Americans are gradually warming up to the idea of buying things via their mobile phones, particularly young adults and men, found a new study conducted by Harris Interactive for the mobile credit card security firm Billing Revolution.
Harris surveyed 2,029 adults from April 29 to May 1; 1,883 of those surveyed were cell phone owners (93%). Close to half (45%) said they think that shopping via cell phones is “somewhat safe,” though just over a quarter (26%) feel that mobile shopping is completely safe.
Regardless, fewer than half of those surveyed (46%) said they would be willing to shop using their cell phones even if safety was not an issue. But attitudes vary based on age and sex, according to Harris. As with many emerging technology-driven habits, younger adults appear more willing to embrace change; 59% of the 18-34 crowd feels that mobile shopping is somewhat safe, versus just 34% of adults over 55. Also, half of men find the concept of cell phone shopping somewhat safe versus 39% of women.
The relative youth, as well as the male-skewing nature of the potential mobile shopping audience seems to influence the sort of purchases respondents indicated they would be willing to make. Harris found that entertainment is likely to emerge as a key mobile commerce category, as willing mobile shoppers said they would be most interested in purchases such as movie tickets, music, mobile video and games.
Officials at Billing Revolution said the survey results indicated that mobile shopping is poised for growth in the near term, as more and more Americans purchase sophisticated smart phones like Apple’s iPhone and spend more time accessing the Internet via these devices. “There’s clearly a large U.S. population of consumers open to the idea of making purchases via their cell phones,” said Andy Kleitsch, CEO Billing Revolution. “With consumers getting more comfortable navigating the Web from mobile phones, mobile commerce is poised for explosive growth, and consumers are very much leading the charge in this direction.”
Walt Mossberg does a great review of the Palm Pre today. If you're considering the device or just curious, you should read it here.
Couple highlights:
"But on June 6, Apple will get a powerful competitor in this category. It's a beautiful, innovative and versatile hand-held computer that's fully in the iPhone's class. It's called the Pre, and it comes from Palm, the company that pioneered the hand-held computer in the 1990s. I've been testing the Pre for a couple of weeks, and I like it a lot, despite some important drawbacks that will have to be remedied."
"All in all, I believe the Pre is a smart, sophisticated product that will have particular appeal for those who want a physical keyboard. It is thoughtfully designed, works well and could give the iPhone and BlackBerry strong competition -- but only if it fixes its app store and can attract third-party developers."
Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference kicks off Monday and according to Financial Times, Apple plans to introduce a cheaper version of its popular iPhone as soon as Monday, in a move that could dramatically increase the company’s share of the smart phone market.
Analysts said that the company is likely to introduce either a $149 phone or a $99 phone, down from the current low end of $199.
Citing a firm survey of consumers, Morgan Stanley analyst Kathryn Huberty said that a $50 price cut could increase demand for the phone by 50% and a $100 cut by 100%.
Apple sells about 11% of the world’s smart phones, trailing Nokia at 41% and Research in Motion (Blackberry) at 20%, according to Gartner figures from the first quarter.
Consumer research firm, The Nielsen Company, released some interesting data on the iPhone this week. The study found:
- As of April 2009, there are 6.4 million active iPhone users in the U.S., up from 2.1 million a year prior.
- 37% watch video on their phone (6x as likely as the typical subscriber).
- There are roughly as many iPhone users 55 and older as there are 13-24. (see chart)
- 98% of iPhone users use the data features of their phone, services that should improve with the enhanced speed promised by the iPhone 3G S.
- 88% use the Internet (4x as likely as the typical subscriber).
- 75% download apps (5x as likely as the typical subscriber).
- 72% use location based services (7x as likely as the typical subscriber).
None of this data is overly surprising but it is good news for all of us in the mobile data market as more and more consumers will be buying iPhones (and other smartphones) so overall usage of applications, mobile web, mcommerce, etc. is about to explode.
Space Miner: Space Ore Bust Spins a Creative Story Around an Old Game
Space Miner: Space Ore Bust is a dual-stick, Asteroids-style shooter with a brain and a funny bone. It shows off what a little creative storytelling can do for a game that is a fairly well-worn—and decades-old—idea.
Yes, you’re still in a spaceship in the middle of an asteroid field. You’re still trying to blast and evade the rocks. You’re still hoping to clear as many screens as possible. But the story line, roleplaying, and mapping aspects layered on top of the familiar “Asteroids” theme make SM: SOB – note to myself, be careful with this acronym – a completely different game.
In Space Miner: Space Ore Bust, you’re a tenderfoot miner helping out your uncle Jeb, whose business sense leaves something to be desired. He gets into hock with the local bank, as initially represented by the attractive if less than entirely trustworthy Ms. Frost. Naturally, the solution to Jeb’s problems involves your hard work—namely, blasting asteroids and collecting their dust; blasting robot mining ships and collecting their parts; collecting floating space tourists; and so on.
Hokey banjo and jaw-harp music infuse a touch of nineteenth-century backwoods flavor into the scifi story, adding to the humorous tone of your adventure.
