The Catalyst Code

Ignorance could delay contactless-payments adoption according to a heading in Cardline, which quotes some wags who suggest that contactless isn’t going as fast as it might because of “the technology’s unfamiliarity among merchants and consumers.” (CardLine, subscription required).Of course it is hard to tell whether potential customers don’t choose something because they are ignorant or […]

In its latest stick ‘em in the eye approach to the mobile industry Google came out swinging at a recent forum sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission Google Pushes Open Mobile Platform at FTC Event.
According to Rich Miner, who’s heading their Android mobile software platform initiative, when someone controls a platform “it stifles innovation” and […]

With the abrupt stop of the mating dance between Microsoft and Yahoo we can talk about other questions about the future of the online ad business.
Here are some of mine.
For social networking: How much will eyeballs however measured sell for on social networking sites—will they be more or less valuable than the […]

Ok, all of you are probably sick of us writing on mobile. But I thought the recent article in the New York Times Mobile TV Spreading in Europe and to the US was pretty interesting.
The Swiss it appears are going crazy watching TV on their little screens—40,000 a day which might actually […]

My post last week Blah, Blah Mobile… Blah, Blah Mobile really prompted a lot of discussion about the topic of mobile payments – and maybe even touched a few raw nerves in the process. I thought I would follow up with a few observations given the discussions that took place last week on and off […]

How many of you are growing weary of the same old proclamations from analysts on mobile payments? Citing “the need to work together so that everyone can win” Javelin remains bullish on NFC technology and cites contactless as the enabler for e-wallets that contain everything from cards to photos to medical records.
A recent […]

Mobile television hasn’t found a profitable business model just yet, mocoNews.net reports. The providers aren’t making much money even in Korea and Japan, where there are a lot of subscribers. Subscription-based services can’t generate enough revenue.
I agree with the article that we won’t ignite a catalyst reaction for mobile television until subscribers […]

Two recent articles on mobile bar codes illustrate the importance of a key catalyst principle—you have to get the pricing balance right for your stakeholders. A trial of mobile bar codes among students at Case Western University flopped in part because of price—students were unsure how much downloading the barcodes was going to cost […]

Amazon’s latest foray into the mobile shopping world has to be giving the bricks and mortar merchant a major headache. TextBuyIt allows a consumer to be in a store (or anywhere for that matter), text an item’s description or UPC code to Amazon and receive a free text message back with two product options, if […]

Two Gartner analysts have laid out a doomsday scenario in which Microsoft’s Windows operating system is in danger of collapsing under its own weight. They point to Microsoft’s smaller and nimble rivals such as Apple and Linux as more innovative.
They have a point—up to a point. Microsoft has taken on the huge task […]