Yell is introducing an activity-based working model to support the daily operations of its 700 strong UK team of on-the-road consultants. The move will see Yell end use of its 18 satellite sales offices throughout the UK and instead use Regus’ network of 140 strong UK business centres. The net annual saving to Yell is about £1.5 million.

 The innovation reflects the changing work styles of Yell’s regional field sales teams, resulting in their less regular need for office premises to work from. Driven in part by continual developments in technology over the last 12 to 18 months, Yell’s sales teams have increasingly been undertaking many traditional office based activities online, on-the-move, with the office network mainly used for team meetings. 



Little green Androids seem to be nibbling away at Apple’s IPhone operating system iOS. In June Google’s Android increased its market share among smartphone operating systems by 1.3 to a total of 21% of the North American market -- well ahead of BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion with 10% but still a distant second to Apple's 58% share, according to a new survey by Web research firm Quantcast.

Although Apple’siPhone $ had an extremely good start, selling last month an industry record of 1.7m units in the first three days of availability,the new garget has now run into difficulties. There seems to be a growing backlash over poor iPhone 4 reception after Apple blocked links on its user-support pages to a negative review by an influential US consumer watchdog. The US magazine Consumer Reports published an online review on Monday in which it stated that after tests it had found  that touching the lower left corner “can significantly degrade” the signal, causing dropped calls.

The UK’s Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) revealed in its latest IPA/BDO Bellwether survey published today (12th July 2010) that marketing budgets were revised down in Q2 amid uncertainty regarding the economic outlook, with around 20% of companies reporting a downward revision against 15% that reported an increase. Business confidence has also dipped with positive sentiment the lowest for a year. However the rate of budget trimming was much slower than at the height of the downturn. (Source: IPA) 

It was a close call but the Chinese government has renewed Google’s licence to operate in the country. This means that China seems to have accepted Google’s compromise solution over Internet censorship. About two weeks ago, Google offered to stop the automatic redirection of searches from mainland China to an uncensored site in Hong Kong and replace it by a static “landing page” for Chinese users, where they are offered the option of clicking on a link to the uncensored Hong Kong site. This does not really meet Chinese wishes, but China was probably unwilling to crate a conflict with the US over the issue.

The award-winning mobile application adaffix (www.adaffix.com <http://www.adaffix.com <http://www.adaffix.com/> > ) announced its launch in the US market. adaffix enriches the call experience by adding relevant content to calls in real-time. The innovative application instantly suggests businesses nearby if the user cannot reach a business on the phone. It also automatically displays the caller name if the caller is not in the user’s contacts list. adaffix accesses the necessary data to deliver such information through a real-time search in cooperation with Yellowbook (www.yellowbook.com) in the US.
 

SEAT PG and Sky Italia have announced a strategic agreement aimed at making the communications capabilities of national television advertising available to small and medium-sized Italian companies, and exploiting the potential of SKY’s football programming as an extremely effective tool for local advertising. The deal will allow SMEs to advertise during Serie B football matches in Italy in the season 2010/2011.

To avoid censorship issue in China and other problems, Google has redirected queries from the Chinese mainland to its Hong Kong site since March. But now, Google’s licence to operate in China at all is up for renewal and in a last-ditch attempt at compromise, Google has now created a “landing page” on Google.cn which offers visitors an optional link to the Hong Kong site instead of automatically redirecting Chinese users there. But Chinese regulators remained silent on whether this would be sufficient to remain in China.

Eniro has signed an agreement to divest its holding in Suomi24 Oy (S24) to Aller Media Oy and receives a total consideration of EUR 5.6m. Suomi24 is Finland’s largest social media, and has been a joint venture between Eniro Finland AB and Aller Media Oy since May 2008.