Tag Archives: android

Google Wallet – Can a phone now burn a hole in your pocket?

Comments 0
October 7, 2011

Google Wallet is the latest of the Near Field Communication (or NFC) systems to hit the digital world, perhaps signalling the end for the humble leather wallet. With the application, money and cards can be loaded onto your handset, allowing items to be paid for with a quick swipe of the phone without hanging around in long queues. The consumer can also be rewarded with the latest offers. No more holding onto paper vouchers and remembering to use them when in store. So why Google Wallet? Or more to the point… Why NFC at all?

 

Essentially the NFC system is a tool for convenience. The idea is undoubtedly exciting. The problem is seeing to what extent the benefits outweigh the dangers of keeping all your financial information in one, digital space. It may be convenient to skip queues, forget about vouchers, and transfer money at a click, but it may seem less convenient if your phone is lost or stolen, or perhaps if a merchant asks for cash – you thought you didn’t need your wallet anymore. Google rebuff the security argument by claiming that the digital wallet is in fact safer than the physical equivalent. The system is protected by a pin and secured with encryption, whereas a wallet’s only protection is often just a person’s trouser pocket. What if the phone is stolen you may ask? Well not everyone has the software to completely wipe their phone’s memory. This means you will still have to cancel your bank cards, even though you will still have them at home!

 

For any technology to become part of daily life, first and foremost it needs to be a better system than what is currently available. For NFC to make a truly social impact it must stay safe and simple. There is little argument against the simplicity of the technology. If you don’t mind syncing your bank accounts to the software then the tool appears easy to use. The interface is almost self explanatory, enter your pin, choose an account, transfer to another person/merchant’s account by holding your phone close to reader, and you’re done. The system will then also sync any relevant offers ensuring you have the best possible deal. All good then…

 

Well there are significant drawbacks that come with the Google Wallet compatibility. The problem is that this makes for a pretty extensive list:

  1. Model – For the time being the app is only available on the Nexus S 4G.
  2. Cards – The only cards taken currently are most Citi® PayPass™ eligible MasterCard® credit cards and the Google Prepaid Card.
  3. Merchants – Although many large corporations will take the system on, it will take a long time for the NFC readers to become universal and readily available.
  4. Battery – The handset must be on to complete the transaction.
  5. Digital – As with all apps there is the threat of malicious applications extracting data.

 

Google ‘Wallet’ is certainly a revolutionary tool in mobile purchasing, although not necessarily a major step forward. The system has some flaws and incompatibilities which detract from the obvious benefits of the application, until these are addressed then Google’s attempt at NFC may hit too many stumbling blocks. The recent law suit with their nearest competitor PayPal may not have tarnished their reputation much, but with a more integrated system PayPal may still reap the rewards. 

Comment
Posted by the7stars

DEVIL IN DISGUISE

Comments 0
August 19, 2011

Facebook and Google have pushed a huge growth in their advertising options. Both offer behaviourally-targeted options to engage with customers – but how can you compare the two? What’s Hot takes a look at the pros and cons of running campaigns with these two behemoths of the web.

Targeting – Google obviously has a more established advertising model than Facebook, having built its entire business around the development of the ‘pay per click’ approach. Google Display Network operates around a robust pricing model that moves with demand, seasonality etc, but not with the wild, often unexplained swings that Facebook’s CPCs do.

Facebook on the other hand uses profile information to target consumers with relevant ads. While Facebook is limited to its own (admittedly vast) network, it offers highly targeted display advertising opportunities, based on profile data and user habits. This way, it can serve messages that have ‘social currency’ among Facebook users. Google’s raft of social launches, most recently Google +, show it is desperate to move into this space.

Data – Facebook is also sticky – it wants people to hang around, rather than directing them elsewhere to other sites as Google does. Via its API Facebook Connect, it is taking Facebook outside of its network and collecting data from user habits on these sites to add into its rich database.

However, Google’s insights into our browsing habits add a unique degree of contextual relevance to any placements across its network.  Google is still learning and is making both search and display network results more relevant, with a truly semantic web as the end goal.

So which platform will have the edge in the future, or can they both happy co-exist?

