Mobile Commerce News

Category: Featured News

M-commerce doubts have not yet been overcome among tech savvy E.U. shoppers

BWild | January 8, 2013

The results of a recent poll have shown that those who use mobile most aren’t shopping with their devices.

Over the last few weeks, m-commerce security has been seeing a great deal of attention, but despite the tremendous changes that have been made in order to ensure that data remains protected when shoppers are making their purchases, consumers in Europe are still not considering their smartphones and tablets to be the ideal methods to use when they shop.

This recent survey was conducted in order to better understand European consumers and their mobile behaviors.

The company behind the poll was TechWeekEurope. It reached out to its readership in order to obtain their feedback in a number of different areas of m-commerce and to describe their opinions and behaviors over the most recent holiday shopping season. It aimed at understanding not only mobile behaviors, but those in the overall e-commerce sphere.

The m-commerce survey was performed following the very end of the Christmas shopping hype.

What it discovered was that a mere 10 percent of the respondents had used a smartphone or tablet for making the majority of their holiday purchases. In fact, m-commerce was ranked in fifth place when compared with the popularity of other channels where purchases can be made.

The most popular channel was the online shopping category, in which 43.8 percent of the respondents made the majority of their holiday purchases over their laptops or desktop PCs. On the other hand 25.6 percent of the participants in the survey said that they went to brick and mortar retail shops in order to make their Christmas shopping purchases. These were many times greater than the participation in m-commerce as a primary shopping method.

The m-commerce poll went on to discover that although the participants were from a highly tech-savvy demographic that was likely to use its smartphones and tablets comfortably and for a number of different purchases, they were not enchanted with shopping directly through their devices. This was unexpected, as it had been anticipated that those who use the devices most would be those most likely to shop with them.

NFC technology ID patent will halt sale of used Sony PS4 games

Denny | January 8, 2013

Industry experts are speculating that the company is beginning a strategy to cease disc resale.

Observers of the video and mobile gaming industry have noticed a new patent that has been issued to Sony, in which it has gained the ownership of an NFC technology that would make it virtually impossible for used PlayStation 4 game discs to be resold.

This strategy would apply a new form of ID scanning through the console so the exclusive owner can be identified.

Though many console and mobile gamers love to grab the latest games as soon as they are released, others prefer to wait a while so that those who like to have the games right away will finish with them and sell their used copies at a lower price. This is the bane of the existence of many game manufacturers as it gives people an opportunity to obtain the discs in a way that won’t generate full retail royalties. New efforts are always being made to help to prevent this activity, such as the patented NFC technology that has now been registered by Sony.

It is expected that NFC technology built right into a console and enabled on a disc will serve this purpose.

Near field communication (NFC technology) is most commonly found in certain credit cards as well as in the most recent models of smartphones. Typically it is used for mobile marketing as well as smartphone payments. However, the new patent received by Sony will allow the technique to be used in the PlayStation 4 so that the console will be able to link a specific enabled disc with an individual user’s account. This will allow the owner of the disc to be identified from the first time that it is used.

The speculations about the use of this NFC technology are not without evidence. The patent document that was discovered linked to the Sony Computer Entertainment Japan stated that “When the game is to be played, the reproduction device conveys the disc ID and a player ID to the use permission tag.”

That same document also descried that “The use permission tag stores the terms of use of the game and determines whether a combination of the disc ID and the player ID conveyed from the reproduction device fulfils the terms of use or not.” This indicates that it would not be possible for the owners of a game disc to sell or trade that product, as it would be connected specifically to their own consoles.