Napster and Ericsson announced today a global partnership to offer the first complete, fully integrated digital music service available for mobile operators. The service will carry the universally known Napster brand and combine elements of Napster�s popular PC offering and Ericsson�s personalized music service, currently utilized by more mobile operators than any other in the world. The Napster and Ericsson business model accommodates mobile operator participation in all revenue streams. The service is scheduled to go live in Europe over the next 12 months and will initially be offered to operators in select markets in Europe, Asia, Latin America and North America. The new service will support coordinated wireless and PC downloading of digital music in both subscription and a la carte models, and phone-based initiation will ensure convenient and easy music library access for both mobile and PC usage. The service scales to current handset models and networks but can also accommodate next-generation technology for newer handsets on higher-speed networks and is designed to work on mobile phones from all major manufacturers that support content protected by digital rights management.
Even the savviest CEO's desire for a digital transformation advantage has to face the global market reality -- there simply isn't enough skilled and experienced talent available to meet demand. According to the latest market study by IDC, around 60-80 percent of Asia-Pacific (AP) organizations find it "difficult" or "extremely difficult" to fill many IT roles -- including cybersecurity, software development, and data insight professionals. Major consequences of the skills shortage are increased workload on remaining digital business and IT employees, increased security risks, and loss of "hard-to-replace" critical transformation knowledge. Digital Business Talent Market Development Although big tech companies' layoffs are making headlines, they are not representative of the overall global marketplace. Ongoing difficulty to fill key practitioner vacancies is still among the top issues faced by leaders across industries. "Skills are difficul