can reap the most extraordinary dividends, both in terms of outcomes and efficiencies.

The results were converted into an index which showed the percentage points above or below average for communications/marketing relevance. In brief, the findings are as follows:-

GI Insight research from early 2007 proved the correlation between relevant communications and customer satisfaction; and customer satisfaction is the absolute pre-requisite for improvements in customer retention and spending. This current study, which has asked consumers about the relevance and targeting of communications they receive, shows a clear disparity between database marketing standards in different industries.

The mature techniques of British Supermarkets stands head and shoulders above the other sectors studied. As an aggregated set of sectors, retailers in general are obviously getting the targeting game right more often than financial services, although the finance super-sector’s average is being dragged down by the poor performance of credit card issuers. It can be no coincidence that these findings correlate strongly with the penetration of loyalty schemes in each of these sectors, suggesting that such schemes are critical to collecting sufficient data on the customers, especially in terms of associating transactions with customers.

The poorest at personalised and relevant communications are the public sector, both at the local and national government level (-18% and –19% respectively). This finding shows that citizen relationship management, which has taken its inspiration from the groundwork of customer relationship management techniques in the private sector, still has a long way to go in effectively implementing data-based communications with the general public

Perhaps most importantly, this study reveals that an overemphasis is being placed on targeting efforts towards younger age groups, in contrast with the 45+ consumer. This is in despite of the fact that the 45-65 age band is the highest earning, and that the departure of children from the family home often massively increases disposable income and, ironically, also creates demand for capital release financial products in parental support of those departed offspring as they set up home themselves. Banks are, surprisingly worst at taking advantage of targeting this wealthy group.

Two main conclusions summarise this report’s key findings. First, it reveals which sectors need to improve their standard of customer relevance and targeting, and shows through the iconic gold-standard of the UK supermarket sector, what can be achieved. Equally, it reveals the prejudice of marketers across all sectors in over-concentrating on the younger consumer to the neglect of high-potential, wealthier, and possibly more appreciative older customers.

eCommerce: Xara Xtreme Pro review

Professional graphics software for under £150? David Bradforth takes a look

Xara Xtreme Pro is the latest development of a program that started in the early 1990's as ArtWorks - a Corel-beating application for RISC OS computers. Essentially Xara Xtreme Pro is a graphic design package, with particular strengths at producing quality vector artwork as well as Flash animation for use on web pages. Or that's how it started. Xara Xtreme Pro adds a little further on that.

For the first time, Xara Xtreme Pro supports multi-page documents. This allows for simple DTP-style layouts to be produced, of both single or double-page spreads. Producing a magazine such as the one you're reading is very much possible, and you can flow within the text any vector or bitmap images you so chose.

PANTONE spot colours are supported; so if you don't find the exact could you require within the usual CMYK range you can opt for one of those - and the end result will include the PANTONE definition for printing. (The problem with PANTONE colours is you will have to pay extra to a printer for a fifth colour out of the CMYK ranges to be printed; the advantage however is that you can print gold using this technique).

The export features of Xara Xtreme have been improved, so you can both import and export XPS and RAW format images; ensuring consistently high quality whatever your end purpose is.
When it comes to professional print output, native export in PDF/X format ensures that what you see on the final printed page is as you'd expected from your screen-based proof.

As an added freebie, Xara3D 6 has been thrown into the bundle. As a very capable program in its own right, Xara3D is a welcome addition allowing you to focus on producing attractive headings for your documents and websites before manipulating the end files.

If we were to compare Xara Xtreme Pro to Adobe Illustrator CS3, we'd probably do neither program justice. Xara Xtreme has always been the faster program to use, both in rendering speed and overall time to produce final product; the creative potential for which has been greatly extended by the addition of basic DTP functionality.

What we liked most about Xara Xtreme is still here in Xtreme Pro; and at a price that's more than justified. The trial version is available on the Xara website so that you can experience Xara Xtreme for yourself - make your own mind up. It's good though.

