UPS Talks Next Gen Driver Handheld Device

Filed under: symbol, HHP, enterprise mobility equipment, Announcements

Earlier this week, we caught a story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about UPS's plan to test and deploy the next generation handheld device that their drivers use to manage the flow of packages in pickup and delivery operations.  According to this story, this will make the 5th generation of their "DIAD" (Delivery Information Acquisition Device) handheld terminal -- this one apparently from Honeywell (the conglomerate which acquired HandHeld Products aka HHP), though previous versions have been...

The Barcode Turns 57 (And Is Still Going Strong)

Filed under: barcode, enterprise mobility equipment, HHP, intermec, symbol, zebra, Announcements

Fifty-seven years ago, on October 7, 1952, the US Patent Office issued a patent to two American inventors (Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver) for a bulls-eye shaped barcode (yes, even though their symbol was "round" - we now refer to it as the first "bar" code) and a scanning apparatus designed to interpret the bulls-eye pattern. Silver and Woodland started as grad students at the Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University), to work on a problem that was brought to...

RepairEngine® -- Perfect App for SaaS Architecture

Filed under: intermec, zebra, symbol, HHP, barcode equipment, enterprise mobility equipment, Announcements

We saw an interesting Channelweb article yesterday focused on the growing adoption by mid-size companies of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications to meet certain specific business needs and reduce their software licensing costs.  Applications like email, CRM, business intelligence, patch management, anti-virus, and spyware may readily lend themselves to the cloud computing environment because of their non-core nature and the necessity that these apps typically have to connect beyond the corporate IT...

Re-Examine Your Business Model Before Your Competitor Does

Filed under: barcode equipment maintenance, Barcode Scanner Repair, business model, flat rate repair, HHP, intermec, symbol, Announcements

There was a great article in yesterday's New York Times business section about business model innovation in the delivery of health care services. The author, Janet Rae-Dupree, did a solid job of pointing out how tired, inefficient business models employed by most physicians and general hospitals actually limit improvements in "care-quality" for patients and keep costs high. She quotes Harvard b-school professor and author of "The Innovator's Prescription", Clayton M....

Maintain Proven Symbol, Intermec, HHP Mobile Computers in Tough Business Climate

Filed under: Barcode Scanner Repair, intermec, symbol, HHP, economic crisis, Announcements

This quote from a breaking news piece on Microsoft's big layoff announcement (5000 jobs cut) in today's New York Times, but it could be from about any day over the last quarter or so:

". . . Blaming market uncertainty, Microsoft declined to issue a revenue or earnings forecast for the rest of its fiscal year.

'We are planning for economic uncertainty to continue through the remainder of the fiscal year, almost certainly leading to lower revenue and earnings for the second half relative to the previous...