Space Miner: Space Ore Bust skips the screen-after-screen tedium of the Asteroids genre, instead allowing you to “discover” new sectors as you download data from navigation buoys. Each screen is actually a little patch of space, and you can return to any sector you are licensed to visit.
You earn licenses as your experience grows, and you earn upgrades for your ship as you collect valuable items. Space Miner offers seven different interdependent aspects of your ship to upgrade. For instance, to power a certain amount of gear elsewhere, you need a new reactor, and to carry more than one weapon, you need a different hull.
These RPG-style choices compel you into buying not just the equipment, but the story line too. You end up not only blasting rocks, but blasting rocks for a reason.
Background graphics in the sectors could be a bit less annoying. They are static—actually slowly changing— backgrounds, so they seem to give the lie to the conceit that your ship is moving, by providing a stationary point of reference. Other graphics – of Jeb’s space station, and of the cast of characters – are cute, and about what you would expect of a cartoon attended by a speech balloon. The in-action graphics are not especially good or bad, but fit the theme well enough.
The draw of Space Miner: Space Ore Bust, however, is its charming “save the farm” story, its funny characters, and its deep upgradeability and progressive challenge. Pick up Space Miner, and you won’t put it back down before the phone needs charging. That’s a promise not a threat.
Source:http://www.appcraver.com/space-miner-space-ore-bust
Colorize is an iPhone app that lets you create and recreate colorful pictures with the stroke of a brush – or really your finger. Developed by Widgetize, Colorize is a creative photography editing application that allows re-coloring of entire photos or specific parts of a photo at different levels of saturation. With the goal being to express creativity through multicolored photos, Colorize is a photography utility with a few saving graces.
Not a huge photography buff myself, as evidenced by the lack of pictures on my phone’s camera roll, I may not be able to fully appreciate every willy nilly photography app that comes along, but Colorize is somewhat cool. It has a control panel that can be minimized to allow more screen room, simple-to-select and use tools, including “brush” size and saturation, and a zoom capability that is clearly its most useful feature.
Without the zoom feature, the ability to recolor any one part of an image would be obscured by the imprecise style of finger brush painting. The ability to zoom in provides greater control, but still requires a bit of work to avoid blurring outside the lines of a selected part of a picture. The color selection range is okay, but the re-colored images don’t seem to be as vibrant as in the example pictures.
While the best approach to learning the Colorize ropes is to play around with editing of the example pictures, most users will want to jump right in with their own photos. The problem with this is that you might not have any appropriate images to work with as photos with high color contrast and close up images are the most suitable. Still, with a little creativity, and use of the zoom feature, most any picture can be re-colored to add flair.
As far as photo editing experiences go, Colorize provides the tools to recreate images into multi-colored works of art. Those users in touch with their creative side will find Colorize lends a different kind of color editing to their pictures that goes way beyond changing to a sepia finish. Make your dog polka dotted or show your kids how ridiculous they’d look with blue hair – it’s really up to you how you use Colorize. Which ultimately is the point to any creative endeavor.
Colorize proves to be a photography app of user-friendly and completely palpable proportions. Simply put, using Colorize on otherwise boring pictures could be likened to what Techno-Color did for the Wizard of Oz. Of course, the necessity of this depends largely on how boring your pictures are to begin to with. As for mine, they’re pretty boring in any color.
Source: http://www.appcraver.com/colorize
FanFeedr attempts to give a Twitter-like information stream of sports scores and news articles to make your fan experience more social.
FanFeedr ditches the standard formula of just displaying scores and sports news. Instead the user is invited to make comments, share articles with friends, and contribute to trending interesting articles. FanFeedr is free for both iPhone and iPad.
Unfortunately the iPad version uses an interface that is not sufficiently tweaked for the device. It is essentially the iPhone version reformatted to fit the larger screen. This creates too many long bars of dead space. The color choice of a black background with white text also makes reading a bit hard on the eyes.
Using the FanFeedr social features requires logging in via Facebook Connect. The upside is that this means no additional login or password to remember. However, given the growing privacy concerns about Facebook be sure this is one more trace to add to your social net.
FanFeedr features a series of the top sports news for the day as well as scores. These can be tweaked for your location or given in one long feed of seemingly limitless sports news. Tapping on a headline takes the user to the story but keeps you inside the app. Then there is an option to leave a comment or give the story a thumbs-up to up its social appeal.
Browsing scores was a bit awkward on the iPad version of FanFeedr given that there was just a long, vertical list without any additional use of the iPad’s large screen. Other sports sites and apps make better use of the screen real estate and provide other statistical information. Tapping on a score brought up either a news story or some stats — both with pitifully small font.
For each story you have the option of making a comment on a story or sharing it with fellow Facebook users. If someone develops a network with other FanFeedr users it could be a more fun way to experience sports scores and news. With a cleaner interface and a wider user base FanFeedr has the potential to be a great way to interact with other sports fans.
Source:http://www.appcraver.com/fanfeedr/