It uses a technology called NFC (Near Field Communication) to securely send your payments digitally.

The only phone in the US that supports NFC is the Google Nexus S, available with t-mobile and Sprint, and there are high hopes that the iPhone 5 will support it too.

Right now, Google Wallet only works with Citi-Mastercards and the Google Prepaid Card. Visa and Google announced a worldwide agreement to support the Visa payWave app, but it will still be up to the financial institutions and banks to add support.

The “tap and pay” method of payment is cool, but the Google Wallet feature that has the most potential is what Google is calling SingleTap. The SingleTap experience means that users can combine their coupons, loyalty cards and payment method all with one tap. It’s an interesting concept … digital save all your credit cards, loyalty cards, and soon tickets, boarding passes, and more.

Security

At first it might be scary to think you will enter all your data into your phone … what if it gets lost? Well, it’s a lot better than if your wallet gets lost … at least your phone has an initial passcode, a second pin number for Google Wallet, and if you’re smart, a remote format feature to securely delete your entire phone’s data should it get stolen.

Privacy

A big question that many would-be users are sure to have about Google Wallet is “does this mean Google knows what I buy.” The answer, at least right now, is no. Google does record local transactions on your phone, but these transactions are only identified by amount and location and are only viewable to you.

In practice, this means that if I look at my Google Wallet history, I only see a date, an amount and an approximate location. Google says that it is working to roll out a more robust digital receipt system in the future.

Diversity

American Express, Visa, Paypal, Google, and the major carriers are all racing towards raining the NFC arena. Google was the first to go-to-market, and there’s a recent announcement that American Express, Discover and Visa have all licensed their NFC technologies to Google, the next step is to get the thousands of financial institutions and merchants on-board with an NFC system.

Other uses

NFC is going to be one of the key technologies of 2012 … with easy communication among phones and cheap RFID tags, we will not only see seamless mobile payments, but also tap to get additional info on any product, posters, magazines, or socially connect to other phones for gaming or networking. NFC’s possibilities are endless – so expect an innovative and fun year to come.

NFC is already starting to be built into a range of Android smartphones, RIM and Nokia have committed to the technology and Apple is reportedly adding the contactless technology to its new iOS devices. GPlus has created an infographic detailing how NFC will replace our wallets and shows how companies are set to revolutionise the way we shop.

This infographic is focused mainly in the US, and it should be very interesting to see if Google Wallets would add more credit cards, and what ISIS has really planned as it gains support from all the major carriers.

Security has to evolve, new types of fraud and nfc sniffing will arise, and along with mobile merchant payments – we should keep a close eye on peer to peer money transfer that will enable the second market and shadow economies.

]]> http://takemetoyourleader.com/2011/07/11/the-future-of-mobile-payments-infographic/feed/ 0 http://takemetoyourleader.com/2011/05/09/the-future-rise-of-smartphones-in-india/ http://takemetoyourleader.com/2011/05/09/the-future-rise-of-smartphones-in-india/#comments Tue, 10 May 2011 01:29:17 +0000 Freddie Laker http://takemetoyourleader.com/?p=1598

If the typical Indian business owner thinks the much talked about smartphone revolution does not concern their business then they should think again. Given the rapid growth of the smartphone market, it is only a matter of time till Indian consumers get their hands on one of the new generation mobile phones. This presents a great opportunity for Indian small businesses that know how to capitalize on this trend to gain competitive advantage.

Although India boasts to have the 2^nd largest telecommunication network in the world after China (with 771 million mobile lines in service) and over time internet usage has surged (currently standing at aprox.  50 million active monthly internet users on PCs and phones), consumers in India have historically avoided mobile internet. The reason was the slow speed of the connections and an overall poor experience on feature phones. This is about to change.

India’s telecom providers are now driving consumers towards a new wave of inexpensive smartphones that will be powered by their new next generation 3G mobile networks, which should be fully rolled by 2012. According to IMRB and IAMAI the total number of mobile internet users in India in 2010 was 12.1 million. In 2011 the number is expected to reach 30 million. A recent study by the Boston Consulting Group has predicted there could be as many as 237 million mobile internet users in India by 2015, up from the current estimate of about 11 million. This not only implies exciting times for telecom companies but also presents a unique opportunity for businesses that are ready to deliver rich mobile content, games, and useful ‘apps’ to consumers and businesses hungry for great experiences on their new smartphones.

