Nokia Siemens Networks, the struggling telecommunications gear joint venture, announced it is cutting 17,000 jobs as it tries to restructure the company with a focus on mobile broadband. The layoffs will cut 23 percent of NSN’s workforce and will save the company about $1.3 billion. Read more »
Fondu, a New York start-up, is launching its mobile app on iOS today, introducing a purpose-built mobile social network designed specifically for discovering places through friends. It mixes some of Yelp’s structure with Foursquare’s tips and Twitter’s short messages. Read more »
HTML5 development tool provider appMobi is putting together a Black Friday deal for developers as it open-sources many key HTML5 technologies that it hopes should help spur the building of more mobile web apps that can compete with native apps. Read more »
Tablets still tend to be early adopter devices, but they’re quickly becoming mainstream tools. By the end of 2014, one in every three Americans or 90 million users is expected to have a tablet, according to a new estimate by eMarketer. Read more »
EBay has announced it’s buying New York startup Hunch, the recommendation engine, to help improve its recommendation services. The purchase helps eBay improve its technology base, compete better with Amazon and it might also be another asset in eBay’s X.commerce platform. Read more »
RunKeeper has raced past its original concept as a mobile app to track runs to become a health platform that ties together all manner of fitness data. Now, it’s raising $10 million to fuel its transformation to become a sort of Facebook for fitness. Read more »
Mobile shopping reward app Shopkick is realizing its full potential by tying into Visa’s payment processing network, helping close the loop on transactions and providing new incentives for users to make purchases. Users will now get rewarded not just for visiting a store but buying products. Read more »
Mobile users are increasingly getting used to buying products with their smartphones and tablets. But it’s not just smaller transactions. New studies show that users are getting comfortable with bigger purchases. The most expensive thing that respondents said they paid for on average cost $274. Read more »
Social Passport is leveraging NFC and QR codes to create a social loyalty tool that enables consumers to socially interact with merchants and retailers in the real world, helping them check in, like, follow or tweet about their experiences, sometimes in exchange for a discount. Read more »
Billy Chasen, the co-founder of Turntable.fm, talked on Thursday night about his pivot away from his barcode-scanning startup Stickybits. It was a tough decision to pull the plug on a mediocre success, but it’s worked out for him. Here are some lessons from his big restart. Read more »
PayPal began as a way to help people pay their friends easily online. Now, it’s taking the logical step of enabling Facebook users to pay their friends using a new Send Money Facebook app. Users can send free payments to each other accompanied by an e-card. Read more »
Xyologic, a mobile app search firm, has come up with what it says is the first break down of mobile advertising on Android apps, showing that Google’s AdMob is well ahead of rival ad providers. It found 89 percent of the top Android apps use AdMob. Read more »
RedLaser and ShopSavvy have been helpful in letting smartphone users compare prices and decide if the product they’re seeing in-store can be found for cheaper. Now, those apps are letting people not only find better deals but also immediately buy them right through their apps. Read more »
Evernote, the note-taking and productivity start-up, is introducing a browser extension called Evernote Clearly that offers users a way to isolate a story and present it in a clean view that strips out navigation, ads and links to other content. Read more »
Daily deal aggregator Yipit is finally available on mobile with a new iPhone app. The app provides users with a mobile version of Yipit’s My Deals feature, which personalizes deal recommendations from its base of more than 800 providers and serves up the top offers. Read more »
VeriFone is looking to become not just a seller of point-of-sale terminals but a provider of managed services for merchants, whic will need help in transitioning to new alternative payment systems like NFC. VeriFone projects half its revenue in 2015 will be from services. Read more »
Square, the mobile payment acceptance tool, is getting a lot more useful for merchants with version 2.2 for iOS and Android. It brings loyalty rewards for Square Card Case users, hardware integration with cash drawers and receipt printers and more back-end tools. Read more »
One in every two smartphones sold in the world is an Android device, according to Gartner, which said that Google’s mobile platform has doubled its share in the past year and surged to a 52.5 percent smartphone market share worldwide in the third quarter. Read more »
Boom, the mobile personal payment and banking service announced in May, is now open, bringing its low-cost mobile alternative to cash remittance services. The service, which targets unbanked workers who often send money home, is launching in the U.S., Mexico, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Haiti. Read more »
The traditional ways that retailers and merchants reach out to users and how they expect them to discover, shop and pay are getting disrupted by mobile and social. And that’s created really empowered shoppers, who are using these tools to augment and alter their buying patterns. Read more »
