Mobile payment, search catching on in U.S.
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Sprint and Cellular South separately announced wireless capabilities to find products and also a trial project to allow cell phones to serve as payment vehicles.
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ChaCha, a search engine powered by people, is hoping that it will be more popular on the mobile phone than it was on the Web.
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InfoWorld - Spending on mobile search and display advertising will skyrocket in the coming years in the U.S., finally making cell phones a viable vehicle for this type of online marketing, according to research firm The Kelsey Group.
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For the first time, Americans&#39; use of credit cards, debit cards and other electronic bill paying has eclipsed paper checks. The number of electronic payment transactions last year totaled
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Yahoo Jazzes Up Mobile Search  Google SMS started serving search results to mobile users in the US just a few days back. Now Yahoo! follows it with even more comprehensive feature set. Google SMS is currently text based for the results; Yahoo! jazzes them up with maps, website icons, as well ...
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Google Inc. last week filed a patent for technology that would allow users to make payments using text messages or SMS.
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PayPal Inc. and mPoria Inc. are rolling out a partnership that will let U.S. shoppers make retail purchases by cell phone and pay for them through PayPal.
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Yokel, Inc. has added new capabilities for local shopping search from smart phone devices including the Treo, Blackberry or Motorola Q, which all can now search Yokel&#8217;s database of local stores and products. For shoppers on the go or looking to compare prices on the fly, the service could be quite a time and money [...]
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(InfoWorld) - U.S. cell-phone users are staying away from mobile data services in droves, according to research company IDC. Almost three-quarters of respondents (72.5 percent) in an IDC online survey didn't use any data service other than text-messaging in the third quarter of this year, said analyst Lewis Ward. The company asked 2,506 teen-age and adult users about their attitudes toward data services. Data services are too expensive, respondents said. Mean consumer data spending on data services was about $3.70 per month, with the average young consumer spending more, according to IDC. But even among 18-to-24-year-olds, 47 percent complained about price. In general, U.S. consumers have been slower than those in other countries at adopting mobile data services. The first significant data service, SMS (Short Message Service), was a big hit in Europe and Asia before it was widely adopted in the U.S. Higher per-minute voice costs and lower data prices in those regions have helped drive adoption, Ward said. Today, SMS is a relatively bright spot for U.S. mobile data use. According to the survey, 47 percent of users sent or received an SMS in the third quarter. But Ward said he was surprised to learn how many of those messages come from subscription news and information services. About one-quarter of the messages in that period came from such services, which mobile users sign up for to receive news, sports, financial and other information, according to the survey. About one-fifth of consumers bought a ringtone during the quarter and one tenth bought a wallpaper or a game. But in a written-response portion of the survey, a small percentage of respondents not only didn't use mobile data services but were vehemently opposed to them, Ward said. Some were worried that they degraded voice calls by taking up network capacity, which is not possible on most types of cellular networks. One wrote, "I don't use any of these" followed by seventeen exclamation points, Lewis said. However, Ward sees the U.S. catching up to other parts of the world over the next several years as a more open market lowers prices. At the moment, carriers mostly control what content and services their customers can get, using a "walled-garden" approach. "As the mobile Internet matures, I think it'll become very difficult for carriers to control all aspects of the business model, as they more or less can in the current environment," Ward said. Third-party offerings, some of them free and supported by advertising, will force down prices and help increase adoption, he said. The U.S. is likely to even lead the charge on some mobile services. For example, instant-messaging services that U.S. consumers have widely embraced on their PCs are starting to catch on with the country's mobile users as well, communicating both among themselves and with PC users, Ward said. (IDC is a division of International Data Group, the parent company of IDG News Service.)
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Google has launched a search service for mobile devices, based on the SMS (short messaging service) protocol. Users can perform searches for phone numbers, dictionary definitions and product
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By Jason Gertzen, The Kansas City Star, Mo.  Jun. 8--On-the-go shoppers looking for the best price or a store stocking a hard-to-find product now can tap on their Sprint phones for tips.   Sprint Nextel Corp.
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Mobile SMS users in the United States received a new mobile search tool today courtesy of none other than Google (Quote, Chart). The new SMS service, now in beta at Google Labs, promises to help mobile users execute search queries via SMS (define).
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Data tracking and management policies lag behind the risk involved with mobile devices.
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By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS COLUMBUS, Ohio - People moving state to state, armed with cash and tricks to avoid scrutiny, are buying cheap prepaid mobile phones by the thousands with plans to sell them in Latin America and Hong Kong.
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AT&amp;T and Verizon Wireless want to go up against other current mobile operators and some possible future competitors, including Google, in next month&#39;s&#160;auction for 700MHz wireless spectrum&#160;around the U.S.The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday released lists of accepted and incomplete applications for the auction, in which it will sell licenses to frequencies that are set to be vacated by analog TV stations. It has accepted 96 applications and reported 170 as incomplete. The latter need to be completed by Jan. 4.AT&amp;T and Verizon are not surprise entrants but are the country&#39;s biggest mobile operators. If either carrier won a portion of the spectrum that has been designated for use by any device and any service, it would have to open up its network more than any big U.S. operator ever has. Verizon has already unveiled part of a plan to further open its network.They were on the list of incomplete applications, along with smaller mobile operators Alltel and MetroPCS. Cable operator Cox Communications, an archrival of the telecommunications giants, is also preparing an application. And cellular technology giant Qualcomm, which is already building a mobile entertainment network on vacated TV channels, is also gearing up to bid. Would-be bidders with incomplete applications have until Jan. 4 to complete their paperwork.Google earlier this year&#160;offered to participate in the auction&#160;in return for the FCC imposing open-network requirements. The booming Internet company&#39;s involvement could drive up bids all around, helping the government reap its hoped-for $10 billion payday for the spectrum.&#160;Google&#39;s application&#160;has already been accepted, the FCC said Tuesday. So has that of Towerstream, a wireless broadband provider to businesses.One surprise applicant yet to complete its papers is oil giant Chevron.Participation by Chevron in the auction comes &#8220;out of the blue,&#8221; said analyst Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates. However, oil companies and utilities are big wireless users, so he can see why Chevron might be interested.Chevron, like Google, is unlikely to actually build a network, though, he said. &#8220;I can see them potentially winning but then becoming landlords, renting it out,&#8221; he said. For both companies, that decision wouldn&#8217;t be based on the cost of building a network but on the experience required: Neither company has any history of constructing and operating a wireless network, a complicated undertaking.Also Tuesday, the agency extended the Dec. 28 deadline for upfront payments in the auction to Jan. 4 and pushed back a mock auction until Jan. 22. The auction itself is set to begin Jan. 24.Nancy Gohring, in Seattle, contributed to this report.
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Smart Phones &#038; Mobile Local (Mo-Lo) Search The WSJ (sub req&#8217;d) reports that Palm announced it wouldn&#8217;t hit its numbers &#8220;amid lower-than-expected retail sales of its Treo smartphones.&#8221; Hmmm . . . I wonder why? The %$#@ phones are so expensive &#8212; that&#8217;s why. By contrast the &#8220;Q&#8221; is being offered at a breakthrough price point by [...]
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Search patterns provide a surprising window into the minds of buyers and sellers in the current unsettled market