Smartphones, for many Indian consumers in cities and rural areas alike, will represent the equivalent of their PC, opening the flood gates to reaching the previously untapped consumers throughout the country with compelling digital experiences. Consumers, who had been previously limited to retail businesses in their local area, will now have full access to online commerce sites. Since historically e-commerce sites have not been formatted for mobile devices, India’s future presents a perfect opportunity for small businesses to serve this new need, while avoiding global players as competition.

In the future, consumers will also have full access to ‘apps’, the latest hot trend in mobile, that will allow for businesses to provide experiences that move well beyond the capability of the mobile browser. Free, for sale or designed to drive awareness of their business, applications will provide businesses with a permanent foothold on consumers’ devices. In a recent report, Gartner forecasts that global sales of apps for the iPad, iPhone and other portable mobile phones and devices will exceed $15 billion in 2011. It also predicts that this year 17.7 billion apps will be downloaded, the revenue from which will exceed the mobile app revenue generated in 2010 by 190%.

 Though digital technologies are yet to conquer the Indian market, the country has already set out on a path to its digital future. Smartphones will bring rich digital experiences to the masses, which they will not only desire but will come to expect – and entrepreneurs who are at the forefront of such platforms will reap the benefits.

]]> http://takemetoyourleader.com/2011/05/09/the-future-rise-of-smartphones-in-india/feed/ 4 http://takemetoyourleader.com/2010/08/19/official-facebook-places-video/ http://takemetoyourleader.com/2010/08/19/official-facebook-places-video/#comments Thu, 19 Aug 2010 15:45:43 +0000 Rob Gonda http://takemetoyourleader.com/?p=1408 Check out the official teaser video for Facebook places. What I really love about it is that it maps exactly to SapientNitro’s PoV on the space-time continuum for experience mapping; in layman terms what we believe is that every moment should cross space and time. A moment crosses spacewhen multiple people in different locations can live the same moment .. for example,  you share a live video feed, lifecast, share status updates, photos, and your friends all over the world can interact with this content in real time. A moment crosses time when you can geo-tag content and you can interact with the same content any time in the future when you’re in the same location … or if your friends visit the same location, can could see your previous experiences in that place.

Everything we do, we do with a mindset of digital amplification through space and time … and Facebook places is just, exactly, that. This can really be huge.

Why to Check In? by Facebook.

If you know me, I am obsessed with analytics … So I noticed today a massive spike in mobile traffic:

Interesting … I did change something this week, I finally added tracking to the iPhone template … but that was not it.

I checked top content people are browsing through mobile and I found a couple of curious facts …

1) iPad users had much longer sessions than web users … apparently their exploring the site and discovering new content, as opposed to web users who found the site through a link, read the article, and leave.

2) 90% of the iPad traffic went to post I wrote Wednesday about Adobe trying to get into the iPad. In fact, more people visited that post from an iPad than any other OS:

Wow, iPad at 37.81%, very impressive. What’s also impressive is that iPad + iPhone + Android = 46% and Mac + Windows = 52% … Mobile is almost surpassing all desktop traffic on this one.

So now I’m totally curious to see where is this traffic coming from. Is it that iPad users search to iPad content? Are they such Mac-heads? Or is it that Google has special algorithms based on device, and return iPad related content in iPad based searches? Or is it a community thing where someone found it and posted into an iPad blog or forum that’s only browser through iPads? I’m not making any sense, am I?

Let’s see, analytics should tell us:

The answer is: I have no idea … all this spike in traffic is coming from an iPad with direct traffic … and I also checked if it was a bot, but apparently they’re all unique users …

So question to you: do you see iPad traffic on iPad content? Is this a cult or a coincidence?

Mashable reads: “Adobe to Bring Flash-Based Ads to iPhone: Adobe has partnered with ad company Greystripe to deliver Flash-based ads to Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Greystripe makes this possible by converting Flash ads (which the devices do not currently support) into the competing HTML5 format”

Now, has Adobe stopped for a second to think, if you can do everything Flash can do in html5, why using Flash at all?  The one advantage that I see is to re-tool banners in multiple media and leverage assets for web & mobile — which is a strong statement … but it does not mean Flash will run in the iPhone, and it most likely mean that not all Flash functionality will work either …

Every step Adobe makes to expand Flash to the iPhone just takes them a step backwards and make people start saying Flash is dead. I do not believe Flash is dead, but that deserves a full article which I will post soon.