Available from Xara (http://www.xara.com) at $249

eCommerce: Business Accountz review

David Bradforth takes a look at a user-friendly approach to business accounts, designed from the start to be jargon-free

We can say with some confidence that producing accounts for any size of business - small, medium or large, is a time-consuming process that depends to a very large extent on the person preparing the accounts having an understanding both on the nature of the business and also on the terminology behind accounts.

With some fifteen years of development behind it, Business Accountz may be the first accounting package aimed at businesses simply intended to make that process easier.

Supplied on a single CD-ROM and suitable for use with Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, Business Accountz operates on the double-entry accountancy principle. Essentially, for everything that comes into the business there's a duplicate entry into a log elsewhere within the business accounts.

It's a nice idea in principle - very straightforward to follow and works very well if somebody spends a half hour each day entering all of the business transactions into the program.

Business Accountz has been designed for use by Sole Traders, Partnerships and Service-Based companies (so those who don't have to deal with stock). They use a principle called Rapid Data Entry meaning essentially that as your transactions are made and entered into the program the figures are reflected elsewhere giving you an instant indication of your profit, costs and so on.

For each customer account you create, an invoices/queries made against that account are reflected in a comprehensive customer history which provides a sound foundation for further discussion on developing that client relationship.

The invoice component of the program is very straightforward to use. You can customise the invoices much as you would in a desktop publishing package; adding in your own graphics for headed notepaper (or deleting the graphics alltogether so as to use pre-printed headed notepaper). It's very intuitive in use, and logically laid out.

At the core of Business Accountz are just that - accounts. You can have purchase accounts, sales accounts - in fact any type of accounts you wish; and they're unlimited. If you have divisions this allows you to trace income on a divisonal basis and to divide the income appropriately.

The business reports are fully customisable, but in their default state provide the essential information many businesses require - the state of the business at that point in time; giving a clear idea of what your cash flow situation is likely to be in a month or twos time.

The manual supplied with the package is very well written; and the tutorial videos supplied on the CD-ROM allow for no doubt when it comes to using the product itself.

It's quite admirable that the program works as well as it does across three computer platforms; and while the manual does explain the interface thoroughly there are quirks to the interface - the Mac version is not 100% Aqua, the Windows version not 100% Vista and so on.

Despite this we do have an accounts package that does what it sets out to on the tin. It provides the smaller business with the means of keeping accurate track of the state of their business without confusing them with terminology. Given that time is money, Business Accountz will pay for itself in a very short space of time.

Available from Accountz.com (http://www.accountz.com) at £69.99

Buyers & Sellers: How to get the best deals on eBay

Do you ever get frustrated when you don’t win items in an eBay auction, or perhaps find that items sell for less than you wanted? David Bradforth offers some practical advice on getting more from eBay; in the way you want.

The key thing to remember with eBay is that it’s an Internet Auction site and, as in a live auction, you have buyers looking for the best deals and sellers hoping for a bidding war to begin and hence the price of items to be driven up. There are ways for both sellers and buyers to get exactly what they want from eBay and, this month in RISC World, we’ll aim to take a look at a few of them.

There’s nothing fancy here at all – everything we’ve suggested needs no special software beyond your web browser and a little time to experiment.

Sellers
As an eBay seller, you are putting an advertisement out in the world. Just as it would in a newspaper, this advertisement needs to give a reasonably detailed account of what the product is you’re selling, what you’ll need to make use of it, any comments about the state of it and the price you’re looking for.

Should it be an auction, or fixed price? You decide

If you’re selling RISC OS related items, you’re generally selling to people who know what they’re talking about and are simply looking for a bargain.

Hence a listing that includes INTEL, SUPER CHEAP or BARGAIN in the title is likely to get less interest than one that simply explains the nature of the product you’re trying to sell. For hardware, you should state the machine model (e.g. Risc PC 700), memory (32Mb + 2Mb VRAM) and hard disc space; then add ‘+ Extras’ to add interest for the prospective purchase and make them read more of the listing.

