Mobile Payments Trial Shows More Transactions, Higher Purchase Value

A mobile payments trial including more than 1,500 customers of both mobile network operator Telefonica and La Caixa bank, using Samsung S5230 NFC phones loaded with la Caixa Visa cards, with 500 participating merchants, has found that customers used the Visa cards stored on their NFC phones to carry out 30 percent more transactions, with a 23 percent increase in the average purchase value, than they had with their traditional plastic cards.

Mobile Marketing and Technology

PayPal Will Drive eBay's Business

EBay appears to believe its PayPal online-payment unit will be the firm’s biggest revenue generator in the relatively near future. For that reason, PayPal will move into the mobile payments business in a bigger way. It appears a mobile version of BillMeLater, now primarily used for online payments, will be a foundation of the effort.

Mobile Marketing and Technology

Xipwire Wants Sending Money to Be as Simple as Sending a Text Message

Xipwire believes that sending money should be as easy as sending a text message, and counts a roster of clients heavy on social causes that want to encourage people to send donations by text message. Founded in 2009, Xipwire enables businesses and organizations to offer their customers a convenient cash alternative without the need to pay high credit card fees.

Mobile Marketing and Technology

Android Market and Honeycomb

Most purchases, half of transactions to be mobile by 2015, Google says

"Two thirds of all purchases and half of transactions will occur on mobile devices by 2015," Google executives say. Consumer coupons will also transition from their current rate of 80 percent push to 80 percent opt-in four years from now, said David Shapiro, Google's director of small business marketing.

Consumers will also digest 80 percent of all visual content through digital by 2015, he added. Shapiro said 1.9 billion people globally were active on the Internet by the end of last year, while 5 billion people were mobile subscribers and more than 800 exabytes of digital information were created. Google predicted that 5 billion people will be active on the Web by 2020, while 10 billion people will be mobile subscribers, and 53 zettabytes of digital information will have been created.

“Mobile will be bigger than desktop in five years,” Shapiro added. “Mobile searches grew five times in the last two years."

Most purchases, half of transactions to be mobile by 2015: Google - Direct Marketing News

Smartphone Sales Grew 72 Percent in 2010

Worldwide mobile device sales to end users totaled 1.6 billion units in 2010, a 31.8 percent increase from 2009, according to Gartner. Smartphone sales to end users were up 72.1 percent from 2009 and accounted for 19 percent of total mobile communications device sales in 2010.

"Strong smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2010 pushed Apple and Research In Motion (RIM) up in our 2010 worldwide ranking of mobile device manufacturers to the No. 5 and No. 4 positions, respectively, displacing Sony Ericsson and Motorola,' said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. "Nokia and LG saw their market share erode in 2010 as they came under increasing pressure to refine their smartphone strategies."

Gartner Says Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users Reached 1.6 Billion Units in 2010; Smartphone Sales Grew 72 Percent in 2010

Wi-Fi Will Never Be a Replacement for Mobile Networks

One occasionally will still hear communications industry observers bemoaning or hoping for a future where Wi-Fi is both ubiquitous, affordable and interoperable, so users will not need to buy mobile services. One hears that a lot less than 10 years ago, but the sentiment still is expressed now and then.

The idea of seamless connectivity between Wi-Fi networks on the move is not even a possibility, panelists recently said at NetEvents. In large part, that is because the superficial similarities between mobile broadband networks and local Wi-Fi networks masks the fundamental difference. Mobile networks, though often used by stationary users, are intentionally designed to support session hand-off over wide areas.

Wi-Fi networks are simply wireless tails to a fixed connection. The two types of networks appear similar on the surface. They are completely different at the logical level.

Wi-Fi will never be seamless, experts claim

MasterCard Creates Payments API

The new MasterCard "Payments API," which suggests MasterCard sees creation of a developer ecosystem as crucial for its future payments efforts, will allow developers to create web and mobile applications that include the processing of credit card transactions around the world on the MasterCard network.

Developers can use the service to find their users deals and discounts. The Offers API also provides the ability to construct a more detailed search for an offer. For example, you can filter offers by category or display offers near a certain location or point on the map.

Ambitious MasterCard Includes Payments in Beta APIs

Mobile Users Increase Mobile Shopping, Mobile Payments

More mobile and Internet users are using existing online accounts to buy things, uploading credit card information to the phone to make purchases, using third-party accounts such as PayPal or Obopay to make purchases. Perhaps significantly, the percentage using their mobiles to access bank account information on the phone to make purchases from online retailers did not grow.

Yankee Group :: Research Report

Mobile Couponing Grew in 2010

Consumer use of mobile coupons has shifted radically from 2009 to 2010, say researchers at the Yankee Group. In 2009, just eight percent of respondents who expressed interest in mobile coupons using text messaging or multimedia message service had actually used a service such as Groupon.

Click on image for a larger view.

This figure more than doubled for 2010, to 19 percent of subscribers. Similarly, applications facilitating the real-time scanning of images or bar codes to receive more information or to compare prices increased in usage from five percent of consumers with an interest in mobile coupons in 2009 to 14 percent in 2010.

Yankee Group :: Research Report

Bill to Mobile Isn't That Popular with Consumers

Consumers do not seem especially anxious to make payments in a retail environment while adding those transactions to a monthly wireless bill.

This is not good news for mobile operators, which are universally struggling with how they will insert themselves into the well-established payments value chain, researchers at the Yankee Group say.

Yankee Group

Japanese and Korean Telcos Announce NFC Roaming

Japan’s biggest mobile operator, NTT DoCoMo, has agreed with Korea’s second-largest telco, KT Corp., to develop cross-border payment, ticketing and other services using standard NFC.

In the announcement, DoCoMo said that these are NFC services that the two telcos will 'launch in their respective markets of Japan and South Korea from around the end of 2012.

Data from the U.S. market is scanty, as few consumers yet have had a chance to use NFC or other mobile payment applications and services.

Researchers at the Yankee Group note that 2010 was the first year tests were run. Click on image for a larger view.

Japanese and Korean Telcos Announce NFC Roaming–Rollouts Expected

Sprint Kyocera Echo Launched

See segments two and three here: http://www.androidcentral.com/sprint-kyocera-echo-presentation

AT&T Introduces Unlimited Calling to any U.S. Mobile

AT&T has introduced unlimited mobile calling to any mobile number in America. "Unlimited Mobile to Any Mobile" is available to AT&T customers with an unlimited messaging plan and a qualifying voice plan, basically those voice plans that include unlimited messaging.

Existing customers with an unlimited messaging plan can activate "Mobile to Any Mobile" by visiting www.att.com/anymobile. The URL will be available beginning Thursday, Feb. 10, 2011.

It is likely no accident that the new offer becomes active on the day Verizon Wireless starts officially selling the Apple iPhone.

How Digital Media Might Affect Education Business

A look at how mobiles and e-book readers might affect the education business.

http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/HR2011.pdf