Visa is expanding its programme to integrate payment technologies into emerging devices and platforms, including NFC-enabled smartphones.
The Visa Ready Partner Program is designed to help device manufacturers, mobile networks and other partners to gain access to Visa intellectual property and licenses, including APIs and SDK’s for mobile point-of-sale payments.
Nissan’s new Note mini MPV is out and it features a generous dose of high tech safety equipment and a new range of frugal power plants.
The original Note launched in 2004 and it practically managed to carve out a new niche in Europe, offering the roominess of a hatch with the footprint of a supermini.
Everything Everywhere launched Britain’s first 4G network in late October last year and it seemed like it was off to a modest start. However, it now appears that the number of early adopters was remarkably low.
EE shed more light on the number of customers in its quarterly earnings report, but it did not break down the figures to distinguish between 3G and 4G users. In spite of that, the numbers look bleak. EE added just 201,000 postpaid 3G/4G customers in Q4 2012, down from 250,000 in Q3 and 313,000 in Q4 2011.
New figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) paint a rather gloomy picture for struggling retailers across the country. Total retail footfall in January was 4.6 percent lower than a year ago, the weakest footfall figure since April 2012, when numbers declined 6.9 percent.
Mobile payments are slowly but surely going mainstream. Mass adoption of smartphones and tablets is making the dream of fully digital wallets a reality and it is opening new possibilities for traditional banks, credit card companies and net-based payment services.
Clear Channel has started rolling out interactive ad panels featuring NFC technology and QR codes to numerous locations across the UK.
A total of 10,000 interactive panels will be installed at bus stops and other roadside locations, NFC World reports.
Smartphones and tablets have already changed the way we access information and consume content, but now they are also changing the way we shop.
According to a report by e-commerce research outfit Yankee Group, mobile payments could total more than $1 trillion by 2015.
The server market has been dominated by the same players for years, but times are changing and Taiwanese outfits are aggressively entering the lucrative market.
Talking to EEtimes, Quanta cloud computing group general manager Mike Yang pointed out that Taiwanese companies are ramping up production of servers, switches and storage systems. The trend threatens to undermine the position of traditional OEMs.
“Traditional OEMs no longer have the advantage, we do,” said Yang. “The business model is changing and it provides us a very good opportunity.”
It could be said that Quanta entered the server market by accident. Five years ago it landed a sizeable contract from Facebook, which prompted the company to rethink its approach to the server market. Yang said the deal had a big impact on Quanta and it was quite surprising, as the company usually only provided precuts to OEMs.
But Facebook is not alone and Big Data is showing a lot of interest in Taiwan. Google and Microsoft also realised they could easily tap Taiwanese companies to build custom designed server suited for their needs. Two years after the Facebook deal, Korea Telecom also approached Quanta to build server racks.
“We asked them why they came to us, and they said they heard we were doing business with several of the biggest data centers in the world,” Yang said.
It did not take Quanta long to realise that it could cut out the middleman and sell its gear directly. Last year Quanta officially created its data centre group and it is pursuing the market more proactively. However, the company is playing both sides and it is still building servers for OEMs like Dell and HP.
Quanta is not alone and one of its chief rivals is Wistron, a former arm of Acer that makes PCs for OEMs. Wistron is now getting orders for racks and last year it launched a spinoff called WiWynn to handle the data centre business and prevent possible conflicts of interest with OEM clients.
Audi’s new S3 Sportback will be showcased at the Geneva Motor Show in March, but the good people of Ingolstadt have revealed a series of official photos and some specs ahead of the show.
The three-door A3, based on VW Group’s new MQB platform, was introduced last September.
Google could generate as much as $5 billion in revenue from selling mobile adverts on tablets in 2013.
According to Marin Software, the effectiveness of search ads on tablets climbed 31 percent in 2012 and that conversion rates on tablets will eclipse those on PCs by the end of the year.
Every office has them and although paperless offices are the new black, copy machines will probably be around for years to come. However, thousands of old copies stored on hard drives will also stick around.
Most copy machines built in the last decade have a hard drive and can store thousands of documents scanned, copied or emailed using the machine. Some hard drives are big enough to store 60,000 to 100,000 pages of data, so these benevolent dinosaurs are in fact massive security threats lurking in the corner, next to the water cooler.
Network Hardware Resale, a provider of pre-owned and new networking and data centre kit, is expanding its portfolio in 2013 with server and storage equipment, available worldwide.
Tesco is apparently gearing up to introduce a new free TV streaming service called Clubcard TV. The beta trial is only available to Tesco staff for the time being, but when it officially launches it will be available to card-carrying Clubcard members and Tesco says it will be “free forever”.
There will be no charges, no contracts nor subscription fees. Tesco says the service is basically “a thank you to our customers”. Clubcard TV is based on Blinkbox technology. Tesco bought 80 percent of Blinkbox in 2011, so the move is hardly surprising.
The service works in a similar way to Netflix, but unlike Neflix it is completely free and it doesn’t have nearly as much content. It will not offer the latest TV shows or movies. Although it is said to feature thousands of movies and TV shows, most of them are pretty old. At least there are some golden oldies, such as early Batman and Superman movies, along with some ancient British sitcoms.
While it might not be a proper Netflix competitor, at least it will be free and available to millions of Tesco shoppers.
Global NAND memory revenue fell seven percent in 2012, on the back of lackluster Ultrabook sales.
Although demand for smartphones remains strong, IHS iSuppli reports that NAND industry revenue fell to $19.7 billion last year, down from $21.2 billion in 2011. IHS expects revenue to rebound this year and reach $22.4 billion. Sales should continue expanding over the next few years.
Apple’s iPhone gobbled up 10.5 percent of all NAND shipments in 2012. An average iPhone shipped with 24.5GB of NAND, which means most consumers still opt for the entry level 16GB model. All other smartphones combined used 10.5 percent.
Although there was plenty of growth in mobile, IHS iSuppli concluded that Ultrabook demand failed to meet expectations. Ultrabooks have had some success penetrating the consumer market, but overall adoption remains underwhelming.
On the whole, NAND production slowed sown in mid 2012 in order to stabilise and reduce inventory. IHS iSuppli now says manufacturers need to tightly manage their supply in the first half of 2013, as the first six months of the year are seasonally a weak period for the industry.
An increasing number of vendors are focusing solely on internal storage and ditching microSD slots in tablets and smartphones. While this trend might be good for NAND demand in the short term, emerging technologies such as cloud storage coupled with 4G could pose a challenge down the road.
Google’s Nexus 4 has been on sale for three months, although one could argue that it has been on sale for a couple of weeks, since it wasn’t really available anywhere. For some reason, Google grossly underestimated demand for its latest vanilla Android phone, resulting in ridiculous shortages in every single market.
Android enthusiasts managed to work out that Google shipped just a million units in the first three months of sales, after four months in production.
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