Author: Dan Gendro

UK mobile payments spark innovation and the founding of new companies

The United Kingdom is emerging as a hub for innovation in the world of mobile payments. The country boasts of high penetration when it comes to mobile technology, with a massive number of consumers having access to smartphones and tablets. Several of the country’s largest retailers, including Tesco, have begun embracing mobile payments very aggressively, making mobile commerce much more popular among British consumers. The growing popularity of mobile payments has lead to the emergence of new companies that aim to establish a formidable force in the evolving state of commerce. Droplet is one such company.

Droplet finds success in UK mobile commerce

Droplet is a mobile payments firm, which released a mobile application of the same name earlier this year. The Droplet application allows users to purchase goods and services using their mobile device. Users can transfer funds to others as well, free of charge. Droplet recently closed a successful beta testing phase for the application, wherein it saw significant success in consumer adoption. Backed by this success, the application is heading to London, where it aims to spark a commerce revolution.

Droplet sees major growth through beta testing phase

Commerce is becoming increasingly mobile-centric. Many consumers in the United Kingdom are becoming more comfortable with the concept of mobile payments, making it more likely for these consumers to make purchases directly from their smartphones and tablets. In Birmingham, where Droplet’s beta phase was focused, more than 60 merchants signed up for the firm’s services and more than 2,500 consumers downloaded the Droplet application in order to make mobile payments. In London, Droplet expects to see those numbers rise exponentially.

Mobile payments to become more attractive in London

Droplet will become more than a mobile payments platform in the coming weeks. Droplet Tools is currently in development and will serve as a platform that will enable applications developers to create customized features for merchants. Through these features, merchants will be able to leverage loyalty programs or provide consumers with special offers. The fact that Droplet is fee-free is also expected to attract a great deal of attention from London’s merchants.

Samsung is now leading the way in the Chinese marketplace as Nokia drops down to seventh place.

Android has been making massive technology news headlines in China’s smartphone market as it is now representing an estimated 86 percent of the devices in the country, as per the statistics from the last quarter of 2012.

Samsung has now leapt ahead as the leader of the devices based on that Google operating system.

That manufacturer has made some highly strategic moves that have made technology news so that they could ride their way right up to the top of the list. This new data was just released by Strategy Analytics, which performed an analysis on the data from Q4 of last year. It also almost tripled its sales in China during 2012.

The latest technology news estimates are suggesting that during 2012 alone, Samsung sold 30.06 million smartphones within the country

This represented 17.7 percent of the entire market and is a massive increase over the number that it sold in 2011, which was 10.9 million and which represented 12.4 percent of the entire market.

The reason that this is making technology news headlines around the world is that China is the largest smartphone market in the world. Moreover, its steady climb up to the top has happened at the same time that Nokia has taken a considerable slide. This took its market share from 2011 when it was 29.9 percent, to reach only 3.7 percent in 2012. It had previously been in first place, but it has dropped down to seventh place.

Among all of the remaining smartphone manufacturers making technology news, Lenovo has come in strong as the second place holder. It has taken a 13.2 percent share of the Chinese market. This is a meaningful increase after having only 4 percent in 2011. Apple had an 11 percent share and third place, followed by Huawei at 9.9 percent, and the local device maker, Coolpad, at 9.7 percent. Those were the companies that made up the coveted top five positions within the Strategy Analytics report that has only just been released to the public.