97% of Android Downloads were Free
Paid Downloads on iOS Increased 3.8%
During this past month, 97% of all Android downloads throughout its search properties were free apps, and that number has increased by 2% over March, the company says.
Two UK firms involved in contactless ticketing and payments have joined forces to launch NFC and mobile phone-based solutions.
Transit specialist Applied Card Technologies (ACT) and digital payments company sQuid have merged under a new corporate umbrella, Smart Transactions Group, in a deal valued at £53.3m (US$87m).
In a Q1 2011 survey of its Wi-Fi Media Channel users, JiWire found that 44% made a purchase from a social shopping deal site, such as Groupon or LivingSocial, at least once a month. That includes 14% who do so at least once a week. Fewer than one-third of mobile Wi-Fi users said they never used social deals sites.
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Google Wallet is a key part of our ongoing effort to improve shopping for both businesses and consumers. It’s aimed at making it easier for you to pay for and save on the goods you want, while giving merchants more ways to offer coupons and loyalty programs to customers, as well as bridging the gap between online and offline commerce.Because Google Wallet is a mobile app, it will do more than a regular wallet ever could. You'll be able to store your credit cards, offers, loyalty cards and gift cards, but without the bulk. When you tap to pay, your phone will also automatically redeem offers and earn loyalty points for you. Someday, even things like boarding passes, tickets, ID and keys could be stored in Google Wallet.
As the critics point out, some gamified products are just poorly executed. Just because you saw something in a game once doesn’t mean it’ll be fun in your product. But I think that most of the critics of gamification fail to take into account the wide range of execution that’s possible. Gamification can be applied as a superficial afterthought, or as a useful or even fundamental integration. To tease out some differences and to think about how to implement gamification, we at DesignMap have started to put together a framework:
- Cosmetic: adding game-like visual elements or copy (usually visual design or copy driven)
- Accessory: wedging in easy-to-add-on game elements, such as badges or adjacent products (usually marketing driven)
- Integrated: more subtle, deeply integrated elements like % complete (usually interaction design driven)
- Basis: making the entire offering a game (usually product driven)
Gamification is a hot topic. Missed it? On Google Trends it first appeared as a blip in late October 2010 and then took off in January so quickly that it appeared on NPR’s Weekend Edition in March. Investors seem interested, and it already has a sold-out conference and a fast-growing list of agencies that will help you “do gamification.” You can even join a quest to become a gamification expert.
More Reading
“Gamification” returns 847,000 results on Google, but we found some particularly clear, helpful, and super-smart thinkers if you want to learn a little more:
- Stephen Anderson, The Art & Science of Seductive Interactions
- Sebastian Deterding, Just Add Points?
- Dan Saffer, Gaming the Web
- Amy Jo Kim, Beyond Gamification
- An interesting example of using a game to facilitate sharing information about road changes
According to a report published late Tuesday from Reuters, sources close to the Internet search giant say Google will unveil a new mobile payment system this week.
The mobile payments system will run on the Android operating system and be available on phones from Sprint Nextel Corp.
The whole report is downloadable as a 50-odd page PDF here, but we've pulled out the best charts for you. They're fascinating.
But where it's most striking is how much it contributes to GDP growth: 21% in mature countries, more in the past 5 years than previously.
Image: McKinsey Global Institute
The Internet has a 3.4% share of GDP in the countries McKinsey analyzed
Image: McKinsey Global Institute
Countries that create strong Internet ecosystems reap huge economic benefits
Image: McKinsey Global Institute
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LBi/bigmouthmedia Innovations in Retail white paper
The white paper, authored by digital experts across both LBi and its media arm bigmouthmedia, draws in knowledge of trends in digital retail, explains their impact and looks into how they can be harnessed by brands to engage and reward consumers and to develop brand and retail loyalty. Areas under the microscope include new technology in retail, mobile retailing, integrated marketing, display technologies, CRM and social customer service, affiliate marketing, multi-channel user experiences and creative social media.
To download your copy of the white paper (PDF) please fill in the short form below.
FeeFighters is a shopping comparison site for credit card processing and it saves 40% on average on businesses credit card processing.
Site provide easy to use UI and you will get bid within minutes of joining it.If you are a business then this site is absolutely free for you because they will charge it from processor once you join them.
Social distribution could help Groupon move beyond email lists to a more precise and targeted audience. And Foursquare wouldn’t mind the revenue it would get from these leads.