Photographs will always help your items to sell – particularly hardware. It gives purchasers a chance to see the quality of the item before they actually place a bid on it; which will help increase the amount people are prepared to bid on high-value items. People need a chance to have some reassurance that they’re not going to end up with something that should have been junked months earlier.

eBay does state during its registration process ‘Caveat Emptor’ – let the buyer beware. Which basically means that buyers need to make sure they’re actually getting worthwhile product through eBay in general and they need to keep an eye out for worthwhile dealers who treat their customers correctly and offer responsible terms.

Buyers
For Buyers, eBay really is their market. As a buyer, when bidding on an item you should enter the maximum amount you’re prepared to bid and go no higher.

Check the specifications of any item before you buy it. If you need any

clarification about an item, email the seller before buying.

If you do come across an item that reminds you perhaps of something in your childhood, it can be difficult to resist the temptation to just buy it for the sake of childhood memories and nostalgia will often make us spend more than we should on items that perhaps do not warrant it.

Be strong; keep to your initial assessment of what it’s worth and if you lose the bid don’t worry – sooner or later the same item or similar will be back on eBay, and you may end up paying less than you would have done otherwise.

One thing you do not to be careful of on eBay is the authenticity of items; particularly with major film releases such as Star Wars III just around the corner. Interest is peaking again in Star Wars-related merchandise, to such an extent that replica light sabres from the first two films are fetching close to £1,000 on auction and have truly ridiculous buy-it-now prices.

They key term in that was replica – these are items that any fan can buy from a model shop for £50 or so at any time, and just because they were authorised by Lucasfilm it doesn’t justify the phenomenal prices being asked.

It is very much a buyers market on eBay – sellers will only sell their products for the amounts that buyers are prepared to pay; and the key to success here is to be realistic about an items value. If you’d not have paid a certain amount for the item when it was new, why pay the same for it now?

Hopes for the future
There are a number of very useful utilities to make listing items on eBay easier; but none are available for RISC OS users and the web browser support could do with being stronger. We’d like to see RISC OS equivalents of the turbo listing tools; something that can make those of us using RISC OS have the same ease as our PC-owning friends. We can but hope…

Something for the weekend... The answer to the Mac versus PC debate

South Park style characters finally answer the PC versus Mac debate

The PC versus Mac adverts have done well for Apple on TV; so it was a matter of time before somebody produced a cartoon parody of them... below we have one such parody as found on YouTube. We hope you enjoy it.

Buyers Workshop: Starfighter 3000 The Next Generation

Dafyd McFlanders takes a look at a new version of Fednet’s RISC OS classic

We’ve all seen it before. Stafighter 3000 is perhaps one of the best known games upon the RISC OS platform. Written by Tim Parry and Andrew Hutchins (who brought us Chocks Away and Stunt Racer 2000), Starfighter 3000 brings a new angle to flying games.

For the first part it’s set in space. Given that the name of the game is, after all, Starfighter that should come as no major surprise.

Secondly it’s very, very addictive and in its original form had graphics and sound that competed well with everything else available.

Looks good.. sounds good.. plays great!

Come 2008, when APDL released - through RISC World magazine - a new version of Starfighter 3000, dubbed The Next Generation.

The storyline is still the same: “The year is 3037, and peak-time TV has acquired its most successful audience participation show ever. A result of the intensified battle for advertising revenue and military hardware between the two rival broadcasting companies, Fednet and TrashTV, lucky viewers were selected from thousands of applicants to take part in the Star Fighter UEP (Ultimate Expansion Programme).

The idea was simple ... Assemble an enormous military attack force around progressively difficult strategic locations (mostly belonging to TrashTV), invite viewers to take part in the ensuing battle, and broadcast the results ...unfortunately, the battle soon escalated into a universal conflict. TrashTV quickly made a number of allies, (mainly on the promise of cheap advertising), each being a powerful military force in the galaxy.

It’s your job to eliminate the opposition, and everybody else that stands in the way of Fednet’s rightful position as the only purveyor of quality entertainment through the known universe. Destroy their buildings, Exterminate their armies, Grind them into the dust, all for points and prizes. “

What’s different is the presentation. The game has had a complete redesign from the ground up. Graphically speaking, the game would not look out of place on the Playstation, PC or Sega Saturn (being the main games consoles available at the original time of its release).

