Apple Scores Big Win Against Samsung: Judge Stops U.S. Sales of Galaxy Tablet

Samsung and Apple have been embroiled in a legal battle over what Apple refers to as Samsung’s “blatant copying” of the iPad experience.  Today, a judge ruled that Samsung cannot sell the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in the United States.

This article details the big blow to Samsung – Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California wrote that “Although Samsung has a right to compete, it does not have a right to compete unfairly, by flooding the market with infringing products.”

It’s also worth noting that Apple just secured US patent protection for a number of the finger gestures – swiping in the direction you are paging, pinch, and grab – which are at the cornerstone of the table user experience.  This will hinder development of Android-based tablets as long as Apple’s deep pockets can keep knocking competitors down in court.

What’s it mean for the business world?  It’s no secret that Apple and the iPad are the frontrunners in the global tablet marketplace, expected to expand to 120 million units this year.  Businesses need to develop and implement solutions that will be around for the long haul.  Apple’s got the best tablet, the best OS, and the best user experience right now.  Challengers will keep appearing, but Goliath has won another round.

This is why when Ai2 was developing our order app, we chose iOS first.  We’re not anti-Android and we can’t wait to see the Surface tablet from Microsoft, but the iPad had to come first, and a lot of America’s top wholesalers agree with us.

The Difference Between Our iPad Sales App and Others

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There are a lot of sales apps out there, covering everything from ordering to CRM to presentations.  To differentiate ourselves with Ai2′s ProSel for iPad, we decided to go “all the way,” that is, to integrate tightly with a company’s ERP/back office solution.  A lot of apps make you retrieve orders in their format from their web portal, or they deliver you an Excel spreadsheet that you need to import to your current system. We see this as double work – your sales rep should hit “send” in the field and the orders should appear in the warehouse, ready to pick.  The time savings and elimination of human intervention is the real ROI.

What’s more, your sales reps need to update fast when quantities change or there is a pricing exception.  A ten-minute update in front of a customer is awkward at best and wasteful at worst.

The last thing we’d like to point out is the fact that many apps are “hard coded,” meaning the data elements, windows, UI etc. are not configurable or flexible.  We don’t believe in putting square pegs into round holes – we want you to tell us how you’d like your information arranged.  This does take a little more work than the plug-and-play apps out there, but the result is a solution customized for your company and your industry.  That’s how ProSel will help you make a difference.

Visit ProSel.Com

Download the free version and contact us for a quick one-on-one.

Energy Bars: Driving Sales & Invigorating Profit Margins!

Reblogged from Allen Brothers Wholesale Distribution:

Click to visit the original post

Looking for a way to rejuvenate sales, morning, day, and night? Take a few minutes to read a well-written article in the industry periodical Convenience Store Decisions with insight on an ever-evolving product line in the convenience store business: Energy Bars. Previously targeted mainly to hardcore athletes, the channel has exploded to include avenues for weight loss, meal replacement, and snacking.

Read more… 53 more words

Convenience retailers - check out what's happening with the energy bar category.

Surface Tablet Announced to Compete With iPad

Surface tablet - will it work for businesses?

The late Steve Jobs and Apple had a clear influence on the way new tech products are rolled out.

Microsoft announced yesterday that their Surface tablet will arrive this fall, running the highly-anticipated Windows 8 operating system.  Pricing has yet to be announced, but this marks a clear paradigm shift for the software behemoth.  Once content to dominate the world’s operating systems, Microsoft is getting into the hardware game like never before.  

Read more of this post

Top 11 Reasons ProSel is the Best Reviewed Wholesale Order App for Sales

Why automate order entry with iPad?
ProSel is ranked in the top 100 iPad business apps in the world.  At Ai2, we’re very proud of this distinction, as the App Store boasts over 650,000 apps according to a recent count.  We got there by going deeper into what sales reps in the field really need, not just placing a “wrapper” around a thin-client, online-only, ordering portal.
ProSel is ready to handle big catalogs and large amounts of data – contact us for more information.  Every day more and more businesses are choosing ProSel for sales force automation on iPad.
After the jump, a few reasons why:

Another Convenience Store Distributor Selects ProSel for Sales Force Order Entry

Garber BrothersWelcome aboard to Garber Bros – a family-owned convenience wholesaler based in Massachusetts.  They’ve chosen ProSel for iPad sales order entry, bar code scanning and retail client ordering.  It’s a pleasure to have them!

Full press release here.

When To Select Laptop, Handheld or Tablet Sales Force Automation

When deciding to implement a sales force automation solution to improve productivity, reduce costly errors and smooth out some of the kinks in your business process, you have a lot of options, especially when it comes to computer hardware.  The hardware you select will determine which software programs are available to you.

Some organizations already have laptops in place for their salespeople, so they decide not to explore other hardware options.  Others work exclusively in the retail space – perhaps they’d prefer a handheld that can take a drop and handle a few thousand scans per day.  A third option is a tablet-based solution that can not only perform order entry, but manage content and display images, videos, multimedia, etc. to assist in sales presentations.  In most cases, you want to eliminate fat stacks of paper, hunting for fax machines, and other outdated, unproductive tasks.

Whether your reps need an order entry terminal or a virtual briefcase, the best course of action is to accurately determine all your needs, then present them to a software provider and see how the functionality matches up.

Ask yourself three questions to get started:

1. What is your sales rep’s primary function?  Order placement, prospecting, presenting new programs and services, or some combination of those?  Are they primarily hunters or farmers?

2. Is bar code scanning a must-have?

3. What content do you need to manage and how will you access it?

There’s a lot more to consider for a project like this, but the better you understand your requirements, the easier an implementation you can expect.

Visit Ai2.com and learn about your options today.

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