Category: Mobile Commerce

Report highlights growing mobile commerce initiatives

The Mercator Advisory Group, a market research and analysis firm, has released a new report concerning global mobile commerce initiatives. The report, titled “Global Mobile Retail Payment Initiatives 2013,” aims to shed light on NFC-based mobile commerce and how it is being used in the retail industry. NFC technology has long been a pillar of the mobile commerce field and the technology continues to see strong support in several industries despite the security and efficiency concerns that surround it.

NFC continues to receive criticism

The report notes that there are a growing number of pilot projects concerning NFC-based mobile commerce emerging around the world. In the telecommunications sector, companies responsible for the making of smartphones and tablets are beginning to give their new devices NFC capabilities in order to accommodate the interests that consumers have in mobile commerce and close proximity data sharing. While the report shows that NFC technology is seeing strong progress around the world, the technology continues to be criticized by several of the companies and organizations that are most involved in mobile commerce.

Mobile security concerns surround NFC technology

NFC technology is used to facilitate mobile transactions. This is done by transmitting a consumer’s financial information. This information can be intercepted with relative ease or otherwise stolen from a mobile device by exploiting the capabilities of NFC technology. Companies like PayPal, which has a strong interest in mobile commerce, suggest that NFC technology is simply not secure enough to keep a consumer’s financial information safe. Moreover, the technology may not be adequate of supporting a massive mobile commerce network, leading to efficiency problems.

Small retailers show strong support for NFC-based mobile commerce

While NFC technology may be receiving some dubious attention, the technology is showing promising signs of adoption from small retail businesses. These businesses do not have the same financial clout of their larger counterparts, but must still accommodate the interests of consumers. As such, mobile commerce is gaining ground with these retailers, and NFC technology has been the best solution available to them.

The social network reported very strong revenues through their smartphone ads for Q1 2013.

Facebook reported, this week, that its mobile marketing generated powerful earnings through its smartphone ads throughout the first quarter of this year, producing a meaningful revenue for the company that has been seeing its ups and downs since it went public.

In fact, the social network giant posted its net income as $219 million for the first quarter.

That represents an increase of approximately 6 percent over the year before, as the first quarter in 2012 saw a net income of $205 million. The earnings that were reported excluding items from Facebook were $312 million. This is the equivalent to 12 cents per share.

That figure is considerably higher than the mobile marketing results that were seen in 2012.

Last year, including the mobile marketing at Facebook, the company reported a net income of $287 million. According to Thomson Reuters, this year’s achievements were off by a penny from the estimates that were made by Wall Street.

The latest CNBC report stated that the quarter the year earlier had reported mobile marketing revenue of $1.06 billion, and that this figure increased by 38 percent in this year’s quarter, when it reached $1.46 billion. That was able to beat the forecasts that had been made for the quarter, which had typically been for $1.44 billion.

It was Facebook’s complete advertising revenue, not just the mobile marketing earnings, which drew the most attention during the company’s announcement. They saw a 43 percent increase over the total that they had experienced at the same time the year before.

Mobile marketing revenue was estimated to have represented about 30 percent of the total advertising income that was earned by the social network within the quarter. Facebook has been investing exceptionally heavily in the smartphone and tablet channels in order to boost its earnings. This has become an especially large focus since it first went public. Now, investors are beginning to see the initial and ongoing results of these efforts and this broader focus for the advertising earning strategies that have been put into place and that continue to be developed.