Google One Pass Enables Content Micropayments

Google One Pass is a payment system that enables publishers to charge consumers for articles and other content. It offers purchase-once, view-anywhere functionality, so users can view the content they buy across all of their devices.

Google One Pass supports subscriptions, day passes, metered access, pay-per-article and multi-issue packages.

Google One Pass

RIM, Telefonica to Support Carrier Billing for BlackBerry App World

Research In Motion and Telefonica are working together to introduce "BlackBerry App World" with integrated carrier billing, on a global basis.

Carrier billing will allow Telefonica customers to purchase apps from BlackBerry App World and charge the purchases directly to their monthly bill. Customers will also be offered the flexibility of charging in-app purchases to their carrier bill which allows for the purchase of digital goods to be made without interrupting their application experience.

BlackBerry - Press Releases

YouTube The Next Netflix?

Google believes that YouTube’s future is to market premium content and streaming services to its hundreds of millions of users. Google has figured out that advertising-supported content cannot make YouTube profitable. It needs another revenue source, and subscriptions for premium content access are the likely and logical choice.

YouTube–The Next Netflix - 24/7 Wall St

Eric Schmidt: Ice Cream Will Finally Merge Android Gingerbread and Honeycomb

Today, Android smartphones run one operating system, while some tablets run a different version known as Honeycomb. If you wonder whether a common version is coming, you would likely be correct, allowing Android to build a more-integrated ecosystem that could have Android smartphones and tablets working together, sharing applications more elegantly and possibly, in some implementations, raising new issues about the "one device" a user finds most useful to carry around.

"We have OS called gingerbread for phones, we have an OS being previewed now for tablets called Honeycomb," notes Google CEO Eric Schmidt. "The two of them, you can imagine the follow up will start with an I, be named after dessert, and will combine these two.”

Eric Schmidt: Ice Cream Will Finally Merge Android Gingerbread and Honeycomb

RIM Playbook Tablet

Research in Motion goes with a seven-inch form factor for Playbook tablet.

Mobile Will be a Powerful Ad Medium, But Agencies Will Struggle With Apps

WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell predicts it will be difficult for advertising agencies and other companies to profit from apps, though mobile will become a powerful advertising medium.

Though the app market has tripled in size to $15 billion, the advertising industry overall is about a trillion dollar industry, he notes.



Asked how the ad industry can make the most of the boom in apps, he was cautious. "I think the real answer is 'with difficulty' because it's not dissimilar to what you're seeing with newspaper and periodicals."

The amounts of income are becoming more significant but are highly fragmented, he said. "You have a vast array of applications and a vast array of designs and consumer loyalty is quite fickle ... It's very volatile."

VIDEO: Sorrell on apps, mobile and social networks

What is a Facebook Phone?

Two upcoming Android devices from INQ, the Cloud Touch and Cloud Q, feature new Facebook integrations with single sign-on and easy one-touch access to popular Facebook features. The home screen features a user's "News Feed" (including your friends' updates, pictures, videos and links) and quick links to Chat, Messages, Places, notifications and more. Users also can also check in to your favorite shops and businesses with Facebook Places, right from the home screen.

HTC's ChaCha and Salsa phones feature a dedicated Facebook button that gives you one-touch access to a user's favorite Facebook functions, allowing users to update your status, upload a photo, share a news article and check in to places. Facebook Chat, Messages and your friends are also integrated, so when a user makse a phone call, the screen displays the user's friends' status updates and photos, and birthdays.

With enough customization and personalization, a multi-purpose smartphone can be transformed into a device with unique characteristics and value for users, even when built on a standard hardware platform. If you wonder how a differentiated communications experience can be built, this is one example.

A Better Mobile Experience

Google CEO Eric Schmidt Speaks at Mobile World Congress

How Telefonica Deals with Mobile Data Challenges

"White board" App for iPhone

Mobile Payments Business Models: Attackers Face Hard Choices

One way of looking at the business potential for mobile payments is to look at the volume of retail payments, the volume of credit card or debit card payments, and then estimate how much of those activity streams could shift in new ways. In the U.S. market, as compared with some others, the analysis is a bit more tricky.

For starters, the payments process is well developed and efficient. But the latest wrinkle is that the actual payments processing business associated with bank cards bearing the "Visa" and "MasterCard" labels is itself in serious danger of massive shrinkage, by reason of new banking regulations that dramatically cap fees. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodd%E2%80%93Frank_Wall_Street_Reform_and_Consumer_Protection_Act or http://www.cutimes.com/News/2011/2/Pages/DoddFrank-Regulatory-Overhaul-Likely-To-Get-Tweaked.aspx.

Deutsche Telekom CTO Ed Kozel says the business model is still in its formative stages, especially in the United States. "Nobody knows what the final version will look like; everybody is still experimenting with their business model," Kozel said. "Will it look like Visa or something else?"

So here's the big and immediate rub: in a payments ecosystem that is efficient, adding one more player either reduces the overall industry revenue, or raises costs to retail partners. On the other hand, if a new player tries to create a new system, displacing or eliminating some participants, there is the obvious problem of determined opposition from the existing players that are threatened.

The former strategy, though arguably prudent, makes it harder to add value to the new experience. The latter strategy means a protracted fight with stubborn foes already facing revenue pressure. Also, if some sort of accommodation with the existing order is the approach, then all the existing players are threatened if a rival and replacement system gets traction. That threat is most obvious for relatively restricted payments using Apple's iTunes or PayPal, for example. But there always is the "threat" that a niche process can improve to the point where it can become a viable substitute for the existing "card-based" system. especially if tightly and elegantly integrated with the mobile device.

Mobile Payments in US Mired in Fight for Control - PCWorld

RealNetworks Business Model Has Changed

Most of its business now comes as an application enabler, largely for mobile service providers.

Apple Plans Cheaper iPhones

Frictiion Between Content Owners, Apple, Again

Apple Gears Up Challenge to Kindle