Tech pundits today are bubbling about Apple’s announcement that it will kick off its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) June 6 by unveiling its next generation software: Mac OS X Lion and iOS 5, as well as a new cloud service called iCloud which is rumored to be Apple’s cloud service for music. READ MORE
Have you ever seen an amazing photo and wondered about the moment before the image was frozen in time? A new social photo app for Apple users, currently in Beta, might just let you answer that burning question. Glmps adds a new twist to image capture and sharing: It lets users store the first five seconds of their image as video, then combines video and image into one package. They can then share the package on Facebook, Twitter and other social sites. READ MORE
First, Square revolutionized how we send and receive credit card payments; now, the mobile payments start-up based in San Francisco is looking to replace the cash register altogether. GigaOM reports that Jack Dorsey, creator of Twitter and co-founder of Square, has released his two latest creations—the Square Register for merchants, and the Square Card Holder for consumers. READ MORE
Monday through Wednesday in New York City TechCrunch is holding its Disrupt Battlefield competition in which hopeful founders and entrepreneurs submit their young, unseen start-up companies for the opportunity to try winning the $50,000 prize while launching in front of an all-star panel made up of innovators, angel investors, venture capitalists and tech influencers. Monday featured three Battlefields: Disrupting Commerce, Disrupting Location and Disrupting Search and Discovery. These start-ups made presentations in the Disrupting Search and Discovery category: READ MORE
The tech press is hailing the new Google Music service, currently in beta mode and invitation-only. The service lets users upload their music collections and then listen to them on many other devices (notably Android phones and tablets). You can even designate albums or artists to play when you’re offline. READ MORE
With the media, congress and privacy advocates circling for the kill, Apple has acted quickly to stop uploading location tracking data from mobile devices with the release of iOS 4.3.3. The LocationGate scandal began when a couple of researchers announced they had discovered iOS 4 devices were tracking their users’ locations (or at least, the cell towers and hotspots closest to them), storing that information on Apple mobile devices, and uploading it to iTunes. Lawmakers and disgruntled customers demanded to know what Apple was up to, and what it was planning to do with the data. READ MORE
Apple’s user-tracking PR debacle has dominated recent headlines (not to mention the season premiere of South Park) but Cupertino’s iOS isn’t the only mobile operating system alleged to flirt with privacy issues. This past Wednesday in Detroit, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Google for much the same reason that led to Apple staring down a lawsuit filed in Tampa: the storage and transmission of users’ geolocation data. READ MORE
Is iTunes moving to the cloud? In rumors today Apple has purchased the domain iCloud.com, a move most likely tied to their plans for a cloud-based music service. GigaOM’s Om Malik broke the story this morning, after receiving a tip that Apple purchased the domain for $4.5 million. While no evidence has confirmed the deal actually occurred, TechCrunch posted an email from the former iCloud (now CloudMe) evasive enough to say nothing substantial, while still fueling the fire for continued speculation. Still, if the rumors are true, Apple will have yet another iProduct to add to its collection. Read more from GigaOM.
Tablets. With about 50 of them launched at this year’s Consumer Electronic Show, some wry observers dubbed it ‘Tablet World 2011.’ Of course, the world’s best selling tablet, the iPad, wasn’t even there. In case you still have any doubt, tablets are here to stay. “Our forecast for media tablets is over 200 million worldwide by 2014,” reports Carolina Milanesi, research vice president, Consumer Technologies and Markets at Gartner. With so many of your customers using tablets, reading about tablets, or waiting eagerly to get their hands on the newest iPad or Android 3.0 devices, it’s time to ask: Should you make a tablet app for your business? The answer is likely a yes if 1) your product or service is one where having tablet access could benefit customers; and 2) your customers are the type who use tablets. “The number one reason for having a tablet app is if you have a younger audience,” says Damon Brown, a technology blogger and author of Damon Brown’s Simple Guide to the iPad. “The younger they are, the more likely that they’re going to connect to your services through an app, particularly a tablet app. So if your customer base skews young, you definitely want to have an app presence.” That’s especially true if your customers have lots of disposable cash. “We target guys in their 20s with incomes over $100,000 in the major markets, so iOS powered devices are a big deal for us,” says Chris Steib, director of product development at Thrillist, which provides insider tips on dining, shopping, and events in major cities. “Users of Apple computers and iPhones and the Safari browser access our service at five or six times the market average. So developing for the iPad was a no-brainer.” Thrillist execs first discussed an iPad app last April, two