Telefonica Launching Mobile Wallet Service

Telefónica Digital says Sybase 365, a subsidiary of Sybase, will be provide mobile wallet services for Telefónica's  m-wallet service.


The service will feature a stored value account, payments and peer-to-peer transfers. 


The m-wallet will be capable of storing prepaid, debit, credit and loyalty cards, turning a mobile phone into a payment instrument. 


Telefonica to launch mobile wallet

European Mobile Broadband Penetration Growing: No Inflection Point, Yet

Mobile broadband penetration should reach 14 percent of the subscriber base in Western Europe, according to analysts at the Yankee Group.

So what should we expect for growth over the next decade? One might be tempted to extrapolate on a linear basis from where we are now. That is probably the one scenario that will not happen, as users change behavior and adopt both smart phones and use of mobile networks to support additional devices such as tablets.

Most technology and consumer electronics products actually are adopted in a non-linear fashion. There typically is a longish period of slow adoption, and then an inflection point where the rate of growth changes dramatically, and adoption is much faster.

Consider mobile phone adoption in the U.S. market. For a substantial period, including the years not shown on this CTIA chart, adoption was modest. But you clearly can see that the rate of adoption hit an inflection point around 1994, when the rate of adoption changed. 



That is likely to happen with mobile broadband as well. What we don't know is when the inflection point will arrive. But a good rule of thumb for most popular applications and devices is that change occurs more slowly at first, then more rapidly after the inflection point. So far, mobile broadband has not hit its inflection point. 

Where's the Greatest Danger to Bank Control of Retail Payments?

Banking entity sentiment about the danger of upstart mobile payments systems to existing dominance of banks in the credit and debit card payment business tends to fluctuate between genuine alarm and quiet confidence. The new attackers are nothing if not self confident, but displacing incumbents in any business typically is harder than it seems.

It would be entirely rational for banks to consider their responses, take stock of vulnerabilities and then move to eliminate those vulnerabilities.

PayPal is arguably the best known of challengers that are trying to displace banks in the payment business.

FIS and Paydiant are among the firms developing cloud-based solutions that can be integrated into a bank’s mobile app, creating a simple mobile payment capability that mimics what PayPal is trying to do. Mobile Wallets: NFC or Cloud?

Apple Slashes iAd Pricing

Apple is more used to winning big than losing, but sometimes it does lose. One example is Apple's iAD service, which once was envisioned as a "premium" mobile ad network featuring visually stunning ads and sold for high prices.

It doesn't appear to be working out that way. Apple is cutting the minimum amount it charges advertisers to run a campaign on its iAd mobile ad system and boosting the amount it pays mobile app developers.

Advertisers will now have to spend just $100,000 for Apple mobile campaigns running in iPhone and iPad apps, down from a previous $500,000 threshold and a significant reduction from the initial starting price of $1 million in 2010, Apple Slashes iAd Pricing

Twitter Uploads Your Entire Mobile Address Book

Twitter Inc. has acknowledged that after mobile users tap the "Find friends" feature on its smartphone app, the company downloads users' entire address book, including names, email addresses and phone numbers, and keeps the data on its servers for 18 months. The company also said it plans to update its apps to clarify that user contacts are being transmitted and stored.

The company's current privacy policy does not explicitly disclose that Twitter downloads and stores user address books. Privacy issues always are important, for any application. Just be aware of the policies. 

Android Will be 80% of Smart Phones in Africa, India and China

The Android OS will start to displace Nokia and Symbian as a dominant mobile operating system in many parts of the developing world, a new study by NPD In-Stat might suggest.


New NPD In-Stat research forecasts that low-cost Android handsets will reach a penetration rate of 80 percent of total smartphones in Africa, India, and China by 2015. 

Verizon, AT&T to Sell 4G iPad

Verizon Wireless and AT&T will sell a version of the coming iPad that runs on their newest fourth-generation Long Term Evolution wireless networks, says the Wall Street Journal.

Apple appears to be planning to announce the latest version of its tablet computer in the first week of March.

Whether other carriers will also sell the device isn't clear, but Sprint Nextel does not yet have its LTE network built, T-Mobile USA has no spectrum to do so, and Clearwire, though planning to build an LTE network, will operate only in wholesale mode, so won't be selling handsets to end users Verizon, AT&T to Sell 4G iPad

AT&T and Verizon Wireless are the only two U.S. carriers that currently sell the iPad, and are also the only two that already have operational LTE networks.

Of course both AT&T and Verizon Wireless would have argued for exclusivity, at least for a period of time, as that has proven to be a viable selling point in the mobile market. The iPads and other tablets do not absolutely require a mobile connection to work, of course, but service providers obviously hope that more consumers will choose to buy such access.