Today's Top Stories Square is ditching its Wallet app and replacing it with Order--a new mobile payments app that allows customers to purchase products before entering the store. Order will enable customers to pay for food, beverages and other products ahead of time to avoid waiting in-store. An article on Gigaom says you can pay for a meal at a restaurant--including tip--before you even sit down. This app is comparable to Square's Pickup--a program also focused on ordering goods ahead of time. The difference lies in Order's "location-aware" design, according to Gigaom, which tracks the coordinates of the user and suggests local businesses he or she may like to frequent. This design is also found in the framework of Wallet. When he launched Wallet in 2011, Twitter founder and Square creator Jack Dorsey thought it would be a big hit. The premise behind such an app? Customers are able to input credit card information on their mobile devices and "pay with their name," as the company states. Wallet wasn't quite as successful as the mobile payments company thought it would be, according to Gigaom. Apparently customers don't see the point of completely ditching their credit cards to pay for in-store purchases with their smartphones. Maybe with the added incentive of being able to pay ahead of time customers will take to Order more readily. An article on ReadWrite suggests that people will continue to use credit and debit cards because it takes the same amount of effort to pay with a smartphone. "People still carry around their leather wallets because that's what they've always done: They prefer to pay with debit and credit cards because it's just as easy as paying with their phones. The result is that mobile wallets have not gained critical mind share among the public," the article states. Square's Wallet is no longer downloadable in app stores, but a spokesperson told Gigaom that the company "will continue to support the apps already installed." Order is coming soon to New York and San Francisco. IPhone users will have the jump on this rollout, with Android following closely behind. The Square spokesperson told Gigaom that the plan is to eventually provide Order nationwide. So, is there any hope for mobile payments companies like Square? The ReadWrite article offers this: "Mobile wallets like Square are going to continue to struggle--at least until a more legitimate, easy-to-use and cost-effective solution comes along."
For more:
- read the Gigaom article
- read the ReadWrite article
Related Articles:
Mobile payments deals slow, but consumer market poised for rapid growth
Square could be at crossroads
Apple, Google mull Square buy Read more about: Square Reader, Mobile payments
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Mobility is saving U.S. small business more than $65 billion per year, according to a survey of 1,042 small businesses by AT&T and the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council. Smartphones, which are used by 94 percent of small businesses, are saving those firms the most time and money--1.24 billion hours and $32.3 billion, respectively, per year. Tablets are saving them 754.2 million hours and $19.6 billion annually. Mobile apps, used by more than half of small businesses, are saving those small businesses 599.5 million hours and $15.6 billion per year annually. A majority of the firms surveyed say they save individually around $6,000 per year using mobile apps. Around 77 percent of respondents say they rely on three or more mobile apps consistently, with 5 percent using 20 or more apps. GPS/navigation and mapping apps are the most used. Other commonly used apps are remote document access, travel planning and banking/finance management. More than nine out of 10 respondents who use mobile apps use them on their smartphone, while slightly more than half use them on their tablet. Small business owners are reinvesting the extra time and money back into their businesses to increase sales, customer engagement and knowledge about their industries, the survey finds. "In the current economy, mobile technologies are critical to enabling small businesses to save tremendous amounts of time and money by helping them do more with less," says Cathy Martine, AT&T president of Enterprise Business Solutions. A study released by market research firm IDC earlier this year found that small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are embracing BYOD programs. In fact, SMBs account for the largest increase in formal BYOD program launches. "Small businesses have seen the most growth in BYOD device uptake and have responded by implementing policies that govern how those devices are used. This is a marked change from only a year ago when close to half of small firms cited having a zero-access BYOD stance," comments Chris Chute, research director of IDC's Global SMB Cloud and Mobility Practice and an author of the study.
For more:
- check out the AT&T survey results
- see the IDC report abstract
Related Articles:
SMBs driving new wave of BYOD programs
BYOD, mobile cloud to spur rapid growth in mobile SaaS market
SMBs investing in mobility to improve employee productivity, IDC survey finds Read more about: Smartphones, Tablets
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Efforts in California to require mobile device kill switches live on again, as the state senate has passed a bill mandating the anti-theft feature for all smartphones sold in that state. In a vote on the bill last week, 26 state senators voted to back the legislation proposed by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, when 21 votes were needed for support. The bill will now head to the Democratic-controlled assembly, notes an article at CIO. A similar kill switch bill had previously failed to get needed support when it went before the state senate last month. The proposed legislation underwent some tweaking, such as a change to limit kill switches to smartphones, not tablets. And companies would now have until July 1, 2015, to comply with the requirement should the bill pass in the assembly. The article notes that CTIA, the lobbying arm of the wireless industry, "remains very much opposed to the proposed California law, for an ever-shifting number of reasons. Last fall, it was because kill switches would be an attractive target for mischief-minded hackers. When Leno introduced his bill in February, the CTIA argued that keeping a database of stolen phones was a more effective way to deter theft. On Thursday, the CTIA fretted about the vagaries of state-by-state mandates." According to an article at Information Week, CTIA last month said its members had voluntarily agreed to deploy, after July 2015, "a baseline anti-theft tool." This tool could be either preloaded or downloaded. The association noted that all its member mobile carriers have pledged to support the tool. "What the group did not promise, however, is that this anti-theft technology would be enabled by default," the article said. "Leno argues that's not enough and insists that deploying kill switch technology will reduce the theft of mobile phones."
For more:
- check out the CIO article
- read the Information Week article
Related Articles:
Bill to mandate phone kill-switches dies, but industry rallies anyway
Mobile manufactures, carriers to provide kill switches
Kill switches could save consumers $2.6 billion, study says Read more about: Tablets
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