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2008 proved to be a Year of Two Halves. In the first half, mobile handset shipments happily chugged along at ~14% YoY. In the second half, 3Q handset shipments slowed to 8% before crashing into the Red in 4Q with -10%. The underlying root cause? “Sheer fear sapped the confidence of consumers, enterprises and corporate users across the board,” says Jake Saunders, Asia-Pacific Vice-President of ABI Research. “As a result, 2008 signed out the year with 1.21 billion handsets shipped for an annual growth of 5.4%. Just a year ago we had +16%.”

The Enterprise Mobility business of Motorola, Inc. announced results of its second annual Motorola AirDefense Retail Shopping Wireless Security Survey, which shows 44 percent of the wireless devices used by retailers - such as laptops, mobile computers and barcode scanners - could be compromised. While this is a surprisingly high percentage, it is significantly lower than results from the same retail shopping survey conducted in 2007 which showed security vulnerabilities in 85 percent of wireless devices.

Merchandise export volumes of the Group of Seven countries fell 0.2% in the third quarter of 2008 compared with the previous quarter, while import volumes rose 0.4%. On a year-on-year basis, import volumes fell 1.4% in the third quarter, the first decline since the third quarter of 2006. Exports rose 1.9%, their lowest growth rate since the third quarter of 2006.

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index (LEI) for Australia declined 1.0 percent and The Conference Board Coincident Economic Index (CEI) increased 0.1 percent in November.

While Australia was one of the pioneers in biofuel production in the Asia Pacific region, the early promise has dissolved under pressure from an unfavorable tax regime and rising feedstock prices over the past two years. The production of biodiesel has been largely uneconomic during this period with high feedstock prices and unfavorable changes to the fuel tax regime. Limited uptake from major oil companies has further jeopardized market prospects over the past two years. Nonetheless, increasing concern over global warming and the political will to strengthen efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions remain strong factors fuelling optimism in the Australian biofuel markets.

Companies seeking to improve business performance in the midst of the current global economic crisis should focus on three strategic objectives in 2009, according to Accenture: create new geographic options that enable them to go to multiple markets to find what they need, be it new customers, talented workers, capital and raw materials, focus on building authentically local businesses in each of the markets they serve and build or adapt global networks to enable them to move people and information across their organizations quickly, efficiently and effectively.

Manpower Inc., a world leader in the employment services industry and strategic partner of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, released a paper titled, "The Underworked Solution: Women and the Talent Crunch." The paper calls for the increased engagement of women in the global workforce as a key component of long-term economic growth and sustainable development.

Nearly two-thirds of informed publics (62%) trust corporations less than they did a year ago, according to the 10th Edelman Trust Barometer. When respondents in the United States were asked about trust in business in general, only 38% said they trust business to do what is right - a 20% plunge since last year - and only 17% said they trust information from a company's CEO. Both are lower levels of trust than those Edelman measured in the wakes of Enron, the dot-com bust, and Sept. 11.

The public’s inclination toward innovative products was largely unaffected by the drop in consumer confidence last year, according to the 2008 IIIP Innovation Confidence Index that was expanded to cover every region of the world.