Tag: android mobile payments

Formerly loyal customers are switching brands with each new service and product unveiling.

As the device battle rages on between Apple and Samsung, the mobile payments market is becoming a central battleground for the device manufacturers, as they pull out all the stops to draw consumers to not only their iPhones and Galaxies, but to their smartphone wallets, too.

Though iPhones are generally considered the industry head, it is Samsung that is leading the way.

The Korean electronics company features a broad range of Galaxy devices, available at different price points. This has made it the global leader with a recently reported market share of 29 percent in the 2012 fourth quarter. This is a massive increase over 2010’s market share, which was 8 percent. Apple is holding steady with a market share of 21.8 percent as of the same period of time.

As the two companies battle over device sales, mobile payments have also become an area for competition.

At the moment, these two companies appear to be each others’ greatest competitive threat both in device sales and mobile payments use. The primary battle is to be able to keep up with the latest in innovation, or it will be very easy to fall behind. This has also involved a number of attacks from within the companies.

For instance, on the day before the Samsung Galaxy 4S was unveiled, Phil Schiller, the chief marketing officer at Apple, gave one of his very rare interviews to the media, in which he openly criticized the “fragmented” software at Android, and on the Samsung devices, themselves.

This type of battle is expected to become even more fierce, say analysts, as the saturation point of the smartphone marketplace, and now the mobile payments market, approaches. This will mean that the growth of the companies will be driven primarily by stealing customers from one another, as opposed to trying to find customers that have not yet been reached.

That said, as much as Apple can criticize, author Clyde Prestowitz (of “Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East” fame), pointed out that in both device sales and mobile payments, “Samsung is very dangerous for Apple”.

Payleven has now stepped out of Germany for Android support in the Italy, Poland, and the U.K.

Payleven has just announced that its Android mobile payments app is exploding its way throughout Europe, as it leaves its previously exclusive Germany in favor of an addition of three more markets, which include Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom.

The app can now be downloaded in any of those countries through the Google Play Store.

The iOS app from that mobile payments company was already available in every market where that service is available. This includes Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland, Italy, Brazil, and the Netherlands. However, the company recognized that the Android environment presents a much larger number of challenges, simply because of the broad range of different types of hardware.

This meant that the mobile payments service needed to take far more variables into account.

A Payleven spokesperson explained that “As Android devices have different hardware components, it needs refinement to ensure app liability. So to actually launch Android perfectly in many countries is a long [process].”

Equally, though, while Android mobile payments may have meant greater complexity, it also has a tremendous user base, as the operating system has become a major dominant platform in the mobile commerce ecosystem. In fact approximately 70 percent of all worldwide smartphone shipments involve Android based devices.

This operating system is especially popular in the European market. For example, more than 70 percent of smartphones sold in Germany are based on that platform.

The Android mobile payments app from Payleven supports a number of different popular devices that use the platform. The company placed its primary compatibility focus on the most commonly used handsets, which include the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy SIII, Galaxy SII, as well as the HTC One Series line, which includes the One S, V, and X.

This mobile payments application allows merchants to use a dongle that is plugged into a compatible device in order to be able to accept debit and credit card transactions. The company charges the merchant 2.75 percent per transaction. It currently supports swipe-and-sign, but it has announced that in the first part of next year, it will also have a dongle that will accept chip-and-pin cards.