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Archive Category: Smart mobile

Mobile commerce sales to grow to $6.7b this year in the US

eMarketer estimates mobile commerce sales will reach $6.7 billion this year in the US—a tiny fraction of overall retail sales but a 91.4 percent increase over 2010. Next year, sales will rise another 73.1 percent to $11.6 billion.

M-commerce sales are on a steep upward trajectory, thanks in part to increasing adoption of smartphones and rising mobile internet usage, according to a new forecast by eMarketer. The company forecasts that 37.5 million US consumers ages 14 and up will make at least one purchase on their mobile phone next year, up from 26.8 million this year. The vast majority of that group will be smartphone owners, at 97 percent in 2012. Overall, 72.8 million mobile users will research or browse items on their phone next year but not necessarily make a purchase.

“For years, the trend has been for consumers to research products online, then go buy in-store,” said eMarketer principal analyst Jeffrey Grau. “But as the industry improves its slate of mobile offerings, consumers are increasingly visiting stores to research products, then go buy something else on their mobile devices.”

The projected mobile sales are based on a meta-analysis of data from research firms as well as overall trends in mobile ownership and usage. M-commerce sales include sales of physical goods as well as travel and event tickets purchased via mobile, but exclude digital downloads and usage of mobile phones as a point-of-sale payment mechanism. eMarketer’s estimates for m-commerce sales do not include purchases made from tablet devices.

Recently, eBay stated that mobile shopping is mainstream now, and the company expects this holiday to be the largest mobile shopping season ever. Steve Yankovich, vice president of eBay Mobile, highlighted that shoppers are in the driver’s seat, with mobile technology putting the mall right in one’s pocket. In 2011, eBay expects to see nearly $5 billion in mobile sales (Gross Merchandise Volume); PayPal expects more than $3.5 billion in mobile payment volume.

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Google to enhance the airport experience with indoor map navigation

Google has shared that now Google Maps for Android enables users to figure out where they are and see where they might want to go when they’re indoors.

The development has emerged as the company announced the next generation of Google Maps for Android, which is first to get indoor Google Maps.

“With Google Maps’ “My Location” feature, which shows your location as a blue dot, you can see where you are on the map to avoid walking the wrong direction on city streets, or to get your bearings if you’re hiking an unfamiliar trail. Google Maps also displays additional details, such as places, landmarks and geographical features, to give you context about what’s nearby,” wrote Brian McClendon, VP of Engineering, Google Earth and Maps on a company’s blog.

“When you’re inside an airport, shopping mall or retail store, a common way to figure out where you are is to look for a freestanding map directory or ask an employee for help. Starting today, with the release of Google Maps 6.0 for Android, that directory is brought to the palm of your hands, helping you determine where you are, what floor you're on, and where to go indoors.”

Detailed floor plans automatically appear when you’re viewing the map and zoomed in on a building where indoor map data is available. The “blue dot” icon indicates your location within several meters, and when you move up or down a level in a building with multiple floors, the interface will automatically update to display which floor you’re on.

Google initially partnered with some of the largest retailers, airports and transit stations in the U.S. and Japan, including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Chicago O’Hare (ORD), San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and Narita International (NRT), among others.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, too, confirmed that it has tied up with Google to become one of the first airports in the world to give Android phone users access to indoor maps in Google Maps.

Airport’s aviation general manager Louis Miller said, “To us, good way-finding means the customer never has to ask for directions and easily can find a restaurant, a gate or the nearest restroom.”

Users of Android devices will need to update the Google Maps application in order to access these indoor maps, but no updates will be required after that one-time installation to get new or updated indoor maps.

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Kayak sees 5m downloads for its mobile apps in first nine months

Travel search engine Kayak has shared that its mobile applications have been downloaded over 10 million times since their introduction in March 2009. The company has witnessed over five million downloads in the first nine months of this year, representing growth of 97 percent over the nine months ended September 30, 2010.

The company offers mobile applications for the iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and other platforms.

Kayak, which filed for its IPO more than a year ago, shared the same in its latest amendment to Form S-1 registration statement as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission recently. As per the document, queries conducted on Kayak’s mobile applications accounted for 13.2 percent and 8.2 percent of the total queries for the first nine months of this year and the full year ended December 31, 2010, respectively. However, the company estimates that mobile applications accounted for less than one percent of total revenues during those periods.

Mobile queries were 13.2 percent of total queries in the first nine months of 2011, as compared to seven percent in the same period in 2010. In all, 679 million user queries for travel information were processed through Kayak’s websites and mobile applications during the first nine months of this year.

