According to a leaked press release Apple iPhone users will soon be able to use their app-tastic iPhones for contactless payment. Web site NFC World spotted the release from Visa and DeviceFidelity on the MarketWatch website, which revealed that the companies have developed a protective iPhone case that will allow users to pay for goods and…
News
Google boggles with Google goggles
The newest version of mobile application Google Goggles (image recognition technology) enables automatic text translation using the phone’s camera. From translating street signs to navigating foreign menus, people can now use their Android mobile devices for easy on-the-spot translation using the technology of Google Goggles plus the engine behind Google Translate. Here’s how it works:…
News
App downloads expected to peak at seven billion by 2013
According to ABI Research’s new “Mobile Application Storefronts” report, consumers downloaded some 2.4 billion applications from the combined worldwide apps stores, and the number is set to increase until 2013 when apps will peak at just below seven billion. The bad news is that ABI expect the number downloaded from app stores to drop after…
News
Mobile handset sales to hit 1.3bn in 2010
It’s very easy to forget just how small Apple’s mobile market share actually is. The hype is so big for Apple that everything just seems to get lost in a snowstorm of words and we’re just as guilty as the next party. However when you look at charts like the one below you realise just…
News
Mobile Payments Market to Quadruple by 2014 to £418bn
The Mobile Payments Markets: Strategies & Forecasts 2010-2014 from Juniper Research predicts that the value of mobile payments for digital and physical goods, money transfers and NFC (Near Field Communications) transactions will reach almost £418bn by 2014, up from £113bn in 2010. With the top three regions for mobile payments (Far East & China, W.…
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30 billion reasons to say mobile
In a recent post on the Nielsen Wire blog the senior VP for Research and insights, Telecom Practice, Roger Entner takes a very good stab at why Google Apple etc are after the mobile marketing market. The reasons are clear to Entner, it’s the – as yet – hugely untapped revenue that exists in mobile.…
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iPad sales to top 10 million in 2010?
Encouraging analyst figures, and the crack-like desire that seems to come over people on first seeing and touching an iPad, can only mean one thing, huge sales for the iPad in 2010. The only question we’re asking is not how many millions will it sell, but will it sell in to the double million figures…
News
O2 launches two embedded laptops
O2 has has made it’s foray into the embedded laptop market with exclusive versions of the new ultra-thin Asus UL30A laptop and the Samsung N150 netbook. Customers signing up to the new deals will benefit from inclusive Wi-Fi through BT Openzone and The Cloud, an extended two year warranty, 30 days O2 Techies support, McAfee…
News
iPhone is now the number three device for Opera
Opera’s monthly State of the Mobile Web report includes an iPhone preview and in just two weeks iPhone users have moved to the third-most popular handset for Opera Mini users worldwide. The release of the iPhone also looks like it will change the top 10 list, as according to preliminary numbers, the United States may…
News
Nexus not a great seller and iPhone OS takes a dive?
New figures from AdMob’s monthly ad round up http://metrics.admob.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/AdMob-Mobile-Metrics-Mar-10.pdf show that the Google Nexus has been a bit of a damp squib when compared to any of it’s sister Android devices, accounting for just 2% of all adverts to Android devices. However at the operating system level Android is making real inroads into Apple’s lucrative…
News
What are people looking at on mobile?
Mobile Commerce have published a short white paper on mobile search snappily entitled ‘Mobile Search: What are people searching for and how do they search for it’ which shows how mobile search affects search bidding, natural mobile internet and web results and shows how mobile sites can be monetised by adding a search box and…
News
Twitter sends 1bn sms a month and buys the company sending them
Twitter has bought out its SMS partner Cloudhopper for an undisclosed amount. The start up has been working with Twitter to build Twitter’s SMS messaging service and as of Friday April 23 it is now part of the messaging community. Cloudhopper, a messaging infrastructure company has enabled Twitter to connect directly to mobile carrier networks…
News
Blockbuster launches mobile promotional scheme
Creaking video chain Blockbuster has dragged some of its hulk into the 21st century with a mobile promotional voucher. The solution produced by Commidea and Eagle Eye Solutions allows the video rental company to send text messages to its customers containing unique codes and information about its Night In promotional offer. Customers on T-Mobile can…
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Kin hell thanks to Vodafone
From early reports Microsoft’s new Kin http://www.kin.com/ phones seem to be pretty spot on with its mix of great quality cameras, a good keyboard and a touch screen, and we can’t wait to get our hands on one. Unfortunately we’re not going to be able to get them until after the autumn. Yes the autumn,…
News, Video
Twitter still growing fast
Twitter released a mountain of statistics at Chirp chirp.twitter.com, the company’s developer conference, about its business. According to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, over the past three years: Twitter has grown to a massive 105.7 million registered users (and it’s increasing by 300,000 each day, with 50% from outside of the US), with 180 million visitors…
News
Opera Mini hits a million downloads in a day
Apple said “Yes”, and iPhone users around the world said, “Yes, please”. Opera Mini was downloaded more than one million times (1,023,380 according to Apple’s download count) in its first day of availability and according to Opera, Mini is now currently the number one iPhone app in the 22 featured Apple App Stores on their…
News
9 out of 10 US adults have a mobile
New findings from Experian Simmons show that mobile phones have fast become are an essential part of everyday life in the US, with nine out of 10 U.S. adults today using at least one mobile device and 35% of mobile phone users now paying $100 a month or more for service. Fully 87% of all…
News
UK leads Europe in Smartphone race
comScore released a study of the smartphone market in Europe showing that smartphone adoption in the EU5 (U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy) has grown 32 percent versus a year ago to 51.6 million subscribers. Whilst growth can be seen across the range of monthly subscription fees, the mid to low tier is growing faster than…
News
Twitter not dead yet
Twitter has a reputation of being a broadcast medium, with just a few users twittering and everyone following, but new figures from Sysomos seem to show that those silent users are starting to get a little noisier. Sysomos looked at over a billion tweets made in the last four months and found that the number…
Comment
Orange new tarriffs yawn fest
The mobile internet has slowly been bubbling to the surface in the UK for quite some time and it’s been interesting to see how the mobile networks deal with it. Orange has ignored the Internet, and in fact did everything in their power to make sure that their mobile users had a hard time getting…