Big egos – not to mention competition commissions – might prevent there ever being a Google/Facebook merger, but both will define the future web.  The next few years will see the two circling as they seek to compete with, or aggregate each other’s data. 

Each wants to dominate the web experience from first to last click, whether information gathering, paying a bill or claiming a geo-located deal in a restaurant. We’ve seen Google toying with real-time Twitter results in its results pages, and Facebook partnering with Bing to bring internal search capability to Facebook. 

The big play for both is clearly mobile/tablet. With new Geo-location services such as Foursquare, both companies reacted with products of their own. Google’s ambitions with Android, not to mention its recent acquisition of Motorola, shows its intentions, and this will no doubt have implications for advertisers.

In short, Google wants to become more social, Facebook more relevant as navigation. Let battle commence!

Comment
Posted by the7stars

CAN’T HELP FALLING IN LOVE

Comments 0
August 19, 2011

On Monday, Google announced it had bought Motorola development division Mobility for a staggering £7.7 billion. The deal comes seven months after Motorola split the business into two; Mobility that develops and manufactures mobile phones, and Motorola Solutions that covers wider technologies for corporate customers and government.

As a result of the acquisition Google will own all 17,000 technology patents that Motorola currently has the rights to. Essentially, this means that if another mobile system wants to use that technology they have to pay Google for the right to do so.

Recently Microsoft has been openly critical of Google and the handsets that use Android as an operating system – particularly HTC – as these handsets use Microsoft’s patent technology and therefore pays Microsoft every time an Android phone is sold.

So where does this purchase and associated legal issues, leave the rest of the mobile phone market? Apple, Blackberry and Microsoft have huge advantages in this space, as all own proprietary handset and operating systems. Android, despite its rapid growth, is an open source platform (used by handsets such as HTC and Samsung) and had been at a disadvantage for not owning a handset (and patents) to accompany the operating system to escalate it to the ‘iconic’ status that the iphone has attained. This could well now change.

Google intends to run Motorola as a separate business and to ‘Supercharge Android’ (according to Larry Page, Google CEO), whilst still keeping it as an open platform for other handsets to use. With the Motorola patents, mobile handset technology, Android operating system and the highest smartphone penetration in the UK, it like Google will be providing Apple with some serious competition! This could even reduce market domination by the iPhone – providing Google gets the handsets right.

The move really has has also shaken up the mobile industry and rumours are spreading about Microsoft acquiring Nokia for its patents and technology and Google looking at buying Blackberry for the addition penetration in the UK market. However, from where What’s Hot is standing Google has got an opportunity to dominate the market in the next year or so even without acquiring Blackberry. Exciting times ahead for the global mobile market indeed.

 

Comment
Posted by the7stars

Rule the World

Comments 0
June 23, 2011

We’ve been scouring the web in the last week or so to find out more about the announcements from Mr Jobs on a raft of new Blackberry-baiting features for the new iPhone operating system (iOS5), stuff about clouds and general Apple gossip.

Let’s start with iMessage which is being touted as the Apple equivalent to Blackberry’s BBM service. BBM has successfully attracted a non-business user (yes teens!) to the Blackberry brand, and it seems that with iMessage, Apple could do the same and improve its position in this market.

Notification Center (sic) meanwhile is a great improvement. New emails, text messages, multimedia messages, reminders, Game Center notifications, mail alerts, Twitter notifications and any other sort of items which could normally trigger a push notification will soon find their way into the Notification Center. They’ll be called to your attention on your iOS lock screen, via a regular pop up alert, or with a small non-intrusive banner which briefly flashes across the top of your screen.

On to iCloud now. This really is the biggest thing from Apple since the iPad launch (which incidentally at 25m units sold makes it a far faster seller than the iPhone). iCloud will be integrated with iOS5 and many of the apps like iPhoto, documents, apps, iBooks, contacts, calendar and mail will have built in iCloud functionality after the update. The iOS5 update is free & includes 5GB cloud storage.

Photostream is another great app that will allow photos to be uploaded to iCloud, then synced across multiple devices and tablets.

With competition fierce on all fronts for Apple (Google Music Beta and Amazon Cloud competing for music storage supremacy; a raft of new tablets all touting iPad-killing features and more) this announcement needed to be a big one, and it sure was.

