Apple is starting to jump on the bandwagon and follow what Google and Microsoft have done with mobile-payments. Right now Apple is known to be on the “sidelines” of the mobile-wars because they are letting their competition do the research for them. It is stated in the article that Apple is completely comfortable being “number two” right now. Mobile payment is a way that consumers can pay for their purchases with their smart phones instead of having to carry their wallets around.

These mobile payment transactions from the smart phones are suppose to exceed $600 billion by 2016 and just this year reach $172 billion. Google first started this mobile payment, which for their Androids is called the Google Wallet. Last month Microsoft said they are going to release a digital wallet service that will store the credit card information of the handheld user and their mobile payment information. Apple will release their part for mobile payments once they research more about that market. Right now they are just using the wait and see approach. If and when Apple enters the mobile payment arena they will have an advantage over the other companies because they have sold more than 200 million iPhones. They also have 400 million credit cards registered with their apple store.

When Apple decides to launch their mobile payment application do you think they will succeed over Google and Microsoft because of their market share now?

 

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304830704577493261395358658.html?mod=WSJ_mgmt_LeftTopNews

I read an article from the New York Times by Ian Austen called “In Setback, RIM Delays Blackberry’s Next Version.” We all know that Blackberry smart phones, iPhones, and Androids are three main smart phones but according to this article iPhone has 73% of the smart phone market. Blackberry has been struggling these past years to make a profit and for the second time they are delaying the production of their Blackberry 10. The first time RIM delayed the production they resulted in a loss of $518 million last quarter. Now analysts are doubting RIM because of them delaying the production once more. RIM has decided to cut 5,000 jobs to reduce their operation costs by $1 billion. They have laid of already 16,500 employees. Because of RIM delaying the release of the Blackberry their revenue has went down 43%. As of right now they need to do something in their company that will result in a profit because their stakeholders are the most worried. RIM’s CEO Thorsten Heins stated that they are delaying the release of the Blackberry because they want the quality to be the best as possible. He also said, “I am confident that the first Blackberry 10 will provide a groundbreaking next-generation smartphone user experience.” I hope his statement is correct for the sake of RIM’s earnings.