A new study by Nielsen reveals where people are using their iPads, and it’s even more evidence that tablets are natural “second screen” devices in front of TV.
via: lostremote
via: Techcrunch
2011 is the beginning of the NFC mobile payments era and consumers are eager to pay with their mobile phones at stores, stadiums, restaurants and etc. – for convenience or impress a date. Well, that’s what we found in a recent survey we conducted with U.S. consumers.
Defined as a mobile generation with its pulse on digital trends, 18-34 year-olds are particularly ready to take their transactions to the next level:
- 63 percent of 18-34 year olds would be at ease using mobile phones to make purchases versus those age 35 or older (37 percent).
- Consumers ages 18-34 (65 percent) feel more naked without their phones than their wallets, compared to 34 percent of those in the 35 and older group.
Akbank's Para Gönder (translation: Send Money) Android Application
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Google Advisor is a site that helps you find offers that meet your needs. You can easily compare offers from participating advertisers and contact them for more information. To help you avoid unwanted sales calls, Google protects your contact information throughout the process.
Visit Google Advisor at http://www.google.com/advisor.>
In Gartner’s latest mobile market report, the research firm indicated that over 428 million mobile devices were sold in Q1 of this year, representing a solid 19% year-over-year increase.As usual, the growth is attributed to the continued spike in smartphone sales– which Gartner pegs at 100.7 million for Q1, up 85% year-over-year. Android remained the top dog, which soared past Symbian to capture 36% of the market. Nokia’s Symbian is in second place with 27.4%, followed by Apple’s iOS with 16.8%, RIM’s BlackBerry with 12.9% and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 with 3.6%.
The mobile land rush is in full swing. Applications are being downloaded at a mind-bending speed, mobile media click-through rates are outstanding, and everyone in the space is working to create unique experiences that will drive everyday use.
But while mobile is rightly being treated as a core area of consumer engagement, too often it is being designed for as a smaller version of the desktop experience. This misses an opportunity to add real value to customers’ lives by being relevant in a mobile moment. As a guide for designers taking the mobile plunge, we have identified four ways existing brands have created powerful mobile experiences.
- Segment and Reduce Functionality
- Expand Your Product’s Use Context
- Take Advantage of The Social Nature of Mobile
- Create an End-to-End Experience for Your Customer
Check out the details at: uxmag.com
Search result annotations:Bing now displays which search results your friends have liked. This is shown with annotations and small thumbnails under any link that your friends has liked.
Surfacing content from Likes: Let’s say Mashable or Cooks.com comes up in one of your searches, and your friends have liked specific articles or recipes from those websites. With Bing’s new Facebook integration, that content will surface right under the Mashable.com or Cooks.com search result. Bing says that this makes it easier to find the “good stuff” within core search.
Changes in search rankings:Facebook Likes now affect search rankings. An article that might have normally surfaced on the second or third page of search results may appear on the first page if friends have liked it.
PC still beats tablet for web and email, but tablet wins for book reading, streaming music and video, casual gaming, etc.
Image: Jefferies tablet report
check out the other charts at the source..
http://itunes.apple.com/tr/app/para-gonder/id437256228?mt=8
Akbank's Para Gönder (translation: Send Money) iPhone Application
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Send money to:
Most recently eBay integrated Milo into a few of its core products, including RedLaser. So with a single scan of a product in a store, users can see which nearby retailers have a product in store, and at what price. eBay also integrated Milo’s results into its own marketplace, allowing users to include local shopping tab in search results to check a product’s local, or in-store, availability directly from the eBay search results page.
But surfacing local product results and integrating barcode scanning only scratches the surface of local and mobile commerce and its potential. There’s no doubt that eBay is reaping the benefits of mobile commerce (the company expects to do $4 billion in mobile gross merchandise volume in 2011).
Local Payments
And eBay realizes that in order to really capitalize on local and mobile in the ecommerce experience, the company also has to be a part of the point of sale for local merchants. And eBay has a player in this race—payments giant PayPal. PayPal has been making its own small forays into local commerce and late last year launched a new version of its popular iPhone app that allows users to find businesses near their immediate location that accept PayPal as a form of payment. The feature rolled out in San Francisco initially, but we haven’t heard much about the initiative since last November.
Why? Well, scaling this feature broadly to other cities is a challenge for even a large company like PayPal. Not only do they have to find the local businesses, but PayPal has to teach them how to use their mobile apps as a payment mechanism. Wouldn’t it be much easier to acquire a company that could help PayPal and eBay do this?
