Category: Technology News

Mobile shopping is rising among APAC consumers

| October 8, 2015

Shoppers throughout the 13 nations that make up the Asia Pacific marketplace use smartphones more regularly.

According to the results of a recent survey that was conducted by Visa, consumers throughout the 13 countries that make up the APAC marketplace have claimed that they have been using mobile shopping to make purchases at a considerably greater rate than ever before.

In fact, the survey results showed that the gap between e- and m-commerce is notably shrinking.

The survey compared the use of mobile shopping this year over what it was in 2014, and it determined that the market had experienced an increase of 22 percent among consumers in Asia Pacific countries. Moreover, the research also determined that there are now more consumers in that region of the world who are paying their bills and who are making product purchases by way of smartphones and desktops than there are those who make those same transactions over desktop computers.

The mobile shopping figures were published within the 2015 Regional E-commerce Monitor Survey from Visa.

Mobile Shopping on the rise in Asia-Pacific regionThe countries in the APAC region that experienced the largest amount of growth were Indonesia, China and Taiwan. They saw a growth of m-commerce use of 36, 34 and 28 percent, respectively. These figures were based on the responses that were given by 11,760 respondents who reside throughout the 13 different Asia Pacific nations. Also among those countries are Vietnam, India, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia.

The Visa survey found that consumers in Thailand were equally as likely to make a purchase over a mobile device as they were over a laptop or desktop computer. The report on the research also indicated that the gap between the use of mobile and desktop computers for commerce was decreasing in several countries including South Korea, China and Indonesia.

According to Conor Lynch, the director of regional e-commerce at Visa, the findings of the survey have revealed a rising “norm” in making purchase through mobile shopping channels. “As consumers get more comfortable using their smart devices to research, browse, and purchase, m-commerce should soon overtake traditional e-commerce habits, strengthening this channel of engagement between consumers and retailers,” he said.

Coloring books get an augmented reality face lift from researchers

| October 7, 2015

This traditional activity for children can now bring on a 3D experience through mobile devices.

There isn’t anything new about having a child sit down with a box of crayons to bring a color to a black and white image in a coloring book, but researchers have now added augmented reality to the experience that could allow kids to see a three dimensional version of their projects through the screens of smartphones or tablets.

With the right AR app, the drawing is monitored and a child can enjoy an enhanced experience from the activity.

For example, if a child were to fill in a coloring book image of an elephant, just as he or she usually would, the augmented reality would make it possible for the colors to be filled in on a tablet or smartphone screen in real-time and can bring an animated, 3D version of that elephant to life on the device screen. That animation is then integrated into the video that the child can watch.

The augmented reality app maintains its core focus on the typical coloring activity while enhancing what is viewed.

Augmented Reality - Image of Coloring PencilsOn top of the image the child is coloring, it creates an AR overlay on top of reality that enhances the engagement between the child and the image being colored. The preliminary user testing conducted by researchers was conducted with adults instead of children. What they determined was the majority of users said that their motivation for drawing within the coloring books was increased through the use of the app. In fact 80 percent of the participants in this study said that using the mobile app increased the connection that they felt with a character in the book.

The researchers were from ETH Zurich, the EPFL university in Switzerland, and from Disney. They made a presentation of this new AR technology based experience in Fukuoka, Japan, at the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2015).

While the research is currently being shared primarily within scientific circles, it has already made its way through the tech transfer process, which has already brought to life the Disney Publishing Worldwide and Bendon partnership augmented reality product that was launched earlier in 2015, called “Disney Color and Play”.