Bizzsms’ customer Safmarine is among the few shipping companies that have a mobile application or mobile website. A recent benchmark by Seaintel Maritime of the 53 biggest shipping company shows that 87% of the large shipping companies does not have a mobile solution. Seaintel foresees an increasing market “Based on developments in other industries, it appears inevitable that the carriers’ customers will increasingly want easy mobile solutions at their disposal”.
In the article special attention is paid to Safmarine:
“As a side note, it will be interesting to see if anything changes regarding Safmarine’s mobile website and apps once their internal support and management functions are integrated into those of its sister company, Maersk Line, as a consequence of the closure of the Safmarine headquarter functions in Antwerp. As it stands now, Maersk Line‟s mobile device offering is not up to par with Safmarine’s.”
Bizzsms & Safmarine just released the new Safmarine Android application. There was already an iPhone version of the application available, and now Android is added to the wide range of web and mobile applications Safmarine offers.
The apps allows to search for sailing schedules , tracking of cargo based container or booking number , a feed to the latest Safmarine news items and the possibility to look up agency contacts. Please note that the tracking functionality has an alert option where Safmarine will push new status events directly to the device of the customer.
Bizzsms is co-founder in the LiveWall project. LiveWall is an application that allows customers to display various types of interactive media such as social media messages, movies, images, Facebook pictures, RSS feeds etc. on screens. The application can be used during events or as a narrowcasting application. The easy to use interface allows customers to set the contents of the screen by themselves.
LiveWall was founded in Juli and worked for customers like Rabobank, touroperator Gogo, Pathe cinemas and ABN Amro.
Bizzsms develops for Ikea
Bizzsms just added a new customer to its portfolio: Ikea. Together with DHL/Mailmission, Bizzsms will develop a webapplication that allows Ikea employees to manage their work clothing inventory.
This assignment is the first assignment in cooperation with DHL/Mailmission and will hopefully result in a long term relationship.
The webapplication is expected to be launched before the end of 2011.
Bizzsms contracts its first Asian customer
Bizzsms just contracted the Asian shipping company MCC Transport for the development of an iPhone application. With the application it is possible to display schedules, track containers and find agencies. The application is expected to be launched before the end of the year.
Safmarine promotion video app
The video below is a promotional video of the application Bizzsms created for Safmarine.
Interesting new development by the Dutch company Layar. Is this going to kill the QR code?
Inspiring talk on the new generation and social structures
Bizzsms launched two new mobile applications
By Eelco van de Wiel
This week Bizzsms launched two new mobile applications.
Safmarine
The iPhone app of Safmarine, a subdivision of the A.P. Moller - Maersk group, was accepted by Apple by Friday evening. Safmarine is an international shipping business offering container and break-bulk shipping services worldwide and has over 200 offices worldwide.
The application offers the following functions:
Search for Schedules: select a from/to location and display all possible sailing schedules.
Track and trace: track the current container location of a booking. Also using the hotlist the users get automatic notification upon changes.
Agencies: find the most nearby Safmarine agency or find by search term
News: the latest Safmarine news
Heyello for Android
The second application that was launched was the Heyello! application for Android. Bizzsms developed the iPhone application before for postcard company DmCards and now there is an Android version of the same application. The application allows users to send a postcard by regular mail from their Android device. Users can select a picture, add a frame and add text to personalize their postcards.
Within two business days the postcard reaches it’s destination. The Blackberry version of the application is soon to come.
Near Field Technology finally going mobile
By Eelco van de Wiel
The latest version of the Android SDK has full support for NFC functionalities. NFC means Near Field Communication and allows mobile phones to communicate to nearby objects. Chances are that if you buy a smartphone towards the end of this year, and most certainly in 2012, it will be equipped with a NFC chip. This technological advancement introduces a new era in mobile communication as it allows mobile payments, location based mobile advertising and communication with local objects to launch a URL, call a number, open a map to a location or launch an application.
The NFC chip will replace all of the cards in your wallet and is expected to be the future payment medium. Google focussed their API on mobile payments and is working with MasterCard and Citigroup on a near field communication (NFC) based mobile payments system.
Even though the technology has been around for a long time it’s only now that the large scale introduction is announced. The long delay has been a result of the economic crisis in combination with the large shifts in the operators - software - hardware powerfield. Now one of the major players, Google, included the NFC technology the technological shift finally takes place.
As happened with all previous technological developments it will take a long time for the leading design to emerge. The next period will be dominated by a power struggle among the big players in the ecommerce and payment playing field to gain the largest market share. As it took almost a decade to introduce the new PIN card in the Netherlands, it might also take as long for mobile payment to be fully supported.
The image below shows a possible solution that uses RFID:
BizzSms is a mobile marketing agency based in The Netherlands. This blog contains the latest findings on mobile marketing, online marketing, sms marketing and sms gateways. This blog is moderated by Eelco van de Wiel.
