Tag Archives: mobile
On September 29th, 2011, Bank of America disclosed plans to collect a fee for standard checking accounts. The fee sparked an outcry among Americans threatening to close their bank accounts and move to other institutions.
Americans rallied together for November 5th, Bank Transfer Day (BTD), as an opportune time to make the switch. Community banks and credit unions capitalized by encouraging customers to move their money to the institutions that don’t charge such fees.
In the final week of October leading up to BTD, eight major financial institutions one-by-one decided not to charge debit card fees, falling to the threats made by consumers.
We’ve seen the power of Americans rallying together to stand up and protect their financial needs. When consumers stand as one, even some of the most powerful corporations in the world will listen.
Consumers stood as one on Bank Transfer Day. In the aftermath, Credit Unions picked up 650,000 new customers – more than all of 2010 combined – totaling $4.5 billion in deposits. Big banks stand to lose more. Their reputation is so thoroughly tarnished among the masses that the ten biggest US banks could collectively lose $185 billion in deposits over the next year if they don’t do more to please their customers.
A Changing World: Consumers Gain Control
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Traveling last week, I found myself immersed in the busiest travel season of the year – the pre Christmas rush. And while I moved from one line to the next, I found time to catch up on a backlog of recent articles on the incredible growth of tablets. Standing amidst a myriad of travellers had me pausing to think back a few months ago to when my wife and I packed up the kids and headed out for a late summer holiday, and the trials and tribulations of traveling with, in our case, an iPad.
My set and practiced packing of technology routine underwent a fundamental, and I suspect over the last few days oft repeated, change. DSLR Camera—check; iPhone—check; baby monitors—check; laptop… And that’s where I stumbled. For the first time in decades, I (gasp!) left my laptop at home.
Though I still remember the days where dragging my ThinkPad required the shoulders of Superman to carry through the gate-to-gate dash that so much of my travel has comprised of, I looked back and forth between my so-much-lighter MacBook Pro, and the family iPad and asked: do we really need the laptop? Read More
Mobile Payments: What’s the freakin’ hold-up?
For the last couple of years, mobile payments have been a holy grail for tech companies, financial service providers, and marketers. Yet, do you know anyone who’s actually making them? I use my phone for a lot of things—watching videos, extending car rentals, tweeting minutiae—but paying for my convenience store purchases is not one of them. And I am a noted smartphone addict (well, “noted” among friends and family, at least). Most people aren’t even excited about the idea. Even among 18 to 34 year-olds, 74% are not at all or not very interested in mobile wallet technology. So what’s the barrier?
Last month, eMarketer published “Mobile Payments: Moving Closer to a World without Wallets”, which surveyed the mobile payment landscape and gave us some interesting insights into why consumers aren’t yet chomping at the bit for a wallet-phone and how they think marketers and technologists will overcome that. eMarketer pinpointed a major fear inhibiting widespread mobile payment adoption: consumer concern about data privacy and fraud. Read More
My wife posed a question last week that admittedly caught me off guard: “At what age do you think it’s appropriate to get our daughter a smartphone?”
Now the question is legit, and the local media has been furiously raising issues of texting and social media in the classroom, so it wasn’t completely from left field. But two elements beyond the question itself had me pause for thought.
First, my daughter is three.
Second, it wasn’t a cell phone anymore, but a smartphone.
To be clear, my wife was not suggesting we run out and buy an iPhone for a daughter barely out of diapers, but was curious as to my thoughts on when it was appropriate to buy any child a smartphone. A great question for further thought, but one we agreed was not in our personal future – at least not until our kids at least hit school age.
But the context behind the question was revealing. The question of a mobile device is no longer a question of if, but when. And, the smartphone was moving from the category of high-tech device, one that would normally fall into – as the self-confessed techno-gadget geek and purchaser in our household – my domain to initially consider.
And I shouldn’t be surprised. In fact, I should know better.
Though some might picture the stereotypical mom as slightly Luddite in her leanings, a series of reports this year reveal just how wrong that stereotype is. Modern moms are not just using smartphone, but leading their adoption. Moreover, it’s not just young, tech confident new moms purchasing the technology, but mothers in their 30’s and 40’s partaking in this rapidly expanding group of smartphone purchasers (Pew Internet).
I’ve been away a while, apologies. I little hiatus, but not without reason –
I’ve spent the past four weeks thinking about MOBile mentality and how I’ve fallen susceptible to something I’ve always disliked – regurgitating news and thinking in one space.
Sure I know mobile really well, but I also know social, web, interactive, etc etc. I had to return to why I chose to write about mobile in the first place – it’s the new thing, it’s the next trending thing. The more I write about it, the more apparent it becomes that the trend is catching up to me. What’s next? Well it’s the fringe I love. That bleeding edge the encircles our industry. The bleeding edge is what I would like to capture. And hopefully not just the edge of tech, but the edge of art, of marketing, or our industry.
So a reformat is necessary.
There’s always new ways of solving problems as technology evolves. It might be mobile, it might be a new startup, technology, or piece of hardware, it might be a new philosophy, but whatever it might be there’s a discussion there. And it’s these discussions that are important.
So MOBile mentality will go the way of the minidisk, and will reboot as a post called “What’s Next” whenever there are ideas to share. Did you think I was going to say UMD?
SXSWi – it’s the birth of a proto-city: a hive of integrated people experimenting with the tools in the market that, without mass local adoption, would not have any poignancy. It’s where the early adopters can temporarily form a society of mutually founded infrastructure.
Obviously I like to consider myself a fairly early adopter. I am generally picking up the newest thing in beta and giving it a try. The proto-city certainly is a unique experience where these services just work and I’m not at the mercy of my family and friends to adopt the numerous new things I throw at them every week.
This week’s post is all about these services and how they work, a kind of preview to how they would work if a mainstream audience were to pick them up. There are some old and some new, but all based around the ever growing social–mobile & desktop–sector.
The prevailing theme this year was group messaging and location based services. Typically when you look back at SXSW there is one clear launch that will take hold and change the landscape of digital: Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, etc. I would say that this year there was no clear winner. This may be perhaps due to development becoming easier and faster than it was a couple years ago, which would correlate to SXSW being fettered with startup after startup, creating so much noise that no single one stood out.
There’s four services that I looked at primarily while down in Austin: Convore, Beluga, Hashable, & Yobongo.
