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Online competition between SMEs is hotting up, it has been revealed.

Research conducted by Cranfield School of Management suggests that the internet has bestowed one great advantage - it is now easier to enter the marketplace.

However, this means that competition is now more rigorous than before, with 46 per cent of SME owners saying that running a business is more complicated as a result.

Having said this, heightened competition means that SMEs are now more adept than ever.

“There is no question that the internet has enhanced the performance of SMEs,” commented Professor Andrew Burke, head of the Cranfield School of Management.

“The sting in the tail is that the uptake in internet use by SMEs has been so dramatic that most now share these same benefits and so few can garner a competitive advantage as a result.”

Foreign as well as domestic competition is to blame, with 62 per cent of the 422 SMEs polled saying that competition from foreign traders had increased.

According to consumer comparison website uSwitch, prices for broadband in the UK have fallen 36 per cent in the past four years while average speeds have risen from 0.5Mbps to 8Mbps.

The experts at uSwitch say no one should have to pay more than £20 per month for standalone broadband, yet nearly five million consumers are still on old contracts a cost of £163 million per year.

The report showed Orange as the having the most expensive broadband for the past five years, while Virgin Media had the fastest services and has just announced it will offer 50Mbps connections next year.

Steve Weller, head of communications services at uSwitch, recommended that anyone without a contract should take advantage of the low prices as soon as possible in the new year.

“We predict that prices will stabilise,” he said, “but customers will be offered more for their money as ISPs continue to increase
speeds.”

Since I got my Nokia N95 8GB back in December 2007, I have been using the Nokia PC Phone service that gives you a possibility to use your mobile phone with your Web Browser.

You can call, text and manage contacts from your phone. I personally have been using it to manage my contacts and occasional texts.

While reading my texts I have been really annoyed by the way text messages were displayed due to a bug so I decided to report it with a fix. So when January came the development team has nominated me as the contributor of the month. Thanks guys, and also thanks for the Prize: Nokia USB Charger CA-100. I have been meaning to get one of them to stop caring an AC Charger.

Here is my wish list for the Nokia PC Phone service before the go live:

Count of Messages, Calls, Contacts: Display total count of records as per display. This can be a very easily displayed on the footer. This will create a better user experience, as it informs the user of their interaction and lack of interactions in some case. Think about the time when you select contacts to send text to, it would be good to know how many contacts you has selected. This would give and idea of how much its going to cost you (if you do not have pre-paid or free text service).

Show all/Clear search button for Contacts: At the moment when you search for someone the contact list filters out the records, but when you clear the search field it takes a bit longer for rest of the entries to load up. Either speed up the response or have a manual button to trigger action to load all entries faster.

Option to permanently turn off Highlight recognised phone numbers on web pages: Nokia PC Phone come with Highlight recognised phone numbers enabled by default. When you turn off the option it does not maintain at the moment. I dont think this option should be forced on those who do not want, enable it by default but let peole turn it off. The workaround that I have found is to change the Firefox Config via about:config and changing the value for: extensions.pcphone.recognize-phone-numbers to false.

Hopefully the development team would agree (or they may disagree) that these features would increase the user experience and further enhance their product. I’ll update this entry as I find more features that I think would be helpful for everyone.