A new study by analytics firm Localytics found that 36.6 percent of U.S. Android devices in the third quarter offer 4G. That could set up an interesting comparison with the next iPhone if it doesn’t support 4G, though it may not affect iPhone sales. Read more »
It’s still too early to say when they Year of Mobile payments will happen. But the important lesson is that mobile payments can’t rely on payments alone to sell itself; it will take a lot of new valuable services to convince consumers and merchants. Read more »
PayPal said consumers aren’t going to wait until Black Friday to get their shopping started. They’ll begin their gift hunting the day before on Thanksgiving using a mobile device. PayPal said this couch commerce will be the first holiday shopping spike this year. Read more »
The Android smartphone juggernaut continues to gain momentum, according to Nielsen. Android smartphones account for 43 percent of all smartphones in the U.S. as of August, up from 40 percent in July. And among recent purchases, 56 percent of them have been Android devices. Read more »
The Federal Communications Commission’s controversial net neutrality rules have been officially filed with the Federal Register and will go into effect Nov. 20. But it’s expected to prompt new legal challenges from carriers who question the FCC’s legal authority to implement the rules. Read more »
Timeline is more than a design change: It’s a bigger push by Facebook to mine the opportunity in the past. Timeline means there can be a point to all of this sharing: a lasting repository that helps paint a picture of your life. Read more »
New HTC users will get a taste of expanded Dropbox cloud storage as part of a partnership between the two companies. The handset maker confirmed Thursday to Pocket-lint that it is partnering with Dropbox to offer 3 GB of free storage to users of Sense 3.5. Read more »
Google has been prodding mobile website owners to optimize their sites for mobile. Now, it’s taking a more aggressive step by announcing that it will consider whether an advertiser has a mobile optimized site when assessing ads quality for all AdWords campaigns. Read more »
Dashlane, a stealth start-up, is still a few weeks away from unveiling its product but the company announced today that it has raised $10 million. It is trying to tackle the problem of inputting information, passwords and payment data into websites from desktop and mobile devices. Read more »
Adobe is looking to be the go-to resource for gaming with updated versions of Flash Player and AIR. Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 will be 3D enabled for the first time and will offer 1,000 times faster graphics rendering performance. Read more »
TechStars announced it has raised a new $24 million fund that will allow it to up the amount of money it provides each startup to $100,000. The money will be applied to all of TechStars classes in 2012 including Boston, Boulder, New York City and Seattle. Read more »
Stitcher, the Pandora of Internet talk radio, has raised $10 million as it capitalizes on the opportunity in non-music streaming radio. The company will use the money to improve the product, enhance the platform for content providers and build out a direct ad sales force. Read more »
Card.io, a start-up that launched a mobile credit card scanning tool in June, is seeing a strong amount of developer support with 80 iOS apps using its tech to improve mobile payments and transactions. Now, the company is bringing the technology to Android. Read more »
HP has confirmed that it has started laying off members of the webOS team, a reduction that is reported to be 525 employees. It’s not surprising given HP’s decision not to build webOS devices. But it seems like another sign that the platform will not survive. Read more »
Windows Phone 7 is increasingly catching the eye of smartphone buyers but awareness is still a major hurdle. The NPD Group reported that while Android is the top choice of smartphone owners, 44 percent of current and upcoming smartphone owners are considering purchasing a WP7 device. Read more »
Location Labs has built a solid business with its location-finding and texting-while-driving prevention tools. Now, the company is taking its idea of family security one step further by launching a Facebook online monitoring tool, which will now be part of a suite of software safety tools. Read more »
Is Google Wallet ready to replace my cash, credit cards and wallet? Not really. Does it make me feel cool and futuristic? You bet! That’s the feeling I get after playing with Google Wallet ahead of the big public launch today. Read more »
Google is finally opening up its near NFC Google Wallet system today, allowing Nexus S users on Sprint to try out contactless payments through their smartphone. With only one handset that supports it, Google Wallet is just a first step in a long process. Read more »
Appcelerator has built up a community of 1.5 million developers that have used its cross-platform development tool to build more than 25,000 apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry. Now it’s looking to turn that community into a selling opportunity by launching a marketplace for software modules. Read more »
Google, whose daily deal product Google Offers is off to a slow start, appears to be in this game for the long haul with another acquisition aimed at firming up its nascent business. Google has bought up DailyDeal, a German deals provider. Read more »
