Google is working on an update to Google Wallet and it may include support for the iPhone. New users who request an invite to the next version of Google Wallet are asked what phone they use: Android, iPhone or other. Read more »
Apple stole the spotlight in the third quarter with the release of its iPhone 5, Amazon pursued the tablet market aggressively with a new line of tablets, and Microsoft prepped to launch Windows 8 and the highly anticipated Surface tablet. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
With the growth of sensors and microelectronics, the potential uses of wearable-computing technologies now reach to health and fitness, gaming, fashion, disabilities and augmented reality. Most importantly, the widespread adoption of wearables will drive the form function and market for mobiles in vital ways. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
UPDATED: NFC reader and software maker ViVOtech is selling off its reader business as it restructures and focuses on software. The company, which has raised $96 million to date, may have burned through too much cash waiting for NFC payments to materialize. Read more »
MasterCard and Deutsche Telekom announced a partnership today that will bring NFC contactless payments to DT’s 93 million mobile customers in Europe. That puts more momentum behind NFC payments and potentially sets up 2013 as a big break-out year for contactless payments. Read more »
Samsung is trying to champion near field communication and is introducing new programmable NFC tags called TecTiles that work with a new mobile application on NFC-enabled Android devices. Users can program that tags to do 25 different tasks. Read more »
Hyperlocal mobile advertising is at a critical juncture: Leading analysts predict that mobile ad spending will increase by more than five times between 2011 and 2015. But what are the forces at play, and how effective are HyLoMo ads? Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Mobile payment joint venture Isis — the product of Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile — announced that Chase, CapitalOne and BarclayCard will place their credit, debit and pre-paid cards on the Isis wallet when it launches this summer. The card issuers cover 100 million card holders in the U.S. Read more »
Want to know what’s going to happen at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week? Why not ask the organizers? I got on the phone with the GSMA, and here’s what they told me to expect: connectivity in everything, NFC and, of course, LTE. Read more »
The mobile payments industry can learn a lot from Starbucks, which has seen tremendous success with its year-old payment app for iPhone and Android. But very few players can match Starbucks’ brand recognition or customer demographics, and no one should expect to replicate its success. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Foursquare has updated its Android app to include support for tap-and-go check-ins and P2P sharing using NFC. The app will now be able to read NFC tags at a location and immediately take a user to a venue page, where they can check-in. Read more »
A Nokia research project called Nokia Hello leverages wireless technology with Near Field Communications (NFC) chips to help people “speak” to each other. I figured it would be a good solution when speaking to someone in a non-native language (it is), but Nokia suggests another use. Read more »
The fourth quarter may have lacked a dominating big-event product announcement like Q3’s Facebook platform extension or Q2’s unveiling of Google+, but the NewNet world continued to buzz along. In the battle for mind share, everyone wanted to be a platform. Meanwhile, consumer and social technologies continued to gain momentum, and new vehicles for content and service discovery presented both challenges and opportunities for NewNet companies. And it is hard to ignore the overcrowded but growing world of daily deals. This quarterly report analyzes these trends and others, and it also provides a near-term outlook of trends, technologies and companies to watch in 2012. Companies mentioned in the report include Amazon, Facebook and Socialcast. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
What consumers need to understand and embrace NFC is a gateway drug. And that is not likely to be mobile payments, said Andrew Bocking, Vice President, Handheld Software Product Management at RIM. It’s more likely to be personal content sharing through NFC-enabled phones. Read more »
American Express has worked up an infographic charting the rise of mobile payments, highlighting a lot of the milestones over time. All this work in the past is now coming together to make mobile payments a mainstream technology. Read more »
NFC has been trashed by critics, who say it adds no value to consumers or is a technology in search of a need. But increasingly, we’re seeing more interesting projects and applications being built that show how NFC will be deployed outside of mobile payment situations. Read more »
Chip maker Intel has been getting some NFC religion lately as it looks to incorporate the short-distance radio technology into its chipset. The latest sign is an agreement with French NFC chip maker Inside Secure, which will provide NFC technology and products to Intel. Read more »
MasterCard and mFoundry are poised to help banks launch potentially hundreds of NFC-based mobile wallets with a new partnership that will allow banks that use mFoundry for mobile banking apps to add support for contactless PayPass payments, turning those mobile banking apps into digital wallets. Read more »
Apple and Microsoft are reportedly poised to support NFC next year in their handsets, according to a report from Digitimes. Apple’s support of NFC could be especially helpful for the nascent technology, helping expose it to a mainstream audience. 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 »
This year, much of the promise of mobile payments seems like it is finally coming together. GigaOM chose 25 mobile payments companies who are exerting the most influence in the mobile payment space, showing where it is and where it’s going. Read more »
Mobile payments — payments initiated by a phone for a transaction at a physical point of sale or online — will total over $750 billion worldwide by 2015, and many predict they will soon begin to replace a typical credit card transaction. This report analyzes and forecasts the mobile payments industry, from its current technologies to the companies implementing them and the trends we can expect in the coming months. Much of the near-term growth of mobile payments will be driven by near-field communication (NFC) technology, but QR and 2D bar codes, mobile POS systems and SMS transactions are also important platforms for companies to consider when creating business models and strategies. Meanwhile, services from the likes of MasterCard, Nokia, Amazon and Google offer examples for others to follow and clues into the future of the industry. Additional companies mentioned in this report include Research in Motion, T-Mobile, Zong and Groupon. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Carriers are struggling to address the gap between mobile data usage and revenues even as their networks approach capacity. Here’s how they can innovate to better monetize in the era of the ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The second quarter of 2011 in mobile was all about smartphones, thanks to Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS and mobile data consumption ramping up. In the tablet space, the iPad lacked any real competition, though that dominance will surely fade as more and more alternatives — from Cisco, HP and others — emerge. Elsewhere, location-based marketing finally made some headlines, and the groundwork for near-field communications looks to be finally falling into place. Additional companies in this report include Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Research In Motion. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
When Google discontinued support for QR codes in its Places product earlier this year, many saw it as an early death knell for the barcode scanning technology. But Google’s latest acquisition is evidence that the company may not be completely abandoning QR technology just yet. Read more »
Mobile payments have taken off in the last few years and are now poised to grow from $240 billion this year to $670 billion worldwide in 2015, aided by growing near field communication transactions for physical goods, according to Juniper Research. Read more »
Making wireless payments using near field communications just became a little easier for customers of Carta Worldwide, a global payment solutions provider that is the first company to integrate with MasterCard’s Mobile Over-the-Air Provisioning Service. Could NFC payments arrive sooner rather than later as a result? Read more »
Rather than scaling back on its plans for its own NFC payments network, the carrier-led Isis joint venture is ramping up and welcoming more credit card companies and banks. And that, Isis believes, will make the carrier venture even more critical to the success of NFC. Read more »
Predicting what not to expect in mobile next year is a lot easier than predicting what will happen. You can be sure, for instance, that consumers won’t pay for on-the-go TV next year any more than they have in the past, and that carriers won’t embrace ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