The company’s revenue for the nine months ended September 30, 2011 was $170.6 million, a 33 percent increase over the corresponding period of last year and its revenue for the year ended December 31, 2010 was $170.7 million. This increase in revenue is primarily due to increased travel queries on its websites and mobile applications, which increased 44.7 percent and 38.3 percent for the first nine months of 2011 and the full year 2010, respectively, over the comparable periods in 2010 and 2009.

Kayak attributed the increase in query volume to a variety of factors including its investment in marketing activities, the acquisition of swoodoo in May 2010 and checkfelix.com in April 2011, and its partnership with Bing Travel which began in March 2011. “The increase in query volume was partially offset by a reduction in RPM due to an increase in mobile queries, for which we earn revenue at a lower rate,” the company shared in the document.

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Hyatt Hotels’ mobile app focuses on clean design with an intuitive flow

Hyatt Hotels Corporation has introduced its mobile app that allows iPhone users to search and explore hotels using location-based technology, check-in and checkout, book new and view existing reservations, as well as join, find deals and track point balances through Hyatt Gold Passport, Hyatt’s guest loyalty programme.

The company shared that an Android app is currently under development.

The Hyatt Hotels app has been launched in order to simplify the travel research process for consumers on-the-go. The company acknowledged that researching travel options can be time consuming – especially if you are on the road and need information immediately.

“We wanted our app to offer a clean design with an intuitive flow so travellers can easily have all the most important details at their fingertips to make their travels as simple and seamless as possible,” said Bill Bernahl, vice president, e-Commerce, Hyatt.

Some of the features of the mobile app include: One touch access to key features; Access to weather, local time, maps and turn-by-turn driving directions to any Hyatt destination worldwide; Search, find and book hotel reservations based on rate, location and available amenities at properties around the globe.

Hyatt’s mobile offering also includes a mobile website, which allows guests to find and book a hotel, access special offers and make new reservations. This site, which is accessible at Hyatt.com on any smartphone, is available in five languages – English, German, Japanese and simplified and traditional Chinese.

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New mobile app to offer free airfare tracking and refund alerts

Yapta has shared that its core airfare price tracking and refund alert service is now available as a mobile application for iPhones.

The app, according to Tom Romary, president and CEO of Yapta, is a “powerful savings tool” that’s well-suited for today’s airfare pricing environment -- and for the busy traveller on the go.

The company says Yapta Mobile is the travel industry’s first free smartphone app that tracks airfare prices on specific flights from hundreds of airlines around the world and alerts travellers when the price on a particular flight drops -- or falls below a pre-designated price point.

The app delivers pricing alerts in real- time via push notifications that enable travellers to either book their flight from the airline website at a lower available price -- or, if the ticket is already booked, to claim a travel credit from the airline. The app also tracks the price of airline tickets that have already been booked -- and if the price drops below what was paid -- it alerts the user when they’re eligible for a travel credit from the airline.

Users can expect push notifications, email alerts, or tweets when prices drop.

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HotelTonight plans to reach 35 markets by end of 2011

Last-minute mobile hotel bookings specialist HotelTonight is in the process of finalising its $9.1 million funding round, according to documents filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to a report filed by gigaom.com, the company has raised $8.65 million in the round so far, with $446,000 of the offering remaining to be sold.

HotelTonight deals are currently available in 28 destinations. The company plans to expand this to 35 markets by the end of the year

The company has over 900,000 downloads on iPhone and Android devices.

Hotel Tonight, a company founded in December 2010 to provide easy mobile booking of same-day distressed hotel inventory, secured its $3.25 Million Series A investment in May this year. The funding round was led by Battery Ventures and includes participation from Accel Partners and First Round Capital. Additional investors included travel industry veterans Rich Barton, Erik Blachford, Brad Gerstner and Hugh Crean.

In another development, the company says it has launched the first and only mobile extranet for hotels.

For the first time, hotel managers can see sold rooms, instantly add rooms and close out -- all from one simple screen on a mobile device, according to the company. Hoteliers can manage same-day inventory from one simple screen that updates instantly.

Offering

The company believes that since it has worked on its entire platform for the mobile use case, it has many advantages over other mobile apps that connect to website back-ends. The initiative that is having the biggest impact on the industry, according to the company, is its 10-second, four-tap booking process, from app open to booking receipt.

“10-seconds wasn’t easy to pull off, but we’re looking to shorten this process even further,” says HotelTonight founder and CEO Sam Shank.

Each day, at noon local time, HotelTonight’s free mobile app publishes three last-second hotel deals, at discounts of up to 70 percent. The hotels are categorised by style (such as Hip, Elegant and Basic) to appeal to a wide variety of travellers. Bookings can be made until the sale ends, at 2:00 a.m., or until rooms sell out, in which case the hotels are replenished with the next-best hotel deal for that night.

