If news of Visa and Bank of America, MasterCard’s mobile PayPass, Google and Paypal, or Apple possibly developing NFC technology hasn’t convinced you that mobile marketing technologies will soon become deeply intertwined in banking, take a look at the winner of the research firm Juniper Research’s 2010 Future Mobile Award: Wells Fargo & Company.

A press release today from Juniper proclaims, “Wells Fargo was chosen based on its multiple platform strategy and continued service innovation such as the recent near real-time warning of potentially fraudulent activity.”

Wells Fargo allows customers–whether their operating systems are iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, or even Palm– to access their accounts in several mobile ways: By sending a text message to a short code; by going on the bank’s mobile website; and by using mobile apps.

The financial institution also offers an SMS alert program for its credit card customers. Those who sign up get a text message every time their Visa card is involved in a transaction, alerting customers to potential unauthorized use of their accounts.

Continue Reading

Those of us who consider ourselves cutting bleeding edge mobile enthusiasts need to remember that much of the population is still playing catch-up with the technology.

Justin told us yesterday how “marketers are overestimating what average everyday consumers know about the smartphones they use,” and that the industry needs to “educate consumers on the potential of new-age smartphones and other devices,” lest their campaigns fall on deaf ears. Yet it seems that consumers, or at least “prosumers,” are more savvy than their employers about high-end technologies like smartphones–to the detriment of corporate workplaces, according to the report titled The Consumerization of IT, conducted by International Data Corp and sponsored by Unisys Corporation.

Continue Reading

The following is a guest post by Beth Hrusch, Senior Editor at Interact Media, a business blog writing service that teaches writing tips and best practices.

It’s no secret that, in today’s self-serve world, consumers are becoming increasingly empowered by easy access to information.  In many cases, answers are now only a click away.  So, it was only a matter of time before on-the-go consumers started demanding the same convenience from their mobile devices.  Given the fact that about 85% of all U.S. households own at least one mobile phone, it’s not surprising that mobile is fast becoming the search tool of choice– particularly for people making purchasing decisions.

Retailers are starting to feel the effects.  According to Forrester’s Research, consumers who research products online before making an offline purchase affect over $500 billion in sales a year.  Consumer behavior is influenced by the information they’re able to find on their own, on the go.

Mobile puts the power of information into consumers’ hands, even as they’re standing in the store aisle.  This opens up new possibilities for shoppers– even those who aren’t yet comfortable with actually purchasing from their mobile devices.  Comparison shopping and searching for products by phone, for example, are high-value, low-risk activities that people curious about mobile shopping can start out with.

Interested in becoming a more informed shopper?  Consider the following mobile apps that aim to improve your shopping experience

1. ShopSavvy- This app allows users to comparison shop right in the store, by scanning a product’s bar code using a camera phone.  It then finds the lowest prices online as well as at local retailers, searches coupons, and actually lets users make purchases.  With over 40 million scans reported each month, this is one of the most popular shopping apps on the market today.  ShopSavvy is available on the iPhone, iPod Touch, Android and Nokia phones.

2. FastMall- This app is a resource for mall shoppers.  It provides interactive maps of mall stores and restrooms, gives the quickest routes to stores, and even helps consumers remember where they parked their cars.  You can also make lists and get coupons.  It’s available on the iPhone and iTouch.

2. GroceryIQ- A handy app that allows you to create and organize grocery lists, scan products and save lists of frequently purchased items.  Coupon users will appreciate being able to access and share coupons. Shoppers can also take photos of bar codes to add items to their lists and create lists of frequently or previously purchased items.   Available on the iPhone and iTouch.

4.    Google Shopper- Google has joined the mobile retail game with this app, currently available for Android.  The Shopper lets you inquire about product information using your phone’s camera. It recognizes bar codes and saves your search history so you always have it available.  A couple of neat features—it can recognize visual data, such as book covers and video game cases, and you can speak the name of the product rather than scan or type it in.

5.    Yowza- Ever wonder what coupons are available for stores near you, wherever you are?  Yowza  uses GPS to determine your location, then sends you coupons for nearby stores.  Just set the distance parameters for anywhere from 1 to 50 miles.  This app started out for users of the iPhone and iTouch, but is now available for use on the BlackBerry, Android and Palm.

Apps like these put more power into the hands of consumers, as they allow shoppers to determine who has the best deals quickly, conveniently and on their own.  So, should mobile commerce have retailers worried?  It depends on how willing they are to embrace, and even profit from, the new technology.  As Alexander Muse, founder of Big in Japan and developer of ShopSavvy, has said: “They realize, sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. But if I stay out of the conversation, I never win.”

And consumers might well say the same thing about themselves.

For those centered in the mobile advertising game, the next few months could prove to be very interesting.  With big moves planned by Apple, Google still waiting in limbo with its AdMob purchase and the FTC waiting in the wings to rain on the parade, things could get tricky.