American-Statesman: As smartphones have gotten more popular, we’ve been hearing more and more about augmented reality. Can you explain to us what it actually is and how it’s being used?

Augmented Reality (AR) is the ability of combining digital and real-world aspects to provide a greater or enhanced experience. Traditionally, it’s layering a digital overlay on top of a video stream, think NFL first-down marker, or NASCAR car information. It is not new, but due to the recent penetration of web and mobile it has been getting greater buzz. It was originally coined in 1992, used in PCs in 1999, by Sony PS3 in 2007, but it wasn’t until 2009 when adopted by Flash and made available for the masses that it began to gain momentum.

NFL and NASCAR are basic examples of mainstream media using AR, but the true reach is when it’s more personal: enhance computer or phone video streams with digital layers triggered by either some market or symbol in the video, or GPS and compass information, or any data source that can be translated into personalized visualization that adds and provides value to the user. Traditional uses range from recognizing trading cards, to real-size mailing boxes, to visualizing how would your new TV look in your living room.

As smartphones have gotten more popular, mobile augmented reality still has not, but they’re setting the base bricks and platform to allow greater penetration in the future. Location awareness, compass, maps, user generated content, all contribute to greater and richer data sources that will allow for great digital and real world mashups. The best mobile apps right now are TwittARound, Layar, Nearest Tube, TAT Augmented ID, SREngine, and Wikitude AR Travel Guide.

What does the future of mobile marketing/advertising look like to you? Will we find it as intrusive as it sounds now or do you think most people will welcome more targeted location-based/personalized marketing?

The entire advertising arena is shifting to brand actively focusing on providing value, enabling actions or behaviors, or building connections, as opposed to traditional mass-media push advertising. More specifically on the mobile arena, there will be three types of advertising: branded applications, opt-in branded benefits, or ad networks that operate on top of free-mium applications … in all cases the user has to perceive value in order to engage.

In the more traditional scenario which is already happening, application developers opt not to charge for the application and distribute it for free, for exchange of placing an ad from a network into their app. Users do not have to pay, thus providing value or benefit, and advertisers get more eye balls due to the free application popularity. The degree of intrusion is solely determined by the developer, but it has not hit any blocks thus far; at the end, the success of the application will depend on the experience, which is a combination of usability, entertainment, and toleration of advertising.

In the new emerging space, some users will gladly opt-in to location based advertising if it’s targeted to their likes, needs, location, they can opt out at any point, and by opting in the advertiser actually helps them find what they want and provides discounts, rewards, or any loyalty incentive. Services such as foursquare are already proving this, but that’s only the beginning.

We already seem to be drowning in information from all directions — in what ways will companies cut through clutter to get their message out?

More information will be generated in 2010 than the history of human kind until 2009. The more user generated content is out there, the less brand generated content can be found. Brands will have to learn to relinquish control and that they can’t impose messages anymore. It’s not about getting the message out, it’s understanding digital behaviors, environments, and connections. Content and context strategy are more important than ever; it’s all about knowing who to target, when, how, why, providing relevant value, leveraging social circles and influence so spread that message.

Companies that understand social influence and leverage it properly, exponentially augment any of their advertising efforts. There are many tools to understand the digital conversation space, perform user research, benchmark online and offline activities, follow trends and patterns, and once brands understand what the conversations are, where do they take place, what’s the visibility, expectations, then they can decide how to leverage that chatter — not advertise — and get their message across.

Will social networks lose their effectiveness in connecting people with companies once the novelty wears off or will they evolve in new directions?

Social networks were never effective in connecting brands and consumers; no one wants to be friends with their butter, and even the cool brands that have millions of fans, have very little engagement. Brands are still learning how to provide value to online consumers; it’s not just setting up a Facebook page, it’s not just having a Twitter account; those social presences are being used as PR extensions, which does not even begin to leverage their true potential.

Social networks play a huge role into identifying the consumer cross-sites, cross-brands, even cross-channels. Players like Facebook will massively influence the eCRM capabilities for brands, fully integrate, and ease tracking online behavior to better understand the digital ecosystem of properties, apps, sites, networks, widgets, locations, and more.

When it comes to the future of augmented reality, what should we be most excited about?