It may be losing out now in the operating system war with Android, but Apple is still the undisputed king of cool gadgets and great functionality. When they pull it out of the bag with announcements like this, others can only look on in envy.
Read more

Comment
Posted by the7stars

Thank You For The Music

Comments 0
May 16, 2011

Cloud based music streaming services are big news this year. Spotify has always delivered music this way and is believed to be launching in the US imminently, Amazon has already launched its Cloud Player whilst Apple is believed to be unveiling its cloud-based streaming version of iTunes later this summer.

The fourth big player, Google, launched its version ‘Music Beta by Google’ on Thursday 12th May. This takes the form of a cloud-based ‘online storage locker’ for users, from where they can stream and download files to internet-connected devices.

Driving the launch is the completion of Google’s new music player Android app, which can play any music stored on Android devices. However, the app can’t access music from the cloud unless users are part of the beta test. The service will initially only be available on a limited, invite-only basis to US users. If you are part of the test, you can upload 20gb of music for free.

There are initial drawbacks – uploading 20GB of music will take a long time at most people’s broadband speed. Additionally, Google has launched without licensing agreements with the major labels, so there’s no purchase functionality. However, domestic broadband speeds are ever-increasing and the legal deals will surely get sorted so these are minor issues. The main point is that this is an instant ‘stepping-up’ of the battle between Google and Apple that began with Android and intensified when YouTube announced its move into the movie rental market on May 10th…but that’s a story for another What’s Hot. For now, the question is what Music Beta means for the music industry.

Once the licensing deals are done, there will be no need for uploading your music – Google Music will just mirror it in the cloud. At the same time, purchase functionality can then be added which means it becomes easier to legally add songs to your Google Music library – with just one click – than to have to find them via P2P, download them to your device and then upload them to Google Music. Anything that makes P2P a less attractive proposition has to appeal to the record companies. The Huffington Post reports that negotiations have only stalled with Universal & Sony so one assumes this will swiftly get resolved.

Let’s assume negotiations are resolved in Google’s favour. Once this is sorted, It’s a straightforward, easy step to add a subscription service which will thereby also include all the music not already in your collection. So, a perfect merger of owned music and everything else via subscription seems just around the corner.

Google’s announcement is not great news for Spotify, given that it has still not managed to launch in the US. Google’s launch is also surely the thinking behind the launch last week of Spotify’s interface that feeds users’ iTunes libraries into their Spotify player.

So, music consumption moving to a subscription based service seems inevitable. All eyes will be on Apple’s response this summer – it will need to raise the bar to keep iTunes in the ascendancy.
Read more

Comment
Posted by the7stars

Knowing Me Knowing You

Comments 0
May 12, 2011

Live Profile is a free advanced messenger service available on Blackberry, Android and iPhone. It allows status updates, photo and video sharing, group chats, doesn’t drain your battery and integrates with Facebook and Twitter. With all of these customer benefits, it’s no real surprise that LiveProfile is experiencing great success. One million downloads in five days though is something else, and worth further investigation…

For some time, BBM (Blackberry Messenger) – a free text-based communication platform between Blackberry users has been extremely popular and has helped RIM, the company behind Blackberry, extend the handset’s popularity beyond the business audience. LiveProfile however threatens to end BBM’s unique selling point.

LiveProfile isn’t the first multi-platform messenger. Kik previously offered BBM-style messaging across Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry devices, until RIM pulled the app and began legal proceedings against the company. WhatsApp also has a dedicated user base across platforms.

New York-based LiveProfile will be hoping for better fortunes. The business was co-founded by Phil Karl and William Key, both of whom bootstrapped the company. Working alone, they “designed, developed, and launched the initial Android application and infrastructure” in just one month, according to Karl.

Karl and Key’s business model is still unclear. The service claims to be ‘free forever’ to users – although at the minute there are no ad opportunities either.

Meanwhile over at RIM a profit warning and subsequent 14% drop in share price last week is cause for concern. There is no doubt that BBM, once a driving force behind the handset manufacturer’s sales, is under threat from better and more flexible technology.

Read more

Comment
Posted by the7stars