There are lucious texture-mapped object that move around the screen at a good speed; with a lack of noticable flickering; alongside a stunning stereo sound backdrop.

The in-game music is superb; setting the atmosphere very well for the action going on in-game. The map, previously 2D, is now 3D and everything you’d expect from the original game is here in a new and improved form.

Concluding
The original game, released in 1995, is starting to show its age - despite the many improvements available courtesy of Chris Bazley - and in Starfighter 3000 - the next generation it’s been given a complete makeover.

It’s difficult to be critical of this - if you have a native RISC OS machine, there is no better action game for your computer.

To locate this on eBay, look for Starfighter or RISC World. You'll find the original PC / Mac version of Starfighter from 3DO looks very similar to this; and will also be available through eBay. To buy the RISC OS version directly, call APDL on 020 8778 2659.

General: New Blogger feature helps out eBay Advisor editor

Being the editor of eBay Advisor is only a part-time occupation, but I always intended that the eBay Advisor website would be regularly updated.

The limiting factor has always been time.. I don't physically have the time to sit down and upload content to it each day; given my work for Qercus, Macworld and others. Thankfully Google have come to the rescue - you can now schedule posts in Blogger so they go live at a certain date or time.

Useful for PR news releases which cannot be released until a certain time.. very useful in my case for scheduling articles.

You'll see a sudden surge in content on our website. I do hope you enjoy it.

David Bradforth

Editor, eBay Advisor & ebayadvisormag.com

Buyers Workshop: Be wary of digital media..

McAfee Avert Labs has discovered more than 360,000 detections of a Trojan horse posing as a media file - the most significant malware outbreak in three years.

Since Friday 2nd May, McAfee has found over half a million instances of the Trojan on users' PCs. The malicious MP3 music or MPEG video files have appeared on popular file-sharing services such as Limewire and eDonkey.

McAfee has rated the threat "medium" risk, the highest risk rating given to a threat since 2005.

Craig Schmugar at McAfee said:

"This is one of the most prevalent pieces of malware in the last three years. We have never before had a threat this significant that arrives as a media file."

Cybercrooks loaded hundreds of rigged MP3 and MPEG files onto file-swapping services. The files are named differently in multiple languages and vary in size to make them look like legitimate music or video files. When the user attempts to play one of the malicious files+ a download of an application named "PLAY_MP3.exe" is triggered, serving the computer with adware. McAfee identifies the Trojan horse as "Downloader-UA.h."

Some of the sample names used by the malicious media files include "preview-t-3545425-adult.mpg" ; "preview-t-3545425-girls aloud st trinnians.mp3" and "t-3545425-lion king portugues.mpg".

McAfee Avert Labs Threat Researcher Craig Schmugar provides more details of this threat on the Avert Labs blog:
http://www.avertlabs.com/research/blog/index.php/2008/05/06/fake-mp3s-running-rampant/.

Seller's Workshop: Multilingual SEO

Many eBay listings appear in search engines - Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live all work on the same principle. Optimise your listings, for multiple languages, and you can achieve better sales. Greig Holbrook, a director of Oban Multilingual, explains

The vast majority of digital marketers in the UK are very familiar with both search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM). The growth in popularity of SEO/SEM has been quite staggering.

However the really big changes in SEO in 2007-2008 have been in the growth in internet usage and search behaviour which is happening within multilingual environments worldwide.

From Russia, through Poland and heading to China, non-English users now represent a massive three-quarters of the online population. As recently as 1997, experts predicted that if you didn’t speak English you wouldn’t be able to use the web - how wrong they were.

English SEO has become ‘clogged’ and hugely competitive in many different areas like travel and online retail. Multilingual SEO offers huge advantages to any company who can see beyond the UK, and look towards expanding their online business globally.


Internet usage/access
The number of internet users of different languages has risen dramatically. Arabic has risen by 1,575 percent in the past five years and Chinese has seen a 472 percent increase over the same period. At just 13.2 percent and 13.6 percent of the population respectively, these markets still have room to grow. This is especially apparent when we note that the UK/ US have around 70 percent penetration.