or three months after the device came out, Steib says. Then a major website upgrade and other technology projects occupied the company’s attention through the rest of the year. “We looked up, and it was January, and about 15 million iPads had been sold,” Steib says. “Nothing lights a fire under us like 15 million devices — and it was our demographic that was buying them.” The Thrillist iPad app, its iPhone and Android apps, and its daily emails, are all free to consumers, but Steib predicts the iPad app will increase the company’s advertising revenue. “It’s a monetizable opportunity,” he says. “Ultimately I’d like to see us sell our mobile services as one package to advertisers. We could offer them our 650,000 iPhone users, plus however many iPad users we have. It would make a really attractive package.” iOS v. AndroidThrillist, which released its first Android smartphone app in late December, is waiting to see how users respond before considering an app targeted to Android tablets. In general, though developers complain about Apple’s tight control over its iTunes market, they agree that developing tablet software for the iPad is a much more straightforward proposition than trying to do the same for Android. While Apple’s iOS operating system runs on exactly three types of devices (iPhones, iPods, and iPads), there’s an endless array of Android-powered devices with different screen sizes and variable hardware. To complicate things even more, there are different versions of Android in the marketplace too, with the first Android 3.0 (or “Honeycomb”) devices now coming out at the same time that companies continue to ship products running Android 2.2 (“Froyo”), Android 2.3 (“Gingerbread”), and even Android 2.0 (“Eclair”). And once you’ve figured out which screen size, hardware, and Android version to target, you’ll also have to put some thought into how to get your app into customers’ devices. With the notable exceptions of the popular Samsung Galaxy Tab and the brand-new Motorola Xoom, most older Android tablets can’t use Google’s Android App Market, at least for the moment, because it only works with the latest Android 3.0 tablet OS. So, to reach these customers you may need to offer your apps in the various carriers’ and device makers’ marketplaces, and perhaps some of the many third-party Android app stores as well. “It’s a complex issue,” says Uwe Maurer, director of business development at Ambient Design, which makes a tablet app called ArtRage. ArtRage software allows users to virtually paint using paintbrushes and other tools. It runs on PCs and Macs, but the company began selling an iPad version last September after customers started requesting it. Ambient Design is still pondering whether to release an Android app, Maurer says. ”With different versions of the hardware and the operating system and different stores, it’s much more difficult to monetize.” Should You Start from Scratch?ArtRage can’t work effectively on a small screen, so there is no smartphone version, but that’s unusual. Most companies contemplating a tablet app already have a smartphone app, and if they don’t they should probably consider taking that step first. “The installed base is much larger, so small businesses can reach more of their customers through a smartphone app,” Milanesi says. “Once you create an app for the smartphone, you have a basic app for tablets [because most Android tablets can run the smartphone version in a small window], and that might be good enough in the short term.” Indeed, if all you need is a larger version of your smartphone app, little effort is required. Android apps adjust for the larger tablet screen size and iPhone apps can run on an iPad, either at the small iPhone screen size or expanded. But, Brown says, “it’s becoming the norm for apps to be written so they’re compatible with both. The software automatically recognizes when you’re on an iPad, and it’ll format correctly and perhaps have a couple of extra features, such as more columns of flight choices in an airline app.” But Steib argues that this is the wrong approach, because what people do with tablets is not the same as what they do with smartphones. “We considered using our iPhone app code, but it’s a completely different user experience,” he says. “To think a user will engage with our content the same way on a tablet as on a website or a smartphone is misleading.” With a smartphone, he explains, people use the Thrillist app on the go, usually to find a good bar, restaurant, or shop near where they happen to be. The entire engagement might take 45 seconds. “People aren’t going to pull out their iPads to find out what the nearest restaurant is,” says Steib. So what will they do with them instead? The device is relatively new and many users are still figuring that out. But for the moment, Steib says, “Apple has dictated the use case of the iPad with its marketing. The ads show people with their shoes off reading the newspaper, or playing games at the kitchen table with their iPad.” In his view, tablet apps should be primarily for fun. “We’re trying to create an experience that will be more tactile, and have more whimsy,” he says. “That’s really what this device is all about.” Of course, the playing field is wide open. No matter which app you create, even if it is a serious accounting program or one that helps patients at a clinic make a reservation, the idea is to provide a way to generate revenue, increase exposure, and please your customers.