Crowdtwist, a New York startup that recently graduated from TechStars’ New York class has been on a roll lining up customers like JCPenney, Live Nation and Sony Music. Now it’s announcing it has raised $6 million to expand its gamified social loyalty program. Read more »
MasterCard showed off a handful of projects Thursday that highlighted how it can leverage mobile phones to encourage shopping using a variety of technologies, from QR codes and NFC to audio signals and also motion control. The technology could be out on the market in months. Read more »
NYC SeedStart, a New York incubator program founded by NYC Seed along with a handful of VC partners, just graduated its summer class focused on media. The seven startups cover a range of topics, but a few themes emerged like crowdsourcing, commerce and content management. Read more »
955 Dreams, which started out building digital album iPad apps, is now getting into the music discovery and content creation business with a new iPhone app called Band of the Day that introduces an artist each day and comes with a lot of original exclusive content. Read more »
Research in Motion struggled through a tough quarter — with revenue, profits and shipments down as it waited for a new generation of handsets to kickstart sales. The newest BlackBerry 7 devices are selling well, but the real turnaround will hinge on QNX-based devices out next year. Read more »
PayPal, which has been a powerhouse in online payments but hasn’t really cracked the market for real-world payments of goods, is starting to show off how it can put all of its components and recent acquisitions together to form a broad tool for mobile payments. Read more »
Mobile advertising network InMobi has raised a whopping $200 million from Softbank in one of the largest investments ever in the mobile Internet market. The money is another sign of the growing momentum behind mobile advertising, which is heating up with big deals and funding. Read more »
Piictu, a New York start-up that is part of TechStars’ New York class, is launching its iPhone app out of beta. The app invites people to interact and converse completely through photos. It has less competition now that Google’s Photovine is now retiring. Read more »
New details about Google’s $12.5 billion bid for Motorola have surfaced showing that Google was eager to buy Motorola. But why? One observer believes it was because Motorola was threatening Google with a number of dire consequences to Android if Google didn’t buy up the manufacturer. Read more »
Design flash sales site Fab.com has been on a tear in its first three months, racking up 600,000 users in 12 weeks. Now the company is trying to kick-start the idea of online pop-up stores with a new series of limited-time retail shops inside of Fab.com. Read more »
Microsoft and Intel unveiled initiatives Tuesday that show how the Wintel partners are trying to separately navigate a new post-PC world. Microsoft unveiled Windows 8, which will work on ARM-based tablets and computers while Intel announced a partnership with Google to optimize its chips for Android. Read more »
Verizon Wireless has rebuilt its VCast App Store with a new interface and better search capabilities thanks to a partnership with app discovery start-up Chomp. It’s part of a larger effort to ensure that Verizon’s store is a well thought out place to safely buy apps. Read more »
Turntable.fm, the hot New York start-up, is clearing up questions about funding and a mobile app by announcing a $7 million round led by Union Square Ventures and introducing an iPhone app. The news, while not a surprise, keeps up the momentum for Turntable. Read more »
Thought you’d seen enough mobile photo apps? Well, Aviary has some different ideas. The New York City-based developer of advanced creative tools for photo, design and audio, is now bringing its web photo editing tools to mobile developers through an SDK for iPhone and Android devices. Read more »
The boom in mobile apps is opening up opportunities for mobile application development services, a market which is expected to grow to $100 billion by 2015. The latest to ride that growth is Apsalar, a mobile analytics and behavioral targeting platform that just raised $5 million. Read more »
Gowalla, like many other check-in services, has had trouble keeping pace with Foursquare. But the location startup is relaunching its service with an eye toward becoming more of a city travel guide, downplaying the role of check-ins in favor of discovery, travel and storytelling. Read more »
It’s going to be a mobile Internet world and we’ll just live in it. That’s the conclusion of IDC,which is forecasting that mobile Internet users will grow by an annual compound growth rate of 16.6 percent through 2015, when they will pass wireline PC users. Read more »
CityPockets, which organizes daily deals from about 30 sites including Groupon, Living Social and others, is now improving its mobile application to include not only a digital wallet but also a secondary market for daily deals that people can search for, buy and redeem instantly. Read more »
Badgeville is introducing Social Fabric, a technology allows a website to quickly add a host of real-time social features on their site that charts user behavior, updates users on their on-site activities and allows people to follow any piece of content or fellow users. Read more »
While the web is interactive and dynamic, e-mail reflects very little of that evolution. But Movable Ink, a New York start-up, is trying to breathe new life into e-mail marketing by making e-mails real-time and context aware, creating messages that don’t go stale. Read more »