Augmented Reality is currently pretty limited, mainly by technology: the processing power to superimpose digital elements on top of real time video captures by a webcam or mobile camera is not powerful enough to make it seamless and as integrated as we would wish. The need of the black and white symbol to activate the experience is intentionally designed due to its simplicity for the computer to recognize it and calculate the coordinates many times per second to achieve maximum digital integration. Any other object such as logos, faces, and complex real objects will be able to trigger AR in the future and that’s when AR will totally take off.

The future of AR will seamlessly integrate with the real world, and it all translates into better experience and better data sources. Depending on how far in the future, expect object, logos, and face recognition, environment based experiences, integration with video, sound, even odor. Transition from screens or glasses into projected displays or holograms if we look far enough.

Digital technology is advancing fast, integrating in every traditional aspect of our lives. Augmented reality will cease to be called that way once digital and analog are so seamlessly integrated that non-digital experiences will not make sense anymore. Same applies for social media by the way, and lots of terms we use today. Everything is social, everything is digital, why do we have to restate the obvious?

The original blog post can be found at the Austin 360 blog.

Thank you Gigaom

So I’m an iPhone user, and so are most of my friends … but I really think the new gold mine is Android; I was playing with the HTC Hero and Samsung Moment today, Droid Eric over the weekend, and can’t wait to get my hands on a Nexus One … With 50 new Android phones coming out this year, an open app eco-system, and 4G coming out this year, I really can’t wait to see the outcome …

Oh, I was playing with some custom phones I bought from China with Video conferencing over Wifi and it works awesome… so 4G/Wiki, Android OS, free cloud hosting, Google Voice / other VoIP providers … New communications are here, this will be an interesting year.

Before answering what does it take to make a successful iPhone application we have to define what makes an application successful. Sapient always asks why are we building something, what are we trying to achieve, and how are we going to measure it; so starting from top down, what are the business objectives, the key performance indicators, and all metrics. iPhone applications usually serve one of two purposes: drive brand or drive revenue.

Objective: Drive brand
Applications that drive brand most likely are free since they have to target a broad reach. Objective is usually increase awareness, brand recall, or word of mouth, and is traditionally measured based on simple downloads, usage, and extended with how many share with friends, stickiness, and engagement levels. A good way to take it one step further is tie in social media monitoring and analyze share and velocity of voice, general sentiment, and overall impact of the application within social conversations.

Now that we understand how to measure it, what will the application do? Nowadays brands cannot push messages to the consumers, they have to provide value and we generally call it brand as an enabler. Applications that drive brand usually fall under one of two categories: be entertaining or be useful. Entertaining applications usually have a wider adoption, more downloads, but less engagement as users open it just a few times before they get bored. Useful applications have a smaller reach but higher engagement; less users will download the application, but they will use it much more than simple entertainment applications. However the key for both types is simplicity.

Objective: Drive Revenue
Revenue can be driven directly by the application, or indirectly but multi-channel tie-in with retail and stores. Indirect revenue usually aims to drive users to store fronts, partners, or provide reasons for the user to purchase products or services. Whereas direct revenue is generated by the application. Measurement towards these objectives are always dollars.

Direct revenue can be generated from advertising or downloads, and both have different strategies. Revenue from advertising is similar to brand-driven applications: it aims to reach as many users as possible by providing free entertaining or utilities, and collect revenue through 3rd party advertising. However, download revenue can be a little more complex as it involves pricing strategy.

The secret to maximize download revenue is pricing. The most popular paid applications are priced between $0.99 and $3.99, with predominant 99 cent applications. These applications are what we call the big-fast-sales. Most users download them and use them once or twice; they’re predominantly entertainment and provide small value to the consumer, but the mass download provides great initial revenue and then stops. The most grossing applications are actually priced between $4.99 and $9.99 at 44% and account for 44% of revenue. These applications are downloaded less, but used much more often as usually they do provide value.

Here’s a simple framework to determine your iPhone application strategy

• Set objectives – what is successful?
  • Drive Brand – Free
    • Entertaining
    • Useful
  • Generate Revenue
    • Direct Revenue
      • Business models
        • Free apps
        • big fast sales
        • sustained sales
      • Revenue Models
        • Thru ads
        • Thru downloads
          • Pricing Structure
            • Most popular $0.99 at 50% and 0.99-3.99
            • Most grossing $4.99-9.99 at 44%
    • Indirect Revenue
      • Cross / Multi-channel
      • Point of Sale

Conclusion
So what does it take to make a successful iPhone application? You need a strategy, know what you want, how to get there, and how to measure. Keep it simple, make it engaging, and provide means to share and pass-along.