English now only represents less than a third of the language users online. This has a very significant impact on how to conduct effective search marketing globally.


Cultural Key-phrases:
Searchers are developing their own varieties of phrases and are also searching a lot more than they did.

Take, for example, the term:’ Kinder Diaper’ in German – ‘kinder’ being the word for child but ‘diaper’ being the American word for nappy. This phrase has high volumes of search but is totally unique to Germany.

In French, the use of accents is a critical factor, as is their adoption of ‘English phrases’, often misspelled, like holliday (a misspelling of the English word ‘holiday’).

Translation is not an effective SEO tool and has now been largely discounted by serious multilingual search marketers. Although obvious key-phrases like car-hire can be considered for translation, once you look beyond the obvious and most competitive phrases the variety of key-phrases is enormous between countries.

Search Engines
Local search engines in many countries continue to dominate and even grow market share. For example, in India one of the most important search providers is Rediff. Google is not the de facto solution for many countries.

In China, Baidu still dominates the market with around three-quarters of the market. In February this year, Baidu announced its launch into Japan. This illustrates that local providers of search are actively seeking to grow their audiences and are not merely at the mercy of Google.

In Russia, Yandex still continues to be the largest search engine by far.


Global Online Trends
Some of the most compelling data in the last year is shows the growing popularity of e-commerce on line throughout Europe and Asia.

Between 2006 and 2008, B2C E-commerce sales increased from $2.4- $6.4 billion in China, with a staggering 90 percent of Chinese internet users stating that they will buy online in 2008, a 40 percent increase over the past year.

At the end of 2007 China had 210 million internet users, which is a 53 percent increase from 2006; China added 73 million new internet users between 2006 and 2007. This is still only 16 percent of the population.

India saw a massive increase in online shoppers between 2006 and 2007 from 11.9 million to 19.1 million, adding a staggering 8 million online shoppers in the last year alone.

Online spend throughout Europe rose rapidly over the past two years. Some of the biggest spenders are in now in Germany. In fact, the UK now spends less online than the Germans.

In travel and tourism the French now spend more online in 2007 than the UK (5531.9-5251.8 euros respectively), with spending on online travel from Greece showing a 10 fold leap in the past two years.

In Asia, B2C online travel sales between 2006 and 2007 increased by 50 percent.

Across Asia and Europe, more people use search to both find goods and purchase online.

In 2007, three quarters of online purchasers stated they would use a search engine to look for product or service information, up from half in 2006. In fact, the only source of research higher than search engines to make purchase decisions was the news.

Over 72 percent of Chinese internet users now search daily, which is now more frequent than the Americans at 64 percent and worldwide average of 69 percent.


Social Media
Social Media has become a very hot topic in SEO circles in the past year, and many people assume that the same trends that happen in the UK are happening elsewhere. However the statistics reflect a very different picture dependent on the market you are in.

In the past year the Japanese have become the biggest blog consumers in the world. Three quarters of Japanese web users use and read blogs frequently. The country that favours blogs least is Belgium with only 12 percent of users relying on blogs for information.

With social networking sites, there are cultural differences as well. In India, for example, 69 percent of web users, use social networking sites frequently which has increased by 40 percent in the past year. In the UK, only 34 percent use social networking sites. In Germany it’s even lower at less than ten percent.


Conclusions
Huge opportunities await companies which make active steps now to own the multilingual SEO/SEM ground in countries outside the UK/US. The statistics show the demand is there. Globally SEO knowledge is still much lower than the UK which offers a competitive advantage to savvy companies.

The time to act is now. One need only look to Poland to see evidence that this opportunity will not last. One year ago there were four to five Polish companies bidding for pay-per-click on Google for ‘loans and credit’- now there are 25!

Companies which go and own the multilingual SEO ground now will have huge competitive advantage but as with anything in digital this won’t last forever.

eBay Technical: Adobe announces Open Screen Project

Adobe today announced the Open Screen Project, supported by a group of industry leaders, including ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG Electronics Inc., Marvell, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Verizon Wireless. The project is dedicated to driving rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. Also supporting the Open Screen Project are leading content providers, including BBC, MTV Networks, and NBC Universal, who want to reliably deliver rich Web and video experiences live and on-demand across a variety of devices.

