Coupon and Group Buying Sites Might Change Retailer Budgets, Campaigns and Channels

Shopkick Inc., which makes a smartphone app that offers shoppers rewards and discounts for entering stores, said it has attracted 750,000 users since the app made its debut in August 2010, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The growing use of, and popularity of, such group buying offers might, if it continues, rearrange retailer advertising, promotion and media spending. If the purpose of at least some advertising and promotion is to get shoppers into stores, the coupon sites are doing that.

Moreover, about 10 percent of them use the app at least once a day, said Shopkick, which has signed Target Corp., Best Buy Co., Macy's Inc. and other retailers to its service.

The retailers pay Shopkick to be included in the app and featured in special promotions. Though it declined to be specific, the high profile start-up said that each store visit by a user of its app costs a retailer "less than $1."

Mobile Apps Draw In Shoppers, Marketers - WSJ.com (subscription required)

Android Tablets Start to Take Market Share

No surprise here: as Android tablets appear in the market, Apple is going to lose some market share.

App Battle Heats Up

Whether mobile apps are as strategic as most people think, or not, there is little question more resources are going into the battle.

Mobile 'apps' to be $58 billion market

Mobile applications downloaded from online stores will be a $58 billion worldwide business by 2014, as tablet computers such as Apple's iPad stoke the surging market, Gartner predicts.

The figure marks a huge increase on the $5.2 billion spent on mobile applications in 2010, technology consultancy Gartner said, predicting there will be 17.7 billion application downloads this year, more than double the 8.2 billion in 2010.

By the end of 2014, Gartner forecasted that over 185 billion applications will have been downloaded since 2008.

Mobile 'apps' to be $58 billion market

Payment Methods Changing

Consumer use of cash and checks are declining, use of debit cards and other payment systems climbing, while use of credit cards is flat, according to Nilson Report data.

That explains, only in part, why there now is interest in mobile payments.

Information Workers Are Not Quite Ready For Desktop Videoconferencing

Forrester Research's latest survey of North American and European business technology users shows that the workforce overall has little interest in and access to desktop video.

There’s a disconnect between what vendors and executives are pushing and what information workers are looking for, says Forrester analyst T J Keitt. Right now, most of the desktop video conferencing technology is not widespread.

For example, while 33 percent of workers surveyed said their company has desktop video systems, only 15 percent said they had access to them. In addition, it’s the upper-level executives who are most interested in the technology, and who use it most.

Forty-two percent of directors use desktop video conferencing, 40 percent of vice presidents and 38 percent of owners or CEOs, according to Forrester By contrast, only seven percent of individual workers say they use the systems.

In addition, for the time being, interest among those individual workers is low. About 72 percent of workers said they didn’t want desktop video conferencing, compared with 13 percent who don’t have it but do want it. Another 13 percent use it, and while 2 percent said they have desktop video conferencing but don’t use it.

Forrester analyst T J Keitt says “Forrester’s workforce data reveals that most of the workforce doesn’t have access to and isn’t bullish on using desktop video for business purposes.”

The study surveyed more than 5,400 information workers. Fifty-six percent of businesses have deployed a room-based or desktop-based video-conferencing system, Keitt said.

Information Workers Are Not Quite Ready For Desktop Videoconferencing - Forrester Research

Is iPad Driving Netflix?

One might be tempted to note the quick rise of streaming on Netflix and assume people have suddenly decided to watch TV on their PCs, or have quickly gotten the hang of configuring "net TV" boxes.

There's some truth to those notions, but a more-obvious guess is that many of those tablet devices are now being used to watch Netflix. In that sense, Netflix could be one of the most-successful app store subscription products yet seen.

The Triple Crown