- Availability on All Major Tablet & Smartphone Platforms (iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows 8.1); New BookDrop Feature Enables Customer-to-customer Marketing -

Infoteria America Corporation on February 12 announced the general availability of the company's Business App "Handbook 4" in the US market on a variety of Tablet and smartphone platforms - including iOS (iPad, iPhone), Android and Windows 8.1.

Tablet penetration and usage within the enterprise is growing at a phenomenal pace.  Several factors - such as ease-of-use, high pixel-density screens, increasing use of video, and the expanding set of options in terms of size and portability - are triggering new types of business uses - especially in the area of sales and marketing communications.  

"Well-designed business apps like Handbook 4 are helping companies harness this powerful trend," said Sachin Mithal, CEO of Infoteria America.  "In the case of Handbook 4, by empowering sales and marketing professionals with new communication, presentation, and content marketing capabilities - helping corporate marketing and sales teams reach key marketing and sales goals."

"Our customer base of more than 100,000 paid users and 500 companies worldwide confirms the high value our customers are deriving from reliable business apps," said Auri Biswas, Director of Marketing at Infoteria America.  "Business apps like Handbook are helping companies achieve specific business goals like accelerating the sales cycle, improving conversion rates, and improving customer satisfaction."

The flip side of this new power available to enterprises is the challenge of accommodating the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend i.e. employee preferences for different devices and platforms (iPads / iPhones, Android, and Windows 8.1 tablets). With the non-stop improvements and changes to these platforms, companies trying to develop in-house business apps are facing serious challenges in terms of development costs, time, and access to quality engineering and design talent.  An associated challenge is the expectation from today's departmental heads and business users of ease-of-use and productivity with minimal training or setup.  

"Handbook 4 squarely addresses these critical enterprise needs by accommodating all the major tablet & smartphone platforms." said Yoshiyuki Kitahara, CTO of Infoteria Corporation.   "Given Infoteria's core business and product strategy, we constantly monitor various platforms and deepen our knowledge of these technologies and UI / UX best practices.  We are able to add value to our customers by reinvesting that growing body of knowledge into Handbook design and development - ensuring that a variety of content published & distributed via Handbook is presented smoothly and attractively on all major devices."

The notable new enhancement in version 4 is the innovative BookDrop feature which allows impromptu sharing of Handbooks in a face-to-face setting without requiring any user account setup.  This feature helps Infoteria's customers realize the ultimate marketing goal of helping end-customers become advocates and evangelists.   Sales staff, using the Handbook App on their tablets, can not only show prospective customers attractive sales presentations and marketing collateral - but also "leave behind" some of those marketing materials on the customers'tablets & smartphones - allowing those prospects  and customers to share such materials with their friends and family.  Contemporary research indicates that this is one of the most powerful forms of marketing in terms of credibility and reach.

Other key improvements incorporated into the latest version of Handbook encompass text search, ratings & surveys, and analytics.  Plus enhancements to the enterprise-grade cloud backend that drives interoperability and fast, secure distribution.  

To help Infoteria's business customers experience the ease-of-use and power of Handbook, Infoteria America is offering a 30-day free trial (no credit card required) at https://handbookapp.net/signup/.  For more information on Handbook - its key benefits and an overview of features, please visit: http://handbookapp.net/us/

About Handbook:

Handbook is a user-friendly business app available on all major mobile platforms (iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows 8.1 tablets).  Sales and marketing professionals use the Handbook platform to create and present engaging and effective communications packages in the form of Handbooks.  A powerful cloud backend takes care of automated and nearly-instantaneous distribution of these Handbooks to specified target audience groups (such as internal sales teams or external customer groups).

In addition to the Handbook App, the Handbook platform includes a cloud-based web application called Handbook Studio.  Handbook Studio allows users to create Handbooks quickly and easily - by combining a variety of existing source materials - such as videos, images, PDFs, presentations, MS-Office documents, price lists / spreadsheets - with drag-and-drop ease from their local file system or a cloud storage service (like Google Docs or Dropbox).  

One major business advantage of Handbook is that it does not require any special IT investment other than a low monthly subscription (cancellable any time).  Plans start from as low as $6 per user per month.  Volume discounted pricing is available for enterprises with higher numbers of users.  More information on plans and pricing are available at http://handbookapp.net/us/pricing/

In terms of learning curve, both Handbook App and Handbook Studio have been designed to allow users to become productive with minimal effort and time.  Infoteria estimates 3 minutes for a Reader role (those who use the Handbook App on their tablets and smartphones to browse the distributed Handbooks); and about 15 minutes for the Editor role (those who put together the Handbooks).  

About Infoteria America Corporation and Group:

Infoteria America Corporation is the US subsidiary of Infoteria Corporation, which is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Infoteria Corporation is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol 3853.

Founded in 1998 as an innovative software product company, Infoteria went public in 2007. Infoteria's middleware product Asteria has 47% market share in Japan.  Infoteria's Handbook product has maintained market leadership in the mobile content management space in Japan for over 2 years now with over 38% market share.    

To learn more about Infoteria America, please visit: www.infoteria.com/en/