I’ll admit I haven’t been on Quora as much recently, in large part due to being unceremoniously blocked by the company for subscribing to an excessive amount of RSS feeds (but that’s another story). However, today, I stumbled across a great Quora thread started by tech insider Robert Scoble. The question: “Which tech startups currently (June 2011) need and deserve angel funding?”
Of course, the resulting list is a lot of self-serving posts from startups hoping to cash in on Scoble’s influence, but frankly, I don’t care. I’m obsessed with this thread and the startups that keep appearing there, minute by minute. It’s startup Disneyland! And if you’re an early adopter itching to try new services, you should check it out, too.
Sponsor
According to Scoble’s post, he’s having lunch with Ashton Kutcher on June 17. And to stoke the fires of the eager founders, he writes:
“Last year when I had lunch with him he invested in Flipboard, which went onto be Apple’s favorite iPad app of the year. Got something you want to get in front of him? This is your shot. Stealth startups preferred.”
Well, that’s one way to unveil the stealthy startups in hiding!
At present, the answer summary includes the following:
But this summary is incomplete. There are now 42 answers on this post and counting. I want to try them all! And if you’re also dying to test out (or at least sign up for) some new services, stealthy and otherwise, this is one thread you should follow. Be warned, though: Quora is often labelled a “time sucking” service, and this thread is a prime example as to why. Be sure to have a few minutes to spare before clicking through!
The analyst firms of Gartner and RBC Capital Markets have provided us with updated insights into how well the various mobile platform players are performing as of late. According to Gartner’s recent report on mobile device sales in Q1 2011, smartphone market share is rapidly increasing, up 85% year-over-year to account for 23.6% of all sales this quarter.
Of particular interest to mobile developers are the trends surrounding smartphones. The two major players, iOS and Android, continue to dominate smartphone OS wars, Gartner says. Meanwhile, Windows Phone has seen only “modest sales” so far, although that may change soon thanks to the Nokia partnership.
In a separate report, RBC details how another notable industry player is doing with its latest launch – that being RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook tablet computer. Surprisingly, it appears the PlayBook is outselling Motorola’s Honeycomb tablet, the Xoom.
Sponsor
Android, Apple Remain Strong
Gartner says that Samsung, a popular brand for Android-based devices, had its strongest first quarter ever, thanks in part to its Galaxy phones and tablets, but also to its new bada-based device, the Wave 578.
HTC, another maker of Android phones, remained strong, with 9.3 million devices sold this quarter. It also achieved the number seven position in terms of sales to end users.
Apple, as usual, performed very well, with growth Gartner dubbed as “market-beating” – 16.9 million devices sold worldwide, and more than doubling its sales of iPhones year-over-year. It’s still the fourth largest brand in the mobile communications market, the firm says.
Nokia, despite shipping 107.6 million units in Q1, saw its market share decline 5.5% year-over-year, to reach its lowest point yet since 1997. To counter that trend, the handset maker will aggressively lower its average selling price in certain markets to maintain Symbian shipments while waiting for its first Windows Phone devices to arrive, says Garnter.
Microsoft’s Windows Phone is in need of Nokia’s help, it seems, too, as Gartner reported only “modest sales” for the new OS, to the tune of 1.6 million units in Q1 2011.
PlayBook Outsells Xoom
Elsewhere, RBC Capital Markets’ General Manager Mike Abramsky told investors this week that he believes RIM has sold approximately 250,000 PlayBook tablets since its April 19 launch. This, notes mobile blog BGR, means the PlayBook is outselling Motorola’s Android-based tablet, the Xoom. It took the Xoom two months to reach 250,000 units, BGR says. In addition, Abramsky thinks RIM could sell 500,000 units during its first quarter of availability alone.
ViVOtech may not be a household name like Google, Visa, MasterCard or even VeriFone, but it is a company at the forefront of the NFC industry. This software-and-systems company connects banks, retail stores and mobile phone providers who are offering NFC products and services to consumers. More recently, ViVOtech has been named by reporters as a partner in building Google’s upcoming mobile wallet service.
Sponsor
This is a post in a series on NFC here on ReadWriteMobile which will serve to get you up to speed on what NFC is, what notable developments are underway and what commercial programs using NFC will arrive this year. You can follow this series by clicking the tag (or bookmarking the tag) “NFC 2011.”
This post assumes you are familiar with the term NFC as well as the technology’s use in mobile payments. If you’re just starting to learn about NFC, you should begin here with the first post in the series to get caught up.
