MCAPI used to only apply to PDA Survey Software, but with the introduction and proliferation of Netbooks, and powerful mobile survey packages like the ones offered by my company, now you can easily deploy complex surveys to small and large screens alike, depending on your project need.
For many outside of our industry, Market Research has always been a fuzzy concept, and let's face it, a weird choice of career.
But no longer! A major Hollywood movie (Last Chance Harvey) features a market researcher as a main character.
But what is she doing with pen and paper? What an antiquated approach! We would expect her to be using a computer assisted personal interviewing system or some kind of PDA survey software, of course. Where are these movie script writers doing their research?
Legal Note: This post in no way confirms that my wife convinced me to watch a movie which could be described as a Romance Drama.
Techneos clients have been using Entryware survey software on Windows Mobile devices for many years. The release of Entryware 6.4 on July 8th will take our Windows Mobile support to a whole new level. We have streamlined the licensing and installation process for Windows Mobile devices, improved the look-and-feel of the entire Entryware Mobile application, and added key functionality to enable diary studies on a wide range of Windows Mobile PDAs and Smartphones (including photo diaries on supported devices).
Entryware software now has four distinct mobile "engines", all of which run questionnaires from a common authoring tool, Entryware Designer, and produce data in a common structure that can be exported to SPSS, ASCII, Excel, and other formats. Today, Entryware Mobile can be deployed seamlessly to the following mobile platforms:
Smartphone and PDA surveys:
Palm OS / Garnet OS
Windows Mobile
webOS (Palm Pre)
Tablet PC, Ultra-Mobile PC and Netbook surveys:
Windows 98/XP/Vista
It is also possible to run Entryware software using emulators or "virtual machines" (available from StyleTap or Access) on Symbian devices, including many Nokia Smartphones and Internet Tablets. We have done limited testing on those platforms to date, so we do not consider them "officially supported" yet. Let us know if there is a particular Symbian device that you want to use for mobile surveys, and we'll work with you to see what is possible in this next frontier...
If you haven't checked out Entryware software recently, drop us a line to get a fresh look at the platform. You might be amazed to see the level of survey research that can be conducted using a mobile device!
I recently wrote a post about a client who asked me about Palm, Market share of mobile devices, and what device to choose for their PDA Survey Software. Hopefully that helped spur thoughts on the state of the market today, but what's in store for the devices researchers will choose for tomorrow's Mobile Research?
In September 2008, professor Randall Stross from San Jose State University did an interview with the CBC where he noted that devices are getting ever more capable.
"There's no question that Google sees the biggest opportunity for growth is mobile access to the internet. Phones are becoming ever more capable of performing the same work that we use our desktops for. There's a whole new category of phones now, beyond the smartphone, that is designed from the ground up to interact with web services"
There's no doubt in my mind that hardware is converging...
Regular laptops are on the decline, but take a look at the proliferation of Netbooks (or mini-PC's, as they are sometimes called). One client of ours just decided to go with the Dell, although some other clients are also using the Asus EEE with great success.
Netbooks don't have a touch screen, and you have to be aware that you might be buying the linux version, but you can't beat the price and battery life.
The UMPC (or ultra mobile PC) never quite took off with widespread appeal among consumers, but they can make a great survey device. Samsung, the main player in this space, is coming out with the next iteration of their popular Q1 line. Our company used the first release in the Q1 line, and I have to say, it was pretty nice. You can't get a durable touchscreen device running Windows for much less.
And of couse there is the highly anticipated Palm Pre... (read more about this in other posts on this blog).
I am personally excited to see the Touch Book by Always Innovating (even though you can't get it with Windows). I understand offering linux, but they came up with yet another operating system (Touchbook OS). Sigh.
What about Android, and LiMO (or Linux Mobile) the open-source mobile operating systems?
Choice is good for consumers, but at some point, the vast proliferation of operating systems and technology standards make it tougher for business users to decide what platform to standardize on.
The shining ray of light in the chaos of these mobile phone wars is the first hint of collaboration amongst the main competitors. It's a green initiative, but incredibly, at least 17 cell phone brands will be sharing the same universal charger by 2012. Of course Apple isn't going to cooperate, but they'll probably come up with their own way to solve the problem.
For researchers, it means you need to consider your mobile software and hardware in tandem. For more on this, Techneos has a great whitepaper I can recommend ;) - check out the last page for "10 tips"
A customer recently called me and said "we have a big MCAPI project starting this summer. We've used Palms in the past with your PDA survey software for customer satisfaction questionnaires, but Palm is losing market share. What device should we use for our mobile data collection?"
I argued that market share in the consumer world is irrelevant to what gets the job done best for intercept research.
And no, it wasn't displaced by iPhone, but by RIM.
Yes, I realize that Palm is the smallest slice in this pie, but you don't even see Android on here (yet). Also, the Palm Centro was one of the best selling devices of 2008, with sales surpassing 2 million units in July of 2008. The point is that you want to run your survey software on a device that is reliable and easy to use. It probably should have a touch screen and a keyboard, and offer good battery life. Palm and Windows Mobile both offer great devices in this regard.
I'll admit that Palm's story isn't all rosy, but they have a strong chance at re-winning some of that market share. ..and if you still don't believe me, check out this segment from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
Worldwide mobile phone penetration continues to climb at a break-neck pace, with 4.1 billion mobile subscribers at last count (that's a global penetration rate of 61.1 percent). Compare this to only 1.27 billion fixed line subscribers (18.9 percent global penetration).
The graph below shows this dramatic evolution unfold over the last 10 years:
Prevailing economic conditions will accelerate this trend, as users consolidate pricey communication services into cost-effective, all-in-one mobile devices.
And for the first time ever, half of all new connections to the internet will come from a phone in 2009.
So how does this play out in market research? Well, I'd say it might be time to take a serious look at mobile data collection if you haven't already.
Mobile market research has been around for awhile now, but with the dramatic increase in mobile phone subscribers in the last few years, it is quickly becoming a permanent and important fixture in the market research industry.
A mobile phone survey or PDA survey allows you to reach people worldwide quickly and easily, and in many cases costs less than paper surveys.
Mobile surveys might be the hottest topic in market research today -- and I've been waiting a long time to say that!
Since I developed my first survey software for Mobile Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (MCAPI) in 1991, I've been waiting for mobile research to hit the mainstream. From bleeding edge to leading edge, mobile surveys have always been viewed as an "opportunity of the future". If PDA surveys generated a bit of a wave back in the late 1990's, then Internet surveys were surely a tsunami... and now it's the marriage of mobility and high-speed wireless Internet access that is opening a whole new word of possibilities.
I had an opportunity to speak at the Mobile Research Conference in London last month. It was billed as the first ever conference dedicated to mobile research, and it was a very promising sign for this niche that Techneos has been working to fill for more than a decade. (In fact, it was at least the second such conference, as I also presented at the Association for Survey Computing conference on Mobile Computing in 2005).
While Techneos has been proving for many years that you CAN do serious research on a handheld computer, a much bigger opportunity for mobile surveys is emerging -- at long last! Ranging from photo diaries to mystery shopping to funky new ways to conduct customer satisfaction questionnaires--and lest we forget the good old face-to-face interview--surveys on mobile phones, Netbooks and other mobile devices will no doubt play a major role in the future of market research.
Hold onto your hats and join us for the ride! We're looking forward to the future that we first envisioned almost 20 years ago. Yikes, how time flies!
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Check out the hot deal on the ASUS Eee PC with Windows at $285.
can make a great survey device. Samsung, the main player in this space, is coming out with the 
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