The Open Screen Project is working to enable a consistent runtime environment -- taking advantage of Adobe® Flash® Player and, in the future, Adobe AIR™ -- that will remove barriers for developers and designers as they publish content and applications across desktops and devices, including phones, mobile Internet devices (MIDs), and set top boxes. The Open Screen Project will address potential technology fragmentation by enabling the runtime technology to be updated seamlessly over the air on mobile devices. The consistent runtime environment is intended to provide optimal performance across a variety of operating systems and devices, and ultimately provide the best experience to consumers.

To support this mission, and as part of Adobe’s ongoing commitment to enable Web innovation, Adobe will continue to open access to Adobe Flash technology, accelerating the deployment of content and rich Internet applications (RIAs). This work will include:

• Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
  
• Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
  
• Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
  
• Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free
  

“Adobe is spearheading the Open Screen Project with support from industry leaders who share a common vision to provide rich, interactive experiences across computers, devices and consumer electronics,” said Shantanu Narayen, chief executive officer at Adobe. “A consistent, more open platform for developers will drive rapid innovation, vastly improving the user experience.”

Adobe Flash Player is the world’s most pervasive client runtime, delivering unparalleled creative options, highly engaging user experiences, stunning audio/video playback, and universal reach. Content for Adobe Flash Player reaches over 98 percent of Internet-enabled desktops and more than a half billion handsets and mobile devices today. Adobe expects more than one billion handsets and mobile devices to ship with Adobe Flash technology by 2009. Flash technology is used to deliver vector graphics, text, interactivity and application logic, video and sound over the Internet. More than 75 percent of broadcasters who stream video on the Web use Flash technology. Adobe AIR is the next-generation RIA runtime for the desktop, supporting HTML, Ajax, Adobe Flash technology and PDF.

The digital explosion across multiple screens is raising consumers’ expectations for engaging experiences wherever and however they connect with content. Web browsing on mobile devices is becoming commonplace, but delivering a consistent rich Internet experience remains a challenge. To ensure that user expectations are fulfilled, software applications and video must work seamlessly across multiple devices and content must be easily available across those devices.

Support for Rich Web Content and Applications Everywhere
Companies supporting the Open Screen Project share Adobe’s vision that a consistent and more open platform across devices will drive rapid innovation that will ultimately be good for consumers. The participants in the Open Screen Project are leading companies in the mobile, desktop and device ecosystems that will contribute in unique ways to this project.

“Delivering a highly responsive, uncompromised Web and rich media experience to consumer devices and the digital home is a key focus for ARM and our partners,” said Warren East, CEO, ARM. “The Open Screen Project with Adobe enables ARM and our partners to optimize and deploy Flash Player and Adobe AIR across billions of ARM Powered® devices and unlocks the ability for hardware optimizations on future ARM® processors.”

“The market is transitioning from the connected home office to the multimedia enabled home,” said Ned Hooper, senior vice president, Corporate Development, Consumer and Small Business Group at Cisco. “Through our Linksys by Cisco product leadership, we can transform life’s experiences by effortlessly connecting people to their digital world at home, at work and on the move. We share a common vision with Adobe and the Open Screen Project, and expect to work together to help enable the fusion of Web, television and user-generated content delivered anywhere, at any time and to any device.”

“Consumers always want more from their devices,” said Doug Fisher, Intel Vice President and General Manager, System Software Division. “Flash Player already reaches the vast majority of Internet-connected computers, and our deep technical collaboration with Adobe will optimize Flash technology and Adobe AIR across a broad range of devices, including a version of Adobe AIR for the Mobile and Internet Linux project, moblin.org. Intel’s broad and rich hardware and software ecosystem combined with Adobe’s Open Screen Project will help us deliver a full Internet experience, whether it be in your pocket, on your lap, at the office or in your living room.”