In a recent interview with EyeforTravel, Shank mentioned that the company’s target market are consumers who didn’t necessarily plan to book a hotel when they woke up that morning. Sometimes, they book a hotel because something unforeseen happened, such as inclement weather or a last minute business trip. Overall, majority of purchases are driven by serendipity and spontaneity. In this regard, the company is generating primary demand and growing the size of the travel industry.

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Pricing pressure will remain strong: survey

A survey, featuring over 5000 consumers in the US, has indicated that travellers are both "emotionally and financially exhausted".

According to Atmosphere Research Group’s US Online Leisure Travel Benchmark Survey, most travellers expect to spend about the same amount in 2012 as they did this year, but more travellers expect to spend less (25 percent) than spend more (21 percent).

“Travel sellers will once again have to walk the leisure travel pricing tightrope. Hike prices too much, and your sales may fall off. Those who discount too much may make it to the other side, but it will be a very wobbly process — and profitability will not be guaranteed,” shared the company, which contracted with Survey Sampling International (SSI), a leader in consumer research panels, to field the online survey.

Other highlights:

• Mobile continues to sizzle. Almost half (49 percent) of US online leisure travellers own a smartphone, and 19 percent have a tablet computer. Without a doubt, the era of mobile travel has arrived.

Smartphone users show strong interest in booking flights, hotels, and cars from their devices. But what’s just as interesting is how smartphone-owning travellers want to use their devices for customer service processes. Why is this so interesting? This opens more right time, right place opportunities for ancillary product merchandising, such as product up-sells or cross-sells, highighted the company.

• Online reviews and ratings resonate with a minority of travellers. There is both good news and bad news in travel review-land. Thirty-eight percent of travellers view online ratings and reviews as credible.

The good news? A critical mass of travellers of travellers find these useful. This illustrates the natural affinity between social media and travel. The bad news? A majority of travellers don’t view ratings and reviews as credible. This is, no doubt, at least in part due to the existence of false reviews. Decisions like those of Starwood Hotels & Resorts and Marriott International to allow bona fide guests to post reviews will no doubt help the category — and aid these organisations‘ own websites as well.

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Lufthansa releases free flight-booking iPad app

Lufthansa has worked on its new mobile application for all iPad users - with numerous functionalities and services centred on flying with Lufthansa.

“Utilisation of these services and flight bookings on smartphones and tablet computers, like the iPad is coming increasingly to the fore in online sales,” said Marcus Casey, head of Online Sales and Mobile Services Lufthansa Passenger Airlines.

Casey added, “Through personalised customer interaction and service visualisation, the new app makes the most both functionally and optically of the iPad’s potential.”

Alongside the mobile.lufthansa.com portal, applications are already available for users of iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and J2ME smartphone devices.

German mobile interactive agency has developed this new app.

Central feature

The central feature of the iPad app is an interactive world map for users to finger-tap intuitively and explore the entire Lufthansa route network: The departure and destination airport are simply zoomed-in for the user to select a flight.

The map shows the requested route, making flight booking or flight planning intuitive, easy and fast. The destinations are graphically illustrated and accompanied by “exclusive and unusual travel information”.

Available, too, are useful and practical tips on different airports together with weather updates.

In the German market, the Lufthansa iPad app also furnishes updates on Lufthansa’s latest fare offers.

The “Experience Lufthansa” section provides a virtual insight into the Lufthansa world, inviting the user to interact and personally experience the aviation domain with a 3-D scenario of the new European cabin. One can also view videos, experience a 360-degree take on the A380 cockpit and a wide choice of free wallpaper motifs to download.

Additionally, the familiar functions - Check-in, Miles & More Mileage Account and My Flight Bookings - are all on the navigation bar.

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According to Canalys, this equates to a four-year compound annual growth rate for 2011 to 2015 of just under 50 percent. Opportunity This projected revenue growth presents an opportunity for mobile network operators (MNOs) to compete

A report has projected that app store direct revenue from the sale of apps, in-app purchases and subscriptions across smartphones and pads combined will hit $14.1 billion next year, up 92 percent from an expected $7.3 billion in 2011, and will reach $36.7 billion by 2015.

According to Canalys, this equates to a four-year compound annual growth rate for 2011 to 2015 of just under 50 percent.

Opportunity

This projected revenue growth presents an opportunity for mobile network operators (MNOs) to compete with vendor app stores. MNOs have a strong platform on which to offer an improved customer experience, leveraging their detailed subscriber data.

