Author: BWild

The coffee giant is now embarking on the rollout of a new level of technology due to massive successes.

Starbucks is boosting the use of smartphone based solutions in its hundreds of coffee shop locations, greatly because of the tremendous successes it has seen in mobile payments.

Recent data has shown that 21 percent of payment transactions at Starbucks are completed over smartphones.

The successes that the coffee chain has seen has propelled it to the top of the mobile payments list, making the company the example for the way that mobile technology can be used to boost business and raise customer engagement. It has managed to accomplish this goal more effectively than any other company in the food and beverage service marketplace. It is precisely this message that was being shared along with the announcement from execs that the company had met the expectations of analysts for its fiscal fourth quarter earnings report. It reached a record breaking revenue of $4.9 billion, with profits of about $969 million.

Smartphone based ordering has been expanding outside the United States where mobile payments have been hot.

The mobile ordering option was rolled out in the U.S. last December. This allowed consumers to be able to skip the line by placing their coffee orders in advance through the app on their smartphone. By September, the feature reached all 7,400 stores across the country. The feature has since been making its way into additional markets with tests being launched in Canada and the United Kingdom.

According to execs from the company when they announced the company’s earnings, there have already been five million monthly transactions completed by customers who have been using the Mobile Order & Pay feature.

President of North American operations for Starbucks, Cliff Burrows, explained that “It has been incredible to see the adoption by customers across the country,” adding that “With each wave that we launch, the ramp rate has been quicker for adoption.”

It’s clear that even beyond mobile payments, Starbucks is continuing to lead the way in customer engagement and in revenue generation by way of shopper smartphones.

The first Android based smartphone from the vendor can now be purchased by Canadians.

Canadians have now become the first consumers to be able to buy a BlackBerry PRIV in advance of its release, which is expected to occur in mid-November, though the company has yet to officially release a launch date.

The PRIV will be the first BlackBerry handset to be based on Google’s Android operating system.

This device has now been opened up for preorders within the Canadian market. Though there is no date published for the release of the BlackBerry PRIV, the company is hoping that consumers will start to get on board in buying the device ahead of time, when they know that there is an imminent launch date ahead – even if they don’t know exactly when that will be. This will represent the first time a smartphone from the company will be running on an operating system that was developed by a company other than itself.

The company is hoping that the BlackBerry PRIV will help to revive its floundering handset sales.

Since there is a relatively small BlackBerry customer base at the moment, the majority of developers have stopped creating mobile apps for that operating system. Instead, they have chosen to develop apps for Apple’s iOS and for Google’s Android, where the markets are exponentially larger. This drop in app available has caused BlackBerry to lose a tremendous amount of interest from customers.

Recently, it attempted to create a new appeal for its devices by making it possible for Android apps to be run on BlackBerry 10 through the Amazon app store. However, that didn’t produce the results for which they were hoping.

Now, the BlackBerry PRIV will take this effort a step further by dropping the BlackBerry operating system and using Android, instead, while still providing the hardware features that consumers have come to enjoy from the company. In this way, consumers will be able to use the brand’s smartphone but will still be able to download apps from Google Play, which offers far more applications and a much larger number of favorites than the company’s own offerings.