Apple Pay 2.0 could become a reality
Apple Pay is only a few months old, but Apple may already be working on a new iteration that will have new features that could benefit consumers and merchants alike. The mobile payments service was released in October of last year and quickly became an attractive option for merchants interested in engaging mobile consumers. Apple Pay won praise for its ability to gain significant support from retailers, but the service has yet to find mainstream success among consumers.
Analysis predicts new upgrades to the Apple Pay service
An updated Apple Pay may come into being in the relatively near future. Apple is looking for ways to improve its position in the mobile payments space, and adding new features to its payment service may be the best way to do so. According to analysis from the Jefferies Group, an investment firm, Apple Pay 2.0 could be a major improvement on the current iteration of the mobile payments service. Apple Pay 2.0 would include new features for merchants, including direct shopper incentives, which may allow retailers to better engage mobile consumers.
Better security features may make consumers more comfortable with mobile payments
The service may also have upgraded security features, which will further augment Apple Pay’s already considerable security. The service makes use of biometric technology, using a fingerprint to protect consumer information and authenticate transactions being made from a mobile device. Other features are expected to be introduced that will help Apple Pay compete with new mobile payments platforms. These features have not yet been identified, however.
Competition continues to increase in the mobile payments space
Mobile payments has become a very competitive market, with consumers showing interest in the ability to shop for and purchase products with their mobile devices. No single mobile payments platform has managed to find universal acceptance among consumers, but some platforms have fared better than others. Apple Pay is one of the services that consumers have come to appreciate, but the service is only available to iOS users, which account for a relatively small portion of the mobile payments market.
Although the South Korean handset manufacturer had previously lost its crown, it appears to have regained it.
By the end of last year, Samsung had managed to make its way back up the list in smartphone trends by shipping about the same number of handsets as Apple, but the news for the South Korean tech giant has continued to improve according to some of the latest stats.
Samsung has now moved its way back to the top spot for the number of smartphones shipped.
These smartphone trends are based on the number of shipments that the company made during the first quarter of this year. During the first three months of 2015, Samsung shipped 83.2 million mobile phones, which represents an increase over the 74.5 million that it shipped during the last quarter of 2014 when it had pretty much matched Apple’s numbers.
At the same time, these smartphone trends weren’t as favorable for Apple, which saw its shipments fall.
From January through March, iPhone shipments dropped to the level of 61.2 million, putting the company in second place behind Samsung. Both of those companies remain well ahead of the third place manufacturers, which are Lenovo/Motorola. Together, they shipped a much lower 18.8 million smartphones during the same period of time. That said, closely behind those two was Huawei, which managed to send 17.3 million devices out the door of its own warehouse during the first quarter of the year.
This data was presented by Strategy Analytics, which assembled the shipment and market share figures for the top players in the mobile technology industry. According to that firm, Samsung took in a 24.1 percent global smartphone market share. It also placed Apple at 17.7 percent of the worldwide share of the market. Lenovo/Motorola held 5.4 percent and Huawei had a firm grip on 5 percent.
Strategy Analytics also went on to release a range of additional feature phone and smartphone trends figures with regards to their shipments around the globe. That helped to show that Microsoft’s performance in this sector is not nearly as good as what that company had likely been hoping to achieve. After all, the figures revealed that Microsoft had seen a 33 percent drop in its mobile phone shipments in the first quarter of 2015, when compared to the same quarter in 2014.