According to Canalys, large app inventories pose a problem for consumers who face overwhelming choice when it comes to the most popular app categories. A consumer searching for a weather app in the Android Market, for example, will find numerous possibilities, many of which have not yet received any user ratings or reviews. This gives operators an opening to provide an improved customer experience, by offering a narrower, yet fully vetted, choice of apps that can be tailored by user preference.

Consumer behaviour is driving a major shift in the mobile space, as end-user appreciation of the convenience of connected mobile apps and web services grows. Consumers typically take their mobile devices everywhere, opening new market opportunities for time- and location-specific services.

As more content and services are delivered over their networks, many MNOs are aspiring to move up the value chain, said Canalys Analyst Tim Shepherd.

Shepherd added, “When it comes to detailed subscriber data, operators certainly have the competitive advantage. While they must clearly be careful to respect their customers’ privacy, the data they hold leaves them well positioned to propose targeted marketing services, such as promotions and recommendations, as well as richer editorial guidance, better localization, improved security and simpler billing processes.”

With 419.0 million application-addressable smartphones and 43.3 million pads expected to ship worldwide this year alone, the market opportunity for apps is still growing rapidly. But for operators, there are other advantages to having a branded app store offering beyond direct revenue. For example, they can actively build consumer experiences that bolster customer loyalty. A vibrant app ecosystem could lure new customers, while helping operators upsell current customers to higher-end smart phones and larger data contracts, and could even encourage pre-pay customers to consider post-pay contracts.

“Some operators are concerned that having their own branded app stores will appear as a throwback to the "walled gardens" of the past,” said Shepherd. “While consumers would probably object to operators installing their app stores in place of vendor ones, there is no reason for operators not to pre-install their app stores alongside vendor stores to compete on user experience.”

Canalys estimates that the impact of mobile apps will extend to all aspects of the customer lifecycle, from acquisition and retention to lifetime value and profitability: “Mobile apps are a disruptive technology force,” said Shepherd. “Consumers will continue to value mobile device design and functionality, but the quality and availability of certain apps will progressively influence their buying decisions. By building on their strengths, operators can capture more of the market, while delivering a better customer experience.”

 

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Offering travellers access to the airlines' onboard stores through their smartphones

Onboard store technology specialist GuestLogix has launched a new travel application for BlackBerry SmartphoGuestLogix says it has become the first company to integrate smartphone usage with onboard retailing with the upcoming release of its latest platform offering.

Brett Proud, executive vice president New Markets and Products at GuestLogix, said, “By staying better connected with their passengers throughout the entire journey, airlines can establish new and meaningful ways to support their customers, invigorate their brand loyalty, and sustain ancillary revenue growth.”

Travellers can obtain the OnTouch Concierge application for BlackBerry smartphones by registering using an airline's website, an airport kiosk, or on BlackBerry App World.

The application is being released for private testing to airline customers in Q1 2011 with general release slated for early Q2 2011.

Features

To access the airline's Branded Onboard Store, travellers simply select the airline name, flight number and date on their BlackBerry smartphone, to view a list of available products and services specific to the destination for the passenger's upcoming trip.

Products and services made available for purchase on the chosen airline's Branded Onboard Store can include transportation to and from the airport; local entertainment and attractions; catalogue sales with convenient delivery; inexpensive communication options to stay connected; other destination offerings; and, of course, items consumed or used onboard such as meals, snacks, beverages, in-flight entertainment, and comfort items. Central to the BlackBerry smartphone application is the Travel Buddy Local Destination Guide, which is supported by live researchers who continuously review and update local listings and recommendations pertinent to the scheduled trip.

Also, before flying, travellers are provided the option of loading currency into their application by accessing an Internet payment service, obtaining a credit card pre-authorisation, using their financial institution, and/or visiting an airport currency exchange operator. Travellers can then select OnTouch Currency as the method of payment to pay for items onboard, which can be accepted by GuestLogix' onboard point-of-sale (POS) handhelds. OnTouch Concierge monitors the availability of sufficient funds for every purchase.

Flight attendants use the GuestLogix POS handhelds to accept the OnTouch Currency. The POS device automatically displays the transaction information on its screen. A receipt is printed and the flight attendants deliver the purchased product to the customer. If the item is to be fulfilled elsewhere a voucher is printed to retrieve the purchased item at a later date.

The complete transaction process, from the time an item is selected via the BlackBerry smartphone, purchased, and fulfilled onboard during flight or elsewhere, has been managed end to end to the latest PCI security standards.nes. The new mobile application, OnTouch Concierge, enables airlines to provide their customers with access to their Branded Onboard Stores, wherever they are, through their smartphones.

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