NFC to Revolutionize Shopping
To date, ViVOtech has shipped over 800,000 readers, 600,000 of which were in the U.S.. The company says it has a 70% market share in the NFC space. Its readers are found in locations that range from McDonald’s restaurants to drug stores and even taxi cabs. There’s a good chance that when you use NFC technology to make a payment at the point-of-sale, it will be on a ViVOtech reader. But CEO Mick Mullagh says, there’s more to NFC than simply being a credit card replacement technology.
“There’s a common assumption that NFC is all about payments,” he said, but insists it is much more. “It’s a technology that can influence purchase behavior in-store on near the store, including tapping on shelf tags. It will revolutionize the way people shop.”
Using NFC to shop involves NFC-enabled phones with access to things like payment cards and mobile coupons, plus over-the-air downloading of smart cards, bank cards and transit cards, all of which can be loaded onto a customer’s phone wirelessly. ViVOtech does the over-the-air (OTA) provisioning of branded and retailer cards, a key piece to any mobile payments/mobile wallet’s system’s backend.
An example of this OTA provisioning was demonstrated back in November 2009, when ViVOtech deployed its mobile wallet, its provisioning service and its readers in the Middle East, in partnership with consumer finance company Dubai First and du, a mobile operator in the UAE market. Dubai First MasterCard holders were able to download credit cards over-the-air to their supported handsets, and could then begin conducting transactions at any MasterCard PayPass merchant location.
If a similar solution was made available to U.S. users, in partnership with U.S. banks and mobile carriers, it could provide a way for users to quickly and easily create their personalized mobile wallets on their own NFC-equipped phones. Currently, the list of notable NFC-enabled handsets includes Google’s Nexus S (built with Samsung), Samsung’s Galaxy S II, Nokia’s Astound (aka the C7) and RIM’s forthcoming BlackBerry Bold devices.
Who’s Mobile Wallet Will We Use?
In a few months, you’ll be able to pay using those devices at a variety of locations, Mullagh promised. But who will be the mobile wallet provider? While Mullagh can’t comment specifically on the company’s deals, he said that ViVOtech is “enabling the Googles, the PayPals and the Amazons” of the world, as well as the banks and handset providers.
More accurately, ViVOtech may be enablingGoogle itself, it has been reported. According to Bloomberg, ViVOtech is involved with Google’s mobile wallet initiative, but the specifics surrounding that involvement are sparse at present.
However, ViVOtech’s vision for NFC matches up with Google’s vision for the future of search, as described by then-CEO Eric Schmidt last fall. Google searches will become automatic and autonomous, leading to “serendipitous” discovery of the world around you, Schmidt said.
How does NFC fit in with that vision? As Mullagh explains, your mobile phone knows who you are, where you are, what you’ve purchased in the past and can deliver you targeted real-time messages which are time-based, essentially personalized coupons based on your search or purchase history.
So for example, to recall a scene from the Tom Cruise movie “Minority Report,” instead of a virtual salesperson suggesting items to purchase as you enter a store, your phone will. A mobile coupon will arrive over-the-air to your device after you enter, and at checkout, you simply tap your phone to make your purchase and receive the discount. The merchant may also then send you another offer or add points to a loyalty card, if they so desired.
NFC can even extend itself to signage, posters, billboards and other merchandising and advertising mediums, allowing NFC phone owners to tap their phone to learn more, compare prices, read reviews, receive a coupon and more – much like barcode scanning does today, but with more elegance and simplicity.
Google, of course, would be a provider of such a system, while the software and services that make much of this possible would come from an NFC enabler like ViVOtech.
Does a future of real-time coupons personalized to you based on your shopping history creep you out? If so, not to worry. For those concerned with personal privacy, you’ll be glad to know that these sorts of systems will be opt-in only. At least that’s what Mullagh believes. It’s what needs to happen, he explains. M-commerce needs do a better job than e-commerce, the latter of which was ruined by spam email. The major players in the industry understand this, he said. They won’t spam your phone.
When Will NFC Really Arrive?
So when will we really have a mobile wallet we can actually use? Sometime in the next 6 months, says Mullagh. But it will be 2 to 3 years before we reach a point of full collaboration between all the players involved, including the banks, handset makers, operators, Web players, etc., he noted. In the short term, there will be some “interesting battles,” says Mullagh, but in the long run, everyone involved will likely move towards more interoperability.