“Users clearly want full functionality, the same look and feel, and a similar instantaneous user experience as they have on their PCs,” said Dr. Sehat Sutardja, president and chief executive officer at Marvell. “We are very excited Adobe is making this happen through the Open Screen Project by unifying the software requirements across all platforms. Marvell is contributing to the success of this effort by providing PC class computing horsepower through our advanced application processor technology that is used in many of our mobile and consumer devices.”

“As a long-standing champion of open standards, Motorola supports Adobe’s Open Screen Project and its goal of enabling a more open development experience for the ecosystem,” said Christy Wyatt, vice president, software platforms and ecosystem, Motorola. “We expect the Open Screen Project to further accelerate the use of Flash technology and innovation in mobile applications, interfaces, and platforms, allowing mobile users to experience the richness of the Web on a variety of new devices.”

“Our approach is to empower fans, Web developers and publishers to access, share and interact with our content freely across platforms,” said Mika Salmi, President, Global Digital Media, MTV Networks. “We’re embracing the Open Screen Project so that our fans can continue not only to enjoy our brands, but also build and contribute to them on every device and screen without limitation.”

“NBC Universal delivers a majority of our content in the FLV format across more than 20 streaming video players on our numerous digital properties. We’re excited about supporting this project, which will reduce barriers to Flash technology adoption on non-PC devices and help ensure NBC Universal content can be seen anywhere,” said Darren Feher, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at NBC Universal. “Clearly, devices continue to increase in importance as a means to access rich content and applications, and we are delighted to work with Adobe to deliver great experiences through these additional distribution channels.”

“As a long time strategic partner of Adobe, we are pleased to help launch the Open Screen Project and applaud Adobe’s move toward removing barriers to adoption of Flash technology in the mobile ecosystem. Nokia will continue to deploy Flash runtime technologies on our devices,” said Lee Williams, Senior Vice President, Nokia Devices Software. “Nokia has a long history of pioneering the deployment of Flash technology in the mobile market and we look forward to exploring future opportunities with Adobe AIR for devices. Today’s announcement will help spur a new generation of rich Internet experiences on mobile devices.”

“NTT DoCoMo has long been challenging the evolution of mobile services and Adobe Flash technology has been a crucial part of our success and the work of thousands of mobile developers in Japan,” said Kiyoyuki Tsujimura, Executive Vice President, Managing Director of Products & Services Division of NTT DoCoMo. “As a longtime strategic partner and innovative operator delivering Flash to millions of mobile customers, we applaud Adobe’s move as the next essential step to enable even richer and more expressive mobile experiences. We look forward to working with Adobe and the members of the Open Screen Project to deliver a consistent application runtime environment to devices everywhere.”

“Qualcomm welcomes Adobe’s Open Screen Project,” said Steve Mollenkopf, senior vice president of product management for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies. “It aligns well with our BREW mobile platform and highly-integrated chipset solutions, allowing an expanded ecosystem of developers to bring applications and services to users of a wide range of 3G mobile devices.”

“A broad range of our handsets are Flash-enabled based on our belief that an engaging and integrated mobile application and Web experience is essential to our users. Adobe’s Open Screen Project will help to further expand the use of Flash technology across the full family of Sony Ericsson mobile devices to energize communication,” said Rikko Sakaguchi, Head of Portfolio and Propositions, at Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications. “Flash technology and Adobe AIR are natural fits to Sony Ericsson’s strategy of building on the best of the Open Web Standards and will help provide new mobile experiences to millions of users around the world.”

“The Open Screen Project will make it simple for Verizon and our partners to deliver rich mobile experiences to more devices,” said Mike Lanman, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Verizon Wireless. “As a complement to our Open Developer Initiative, Adobe’s move and our ability to contribute to this initiative will further enable developers and content providers to deliver the next generation of applications using Flash technology and Adobe AIR across mobile platforms and devices worldwide.”

The implications for eBay use across devices are quite clear. With the eBay Desktop using Adobe's AIR runtime, this can in future be run across multiple platforms and devices allowing for an identical experience regardless of the lead into the website. As the technology evolves, this could - we think - see other things happening too.

For more information about the Open Screen Project, visit the website at www.adobe.com/go/openscreenproject.