The Kindle Fire isn’t just getting attention from consumers. Developer interest is on the rise, making Amazon’s new device the top Android tablet developers want to code for in North America, just a few points behind where the iPad debuted, according to a new developer survey. Read more »
Crowded Room, the first location-based app from IAC, is introducing the idea of the ‘Might Go,’ a casual pre-check-in action that suggests where people might be interested in going that night, something that can create connections to friends and strangers based on shared places and interests. Read more »
Pandora went public,bit.ly/vI6vQC and Spotify successfully launched in the U.S. So which streaming music service tops them on smartphones? Try TuneIn Radio. Onavo, a mobile data management and compression service, has done some work to figure which are the most popular mobile music apps. Read more »
WhatsApp is now delivering more than 1 billion messages a day on six different mobile platforms, which it claims puts ahead of any other independent messaging apps. It’s built its success despite charging for its app, avoiding publicity and somewhat reluctantly accepting VC money. Read more »
Adam Bosworth, the founder and CTO of health start-up Keas said the key in transforming health care is not in personalized tools but in gamified systems for employees that build off competition and encouragement and help employers bring down their insurance costs. Read more »
AnchorFree, which distributes the world’s most popular consumer virtual private network, is bringing its Hotspot Shield to iOS devices in a new app that also offers data compression to help cut down people’s mobile data usage by up to half. Read more »
Mixel, a new iPad app, invites people to make really simple photo collages that can be shared easily among friends and remixed into new creations that form a sort of visual conversation. The free app tries to make art fun and casual. Read more »
China Telecom is moving ahead with plans to pursue an MVNO service in the U.S. starting next year. A China Telecom executive said the branded cellular service will start early next year and will target tourists and travelers who fly between China and the U.S. frequently. Read more »
A new ChangeWave survey of 2,600 early adopters found that 5 percent had pre-ordered or were very likely to buy a Kindle Fire. And of those consumers, 26 percent said they were planning on delaying or holding off on the purchase of an iPad. Read more »
Walmart is ramping up its mobile strategy and releasing a new iPhone app that provides new smart shopping lists, a budgeting tool and access to manufacturers coupons. It comes on the heels of Walmart’s first iPad app released late last month. Read more »
CrowdMob, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup, is taking the wraps off its business: creating a next-generation deal network that combines Tapjoy with Groupon. CrowdMob will distribute local deals via mobile gaming apps, incentivizing gamers to purchase offers using virtual currency. Read more »
AT&T is launching a new mobile app that allows its smartphone users to make international calls via VoIP. The new AT&T Call International will allow users to make calls overseas at cheap rates like 4 cents a minute to China, Germany, France and the UK. Read more »
American Express wants to have a stake in the next big digital commerce start-up and it’s establishing a new $100 million fund to make sure it doesn’t miss out. It’s another sign that 162-year-old American Express is anxious to keep evolving. Read more »
Barnes & Noble unveiled its answer to the Kindle Fire Monday with the introduction of the Nook Tablet, a more robust version of the Nook Color that will feature beefier hardware and a wider array of content options. The device wil sell for $249 starting next week. Read more »
Own, a Detroit-based startup, is building its own tablet-based point-of-sale technology that enables merchants to tie all of their payments, analytics, social media and deals into one experience. It just announced $1.2 million in seed funding and is moving its headquarters to San Francisco. Read more »
Badgeville has been synonymous with gamification, the idea of incorporating game mechanics to motivate business employees and consumers to do specific tasks. But the company says it’s not stopping with gamification. It wants to shape behavior through game mechanics, private social networks and reputation. Read more »
Intuit is pushing harder into the mobile payments market by building off its existing business ties. It just struck a deal to make it easy for AT&T small business customers to get started on GoPayment, and it’s trying to leverage its QuickBooks customers to compete in mobile payments. Read more »
Urban Airship, a push notification and mobile development service provider, is enjoying a huge lift from the growth in mobile and has now pulled in $15.1 million in a Series C Round led by Salesforce.com and Verizon. It’s looking to become a one-stop mobile engagement platform. Read more »
Sprint may be poised to rescue partner 4G wholesale partner Clearwire. The third-place U.S. carrier said it was planning to offer debt in the form of 7- and 10-year notes that it will use for general purposes, including potentially funding 4G provider Clearwire. Read more »
With the high-end smartphone market filling up with a glut of choices from Apple, Motorola and Samsung, HTC introduced the Rezound on Thursday, a new media-focused LTE Android smartphone on Verizon that will be the first HTC phone to feature Beats Audio technology in the U.S. Read more »