For now, we can expect to see the first big wave of NFC devices making their way to market. NXP, the largest supplier of NFC ships, has projections for shipping 70 million NFC phones from all its suppliers in 2011. 20-40 million of those will wind up in consumers’ hands by year-end. And some subset of those will have mobile wallets, says Mullagh. Maybe as many as 20 million, but probably closer to the low tens of millions, he forecasts.
Will one of those wallet providers be Google? Certainly. Will ViVOtech be involved? No comment from Mullagh here, but it’s a likely yes.
Mobile marketing solutions provider Blue Bite and digital media company Reach Media Group (RMG) are teaming up to deploy NFC technology to over a third of RMG’s 200,000 digital screens over the next six months. In addition, Blue Bite is working with other partner networks to bring its total NFC deployment to 200,000 screens across the U.S. These digital screens, such as those found in malls, theaters, bars, clubs, gyms, airplanes, taxis, and elsewhere, allow advertisers to display video ads to millions of viewers per month. RMG, in particular, provides access to over 70 million viewers monthly.
Now those viewers will be able to learn more about any given advertiser using NFC technology. Simply put, it’s one of the largest commercial rol-outs of NFC-based advertising this country has seen so far.
Sponsor
This post is part of a series on NFC here on ReadWriteMobile which will serve to get you up to speed on what NFC is, what notable developments are underway and what commercial programs using NFC will arrive this year. You can follow this series by clicking the tag (or bookmarking the tag) “NFC 2011.”
This post assumes you are familiar with the term NFC as well as the technology’s use in the mobile industry. If you’re just starting to learn about NFC, you should begin here with the first post in the series to get caught up.
San Francisco, Other Major U.S. Cities a Part of Initial Rollout
The initial rollout with RMG begins San Francisco, where viewers will see a call-to-action appear onscreen after the ad, asking them to tap their NFC-enabled phone or scan the barcode located on Blue Bite’s “mTAG” found at or near the point-of-sale. The inaugural sponsors of the new program are Hotels.com and The New York Times. (Disclosure: The New York Times is a syndication partner with ReadWriteWeb.)
Future RMG rollouts will reach New York, L.A., Chicago and Boston, while partnerships with other vendors will help Blue Bite reach even more regions across the U.S.
mTAG: Combo QR Code and NFC Tag
The “mTAG” is a trademark owned by Blue Bite which combines an NFC tag with a scannable QR code into a placard, allowing those familiar with NFC to tap their NFC-enabled phone on the tag, while also providing a way for those with older phones, or those unfamiliar with NFC technology, another way to access the same content.
In this particular campaign involving Hotels.com and NYT, end users will see the RMG screen branded like NYT’s website, displaying news headlines, articles and ads. When the ad for Hotels.com appears on the sidebar of the screen, there will be a call-to-action to viewers to “find the mTAG” in order to access exclusive content. In future campaigns, this content could be a special, discount, coupon, or something else the advertiser wants to offer viewers.
After the user either scans the barcode or taps their NFC-enabled phone on the mTAG, they’re taken to a proprietary webpage on their mobile phone, which thanks them for either scanning or tapping, as the case may be, then provides access to that exclusive content. It will also showcase links that allow users to download Hotel.com’s and NYT’s mobile applications. The platform can detect the phone being used in order to point the customer to the correct mobile app. Currently, Blue Bite supports all the major smartphone operating systems, including iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows phones.
NFC: A “Silver Bullet” in Mobile Marketing
Of course, NFC technology is not available to all mobile users at this time, though there are some high-profile devices which are out there or coming soon. Notably, Google, in partnership with Samsung, released the NFC-enabled Nexus S, and RIM (BlackBerry), HTC and Nokia have all announced plans for NFC devices in the future.
According to Dan Trigub, VP of Business Development at Blue Bite, his company believes NFC has a lot of value to the marketing and advertising industry going forward. “NFC has the potential to be the silver bullet in mobile marketing,” he says. But unlike Google, which recently discontinued the use of QR codes in favor of NFC in its business listings service Google Places, Blue Bite thinks that QR codes will still be essential for many months, even years, as the transition to NFC occurs.
Currently, 40% of the phones in the market are smartphones, and fewer still are NFC-enabled smartphones. This will change in time, of course. However, Blue Bite says that full NFC market penetration among smartphones is still 2 years out, citing research from Juniper Research. The analysts at Juniper claim that by 2014, 300 million phones will be NFC-enabled, the majority of which will be in the U.S.
