Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly - September 28, 2010

Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly is an online newsletter that is made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile retailing applications, mobile payments and mobile marketing applications that I run across each week. I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

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Research In Motion is kicking off its BlackBerry Developers Conference here by announcing advances to the mobile platform's App World store and new developer opportunities.

http://www.enterprisemobiletoday.com/features/article.php/3905536/BlackBerry-Opens-Up-App-World-But-Is-It-Enough.htm

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Visa announced two pilot programs in New York and Los Angeles whereby commuters can use its contactless payment application Visa payWave or Visa prepaid cards to pay for bus, subway and train fares.

http://www.telecompaper.com/news/article.aspx?cid=757996

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iPhone owners tend to shop more with their mobile devices, while consumers with Android smartphones are less likely to have landlines. BlackBerry owners, meanwhile, apparently like listening to the radio.

http://www.internetretailer.com/2010/09/23/apple-users-tend-engage-more-m-commerce

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Smartsoft Mobile empowers some of the world’s largest multi-national organizations to extend and improve business processes by providing mobile solutions to their employees and customers. Smartsoft has more than 700 experienced ERP/mobile consultants with over 5,000 man years of experience helping 400,000 plus mobile users achieve their business goals with powerful mobile B2B and B2C applications, designed and developed specifically for today’s popular consumer and industrial grade mobile devices. For more information please visit, http://www.smartsoftmobile.com/. This newsletter is sponsored in part by Smartsoft Mobile Solutions.

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Forrester Research just put out a new study that proves just how much traction mobile commerce is gaining with consumers and the numbers are pretty impressive.

http://ecommercejunkie.com/2010/09/24/m-commerce-use-now-in-the-millions/

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Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! have swiftly lost share in the U.S. mobile advertising market to Apple's new iAd. Independent rivals such as Jumptap and Millennial Media are gaining, too.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2010/tc20100926_023792.htm

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Forrester predicts B2B interactive marketing spending to reach $4.8 billion by 2014 - almost double that estimated for 2009 ($2.3 billion).

http://www.bizreport.com/2010/03/b2b_marketers_embracing_interactive_channels.html

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Fits.me co-founder and CEO Heikki Haldre says virtual fitting rooms are what online apparel retailers need to be able to compete with traditional brick-and-mortar clothing shops, as they aim to remove the biggest barrier to buying.

http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/09/22/fits-me-funding/

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A Shakey’s Pizza campaign encouraged users to send a text message to receive a mobile coupon good for a large pizza. After the short pilot program in just 30 of its stores, Shakey’s was able to build a significant database of over 16,000 people who responded to the initial promotion.

http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/shakeys-pizza-adds-16k-opt-ins-and-sees-10-conversion-using-mobile-coupons-sms-8993/

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Starbucks is taking a tip from its users and designing its upcoming web landing portal Starbucks Digital Network to be optimized first for mobile devices instead of traditional web browsers.

http://gigaom.com/2010/09/23/starbucks-new-portal-was-designed-with-mobile-in-mind/

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A new study by mobile ad network Millennial Media and comScore suggests that a small segment of mobile consumers prefer to shop via their mobile devices rather than other ways.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=136325

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By 2014, about 12 percent of all e-commerce transactions will be made using smartphones and other mobile devices, but fraud detection tools for mobile commerce are lagging, Gartner said.

http://thecitizen.co.tz/business/-/4302-mobile-commerce-surge-outpaces-anti-fraud-tools

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The China Telecom Chongqing branch has launched a new mobile payment platform for students.

http://www.chinatechnews.com/2010/09/27/12546-china-telecom-chongqing-to-promote-mobile-payment-on-campuses

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U.S. consumers are still at least "a couple of years" away from widely using their smartphones to make payments, despite technology that is already available, a MasterCard, Inc. senior executive told Reuters on Friday.

http://in.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-51584220100918

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Mobile retail application developer shopkick Inc. has raised $15 million in Series B financing led by Greylock Partners, a sign that the mobile medium is becoming more of a priority for retailers.

http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/mobile-retail-firm-shopkick-gets-15m-in-funding/

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Best Buy has been aggressive in its efforts to claim a greater share of the mobile retail market. The company said in April that it will open another 75 to 100 of its standalone Best Buy Mobile stores, and could eventually have close to 1,000 of the stores nationwide.

http://www.fiercewireless.com/special-reports/mobile-retailing-flux-carriers-vs-big-box-retailers?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal

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Imagine you are shopping at a cosmetics store and are shown on a screen what Julia Roberts looks like in certain make-up! Now, with the right app you could, with just a few clicks and snaps, see yourself on a screen with the same make-up elements. Some may not want to look like Julia Roberts, while some may prefer no make-up altogether, but hopefully you see that this opens up a whole new set of possibilities for retail and consumer products enterprises to go after their customers.

http://bit.ly/bbPA1w

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With competition high for retail dollars, savvy retailers are relying on the rapidly growing smartphone market to increase average order value as well as the conversion rate of shoppers.

http://smartsoftmobile.com/wordpress/2010/09/23/mobile-application-use-for-on-site-retail/

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Online check-ins, as a trend and use-case, have created a remarkably compelling opportunity for offline merchants to interact with consumers who are in the store before the sale happens.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/26/mobile-commerce-check-in/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

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Recent articles from Kevin Benedict’s blog Enterprise Mobility Strategies for SAP and Others

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Archived editions of Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly are available at http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/p/mobile-retail-news-weekly.html 
You can follow me on Twitter @krbenedict and read my blog, Enterprise Mobility Strategies for SAP and Others.
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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join SAP Enterprise Mobility on Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

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