What the experts say

PayPal has doubled its mobile payments volume since Xmas 2010

16 November 2011

Online holiday shopping reached record levels in 2010. And e-commerce spending is up this year. All signs point to consumers spending even more online this holiday season. Techcrunch sat down with executives from Google, eBay, PayPal and ShopKick to discuss the trends that are expected to emerge in the e-commerce space over the next few months. They center around mobile, tablets, and deals.

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'Lookout' brings smartphone security and tracking app to the UK

9 November 2011

Lookout's web-based, cloud-connected applications for Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and most recently iOS devices help users from losing their phones and identifies and block threats on a consumer's phone. Users simply download the software to a device, and it will act as a tracking application, data backup and a virus protector much like security software downloaded to a computer.

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Porsche Design P'9981 Smartphone From BlackBerry Now Official

31 October 2011

Research in Motion and Porsche Design have now made the Porsche Design P’9981 smartphone from BlackBerry now official. The P'9981 is essentially the BlackBerry Bold 9900 series with a different external shell to highlight Porsche Design’s minimalist industrial design. This will be RIM's first collaboration with a luxury brand to release a smartphone and RIM now joins other collaborations on the market today, including Samsung with Armani, LG with Prada, Asus with Ferrari, and Acer with Lamborghini.

The Porsche Design P'9981 was previously known by its code name, the BlackBerry Knight, and the device replaces RIM's BlackBerry Bold 9900's soft and subtle curves with more straight lines and angles.

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Google: "14% of all searches from the UK are made on a mobile phone"

29 October 2011

Peter Fitzgerald, from Google revealed that "14% of all searches from the UK are now from a mobile." He continues .."the mobile device will be the most important shopping assistant for UK shoppers." Google can see the trends in mobile commerce ahead for UK retailers.

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Worldwide Mobile Payment Users to Reach 141 Million in 2011

10 October 2011

Worldwide mobile payment users will surpass 141.1 million in 2011, a 38.2 percent increase from 2010, when mobile payment users reached 102.1 million, according to Gartner, Inc. Worldwide mobile payment volume is forecast to total $86.1 billion, up 75.9 percent from 2010 volume of $48.9 billion.

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Viruses on Mobile Phones

4 October 2011

Network security research firm SANS found 18.1 per cent of smartphones in the US alone are infected with a virus – double the amount of infected PCs.

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Facebook will be a mobile company within 1-2 years

28 September

Facebook Mobile Chief Erick Tseng said "It's interesting that if you take a look at our top line of growth, we're getting to the point that the countries we’re getting into now are ones that don't really use computers at all. The predominant ways people are connecting in Africa, in India, is through their mobile devices. As Mark touched on a few days ago, we now have over 350 million mobile users. Within another year or two, we'll be a mobile company, with 1/2 mobile users."

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Smartphones take lead in European mobile phone market

8 September 2011

Simple 'feature phones' now make up less than 50% of sales as quarterly smartphone shipments exceed those of more basic devices for the first time.

The era of the simple "feature phone" that cannot connect to the internet is over in western Europe. Smartphone shipments exceeded those of "feature phones" for the first time in the region over the most recent three months and accounted for 52% of the 42m units sold.

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Mobile internet use nearing 50%

31 August 2011

Almost half of UK internet users are going online via mobile phone data connections, according to the Office of National Statistics.

The ONS survey also found a dramatic rise in the use of wifi hotspots - a seven-fold increase since 2011 - suggesting that the rise of 3G has done little to slow demand for free and paid-for wireless access.

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Mobile App Development Startup Canvas Raises $1.2M From Motorola And Others

25 July 2011

Canvas, which allows business to customize and publish data on mobile devices, has raised $1.2 million in Series B funding led by an investment from Motorola Solutions Venture Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to $2.3 million.

Canvas' platform allows businesses to find, create, deploy and share mobile business applications. Businesses can allow employees to collect information using their mobile devices, analyze that data and share the analysis and data. Canvas subscribers can use their mobile devices to collect data in a simple form or via a survey.

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One in three phones in US a smartphone

07 July 2011

Newly published figures from ComScore show that one in every three phones in the United States is now a smartphone.

The figures show that 76.8 million users now own phones that provide a significant improvement of computer power over normal phones, and that figure is growing.

Android now accounts for 38.1% of smartphone users, up by 5.1% from the previous quarter, while Apple has come in second place with 26.6%, up by 1.4%.

Samsung was the main manufacturer with 24.8% of the total market, while LG comes in second with a 21.1% share, followed by Motorola at 15.1%. Apple holds an 8.7% share.

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Google launches new search features as mobile traffic growth explodes

15 June 2011

Google launched the new initiatives last night at a dedicated search event in San Francisco, where it continued to emphasise that more users will be searching on their mobiles and the company needs to respond.

"The thirst for knowledge doesn't stop when you step away from your computer, it continues on your mobile device. In the past two years, mobile search traffic has grown five-fold. Mobile search today is growing at a comparable pace to Google in the early years."

The company showed off data showing mobile search traffic growth over the past three years is comparable to overall Google search traffic growth recorded during its first few years.

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Mobile Web Users in Western Europe to Double by 2015

11 April 2011

Around the world, smartphone adoption is the trend, and with it, greater mobile internet usage. The EU-5 is no exception, and eMarketer expects the number of mobile web users in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain to double between 2010 and 2015.

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10 Ways Mobile Sites Are Different from Desktop Web Sites

21 March 2011

Many believe the basic principles and guidelines that are applicable in the design of Web sites should still apply when designing for mobile platforms. After all, Web design has evolved from basic, text-based HTML pages into today’s Web standards. So, we might expect that mobile sites that follow the same guidelines could easily reach the same level of success with users that desktop Web sites have achieved.

However, the design of mobile sites is still in its infancy. As Jakob Nielsen’s 2009 study on mobile usability pointed out, users’ success rates when using mobile devices to access mobile sites averaged only 64%, which is quite low in comparison to the 80% average success rate for users who access Web sites on a computer. The form-factor difference seems to have a dramatic impact on the success rates of users’ interactions, and therefore, should impact how we design mobile sites as well.

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