To reach other mobile audiences, Blue Bite also offers tools to deliver content via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WAP sites, mobile apps and SMS. Bluetooth has proved especially effective, but marketers tend to want to go with what’s being “buzzed” about, which, these days, are mobile apps. NFC is starting to get buzz, too, which is one of the reasons why Blue Bite believes in NFC’s potential.
You can see Blue Bite’s mTAG technology in action here on YouTube.
Google is moving away from barcodes and towards NFC (near field communication) if a pair of stories about the search company are tied together. Yesterday, news broke out about Google’s decision to officially end support for the use of QR codes, the 2D barcodes readable by camera-equipped mobile phones, in its business listings service Google Places. Today, non-profit industry association NFC Forum announced that Google has joined its ranks as a new member with voting privileges.
If you’ve been waiting to see momentum surrounding NFC, here it is.
Sponsor
Killing the QR Code
Earlier this month, Mike Blumenthals of the “Understanding Google Maps & Local Search” blog noticed that business owners could no longer create a printable QR Code for their listing in Google Places. These codes had previously been used by merchants in advertising, on business cards, posters, signage and anywhere else a business wanted to advertise its Places page. This type of advertising helped to popularize the QR code with consumers.
Why, then, would Google kill it?
As it turns out, the missing feature wasn’t due to a bug, but an executive decision at Google to move beyond the barcode.
A company spokesperson provided Blumenthals with the following statement:
Users will no longer find unique QR codes in their Places accounts. We’re exploring new ways to enable customers to quickly and easily find information about local businesses from their mobile phones.
Instead: NFC in Google Places
The studious observer knows precisely what Google means when it says “new ways.” It means NFC.
NFC, which stands for “near field communication,” is a wireless technology that enables data exchanges over short distances. It’s the backbone of Google’s (reportedly in development) mobile wallet initiative with MasterCard and Citigroup.
It’s also the technology Google has been testing with its Hotpot program, a Yelp-like service that encourages local customers to rate and review their favorite restaurants, bars, shops and other local businesses. Now in its pilot phase, Hotpot merchants and business owners in Portland, Oregon have been provided with NFC-enabled window decals which would, when tapped with an NFC-enabled handset (or activated by waving the phone near the sticker), would link to the business’ Places page.
This week, that program expanded to Madison, Wisconsin. These businesses will also be received NFC-enabled window decals, says Google in its announcement.
Google Joins NFC Forum
In addition to the NFC support in Google’s Android mobile operating system, the NFC support in Google’s flagship phone, the Nexus S, the NFC-enabled window decals for Hotpot businesses and the reported NFC-enabled mobile wallet system, Google has now joined the industry group called the NFC Forum.
This non-profit association, created in 2004, is dedicated to advancing, standardizing and educating the market about the use of NFC technology. Today, 31 new members have signed up to join the organization, including Google. Intel and CSR also upped their membership level from Associate to Principal, meaning, like Google, they will now have voting rights and the ability to designate individuals to run for positions on committees and in working groups. Principal members can also propose initiatives for the organization to pursue.
It’s obvious why this move is notable for the industry, especially given Android’s market share. The Google-created mobile operating system is now the number one smartphone platform in the U.S., and number one or two worldwide, depending on which analyst firm’s figures you choose to believe.
NFC Doubters Come Out of Hiding
Despite the growing momentum surrounding NFC (we’ve been running a series on ReadWriteMobile, tracking the technology, for what it’s worth), not everyone is convinced of its potential.
Marty Beard, president of mobile messaging company Sybase 365, told the blog VentureBeat that the industry’s obsession with NFC is unjustified because it still hasn’t show how it is better than existing technologies.
Mike Rowehl agrees with Beard’s general sentiment. Rowehl, currently at mobile services-focused Churn Labs, the organizer of Silicon Valley’s Mobile Monday and who aids in the organization of Mobile 2.0 events, he recently blogged “Why I’m Crossing NFC Off My List.” He thinks that NFC technology is “headed for a brick wall” and simply “won’t work.”
That said, we’ve talked to a number of high profile companies working on NFC initiatives and will soon talk to more. So far, the list includes Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Chase, Intuit, Isis (a carrier-led mobile wallet service in the U.S.), ViVOtech, PayPal, NXP, VeriFone and others. If NFC fails, as doubters expect it will, it certainly won’t be for lacking of trying.