The first big move was Google’s purchase of AdMob, which is now under intense scrutiny by the FTC for anti-competitive issues, even though it seems Apple will soon have a leg up with the introduction of its so-called “iAd” mobile advertising platform.  What’s interesting is that Google is pushing hard for Apple to debut its plans, in hopes that it will get the FTC off its back by proving that Google is in no way set to dominate the mobile ad space.

In some ways, Apple’s plans with Quattro Wireless are more anti-competitive in nature than Google’s plans with AdMob- only because Apple dominates the mobile apps business at the moment.  By making it easy to implement its own advertising by way of its development SDK for iPhones/iPods and now the iPad, Apple can effectively lock-out (without formally doing so) all other competing ad-networks.

Google, on the other hand, has no such plans and even promotes openness through its mobile initiatives.  The only problem in the eyes of competitors and the FTC is Google’s reigning dominance in Online advertising, which many fear will trickle down to its mobile ad business as well, even though AdMob first specialized in iPhone-centric ad-units, go figure.

Even so-called competitors are starting to let the FTC know that there’s really nothing to worry about with Google’s purposed intentions with AdMob.  4INFO, a leading SMS marketing company, even sent a letter directly to the FTC stating that it sees no problem with the acquisition and that it actually promotes competition instead of hindering it.

Continue Reading

PayFlex Systems, which administers nearly $1 billion in employee benefit transactions per year, today announced a new mobile app as part of a larger mobile application platform dubbed PayFlex Mobile.

The new app is intended to bring various benefit-oriented information directly to employees, allowing them to access and act on all elements of their personalized healthcare financial benefits including Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) and Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs) from anywhere and at anytime.

“The early response we have received from our customers has been exceptionally positive,” said Robert Natt, PayFlex CEO. “The ease of use on a 24/7 basis and the ability to check your account balances, while also seeing past claim history are some of the more prominent features that our clients and prospective clients have raved about.”

Compatibility was key during development, as the app will work with more than 300 mobile devices, or approximately 90 percent of the worldwide market.  This allows consumers to easily access and act upon their personalized information, on-demand, whether they’re at home or in their physician’s office, pharmacy or hospital.  Since PayFlex works with such a broad range of companies, placing emphasis on device compatibility was a smart move.

The application will initially be piloted at several large PayFlex customers and is expected to be generally available in the early summer of 2010, with future apps coming down the pipeline eventually.

When users rant about their wireless carriers, it’s usually associated with spotty coverage or dropped calls, but a new survey suggests dropped texts is a growing problem as well.

The survey, sponsored by Telcordia, revealed 82% of respondents said they’d suffered a dropped SMS or MMS message in the past 12 months.  What’s interesting is that the sample size for the study was huge- not a few hundred people as some surveys sample.  The respondents represented mobile users in more than 75 countries.

Telcordia, a vendor who “administers industry directories and registries that service providers and aggregators use to deliver voice and data services (including SMS),” thinks the problem lies with number portability, which is amplified across multiple SMS aggregators or hubs that may not have access to the same data about number changes that mobile operators have themselves.

Service providers typically have access to number portability changes within their network, obviously, as well as on a bilateral basis with other carriers, but SMS aggregators and hub providers have less access to such up-to-date data.  This, along with the sheer number of messages being sent at any given time, indicate a problem that can only get worse.

A key decision to make when planning which platforms to target in term of application development and deployment is which platform(s) make the most sense for your objectives.  With a thriving development community surrounding more than just the iPhone OS, how do you know which platforms will generate the highest ROI for your mobile apps?

These and more are questions r2integrated aims to help answer with its new whitepaper titled “US Smart Phone Platforms: A Comparative Analysis,” in which all leading smartphone platforms in the US market are compared using a variety of data points in hopes of helping businesses make better decisions when it comes to mobile app development for smartphones.

Based on market analysis, the whitepaper identifies the six most popular smartphone platforms in the US, which include iPhone, Android, Palm’s WebOS, Windows Mobile, Symbian OS and RIM’s Blackberry.  In terms of market share, while Symbian dominates worldwide share of smartphones, with 46%, it’s a far different picture in the US.  As of October, 2009, RIM held the majority of market share in terms of smartphone usage in the US at 41%, while the iPhone was a distant second at 25%, followed closely by Windows Mobile in third at 20%.  This is significant for decision makers wanting to target the US market over a worldwide audience.

One of the most interesting data points analyzed in the whitepaper was a survey conducted in October and December of 2009, which looked at what smartphone platforms consumers were most interested in buying during their next purchase, giving a clear picture of what platforms are most popular with consumers.  32% of respondents indicated their next purchase would be an iPhone in October of 2009, but that number dropped to 28% in December.  Android, however, showed the most improvement in terms of consumer willingness, with only 6% indicating Android was their next purchase choice in October, rising to 21% when asked again in December.

Continue Reading