Credit cards are extremely low tech — they contain simple data to authenticate a transaction. Now, several players, including banks to mobile carriers to financial networks, are looking at a new transaction device: your smartphone. Indeed, financial institutions such as PayPal and MasterCard have issued some customers adhesive chips for their phones. The credit card information is stuck to the phone and can be used at any of the 200,000 contactless readers in stores around the nation. That’s the low-tech version. What’s really a hot topic now, though, is Near Field Communication (NFC), which allows two-way wireless communication between a chip inside a phone and a receiving terminal. This means that soon, if you have a phone that supports NFC, you’ll be able to not only pay for a purchase by waving your phone near a contactless reader, but you can also get instant loyalty points, coupons and rewards. While the idea is intriguing for consumers and merchants alike, the question is whether NFC will work for US merchants — and work well. “Technology is usually only one small component that leads to the success or failure of ventures like this,” said Charles Golvin, principal analyst with Forrester Research, explaining that the technical infrastructure, customer adoption, and low fees must all line up as well. Smarter smartphonesEven though countries like Japan and South Korea have been using mobile phones for payments for a while, paying with a smartphone is off to a slow start here, mostly for financial reasons. “It’s a business model problem,” said Omar Green, the director of strategic mobile initiatives at Intuit, a company highly interested in using NFC with its millions of small business customers, who explained that there is still uncertainty about how merchants will actually be charged to use mobile payments from smartphones. That said, several indicators point to 2011 being the year when mobile payments and NFC reaches a tipping point. First and foremost: Samsung now offers the Nexus S as the first NFC-enabled Android phone. Nokia says its smartphones will support NFC in 2011. Visa’s head of mobile Bill Gajda says the company has been holding pilots with four of its largest issuers. As part of that, all New York City taxis — a whopping 13,000 — now have a contactless readers in the backseat. Chicago and Boston taxis are also being outfitted with about 3,800 readers so far. In fact, transit is a no-brainer for mobile payments. Most people have their phone in hand all the time anyway so waving it past a reader to get through a turnstile seems beautifully efficient. Mobile commerce expert David Eads of Kony Solutions, writing in his blog, says the iPhone 5 is expected to support NFC when it comes out. In the blog post, he points out that, considering the trillions of dollars run through financial networks annually, Apple stands to increase revenue dramatically by getting involved in processing payments for things out in the real world. Conveniently, iTunes already has payment information for its 160 million customers. That’s a match made in Heaven for Apple. Most impressive, though, is an announcement from Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. In November, the companies announced that they’re working together with Discover to build a NFC contactless payment network called Isis for the cell phone companies’ 217 million customers. While holding hands with the competition might raise eyebrows, it’s actually a brilliant idea. According to Jaymee Johnson, the director of strategic development at T-Mobile who is also the Isis spokesperson, the joint venture has worked to provide a single unified platform to consumers, merchants, and banks that will streamline adoption of NFC. They realize that mobile payments using NFC aren’t going to work if the merchant is seeing a different interface for every customer that walks through the door, says Johnson. Intuit’s Green says they’re also trying to figure out how to deal with transaction fees. Once they are low enough, a smartphone will be an ideal transaction device. About those fees, Forrester’s Golvin said, “There is a going rate that is established for transaction fees on payment. I would be extremely surprised to see a merchant fee schedule for these payments that was radically different from what currently exists from the existing acquiring banks and payment networks.” Using a smartphone for transactions makes sense, especially for merchants who can capture new information about a customer, such as buying habits and preferences. According to Jeff Miles, the director of mobile transactions at NXP Semiconductors (www.nxp.com), the company that invented NFC with Sony in 2002, NFC tags in stores are another tool that will benefit merchants and their customers. ”Think of a small hardware store,” says Miles. “I walk in and I’m looking at a new drill and Bosch has a promotion, so they put a smart tag in the store. I tap the tag and it gives me some product information and potentially could give me a coupon.” Consumer concernsThere are concerns with using a phone to pay for goods. For example, some wonder: what if your phone is stolen? “[It would be] probably no worse than someone stealing a credit card and perhaps somewhat better because you can password protect a phone,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with Enderle Group, adding that the Web service a consumer would be using with a NFC-enabled phone would likely contain financial information and it would not be on the phone itself. Whether people will be eager to adopt NFC is another question. “Consumers are used to using existing methods of payment and as a race we are not very fond of change,” Enderle said. Golvin agrees. “The engrained behavior that people have for paying is pretty deep and it takes a lot to change that,” he said. The coupons and loyalty rewards that would come along with NFC phone payments will help, he said. “Those things do make a big difference. If you can do all of that in the transaction, now you’ve given the customer a real incentive to change their behavior and use this alternate payment method.” Experts aren’t sure at what point the average consumer will be paying for things with a wave of a smartphone. Regardless of when, it stands to chance that while today our phones rule much of our lives, tomorrow they just might control our money as well.
