Google's NFC trail in SF and NY

Google introduced their nexus S device with NFC capabilities a while ago, its time to make use of those devices for trail in two major markets San Francisco and New York. The size of the trial is very small with limited retail outlets participating, but it provides a test ground for Google to test payments and beyond. This will be first trial in US with NFC handset, so the industry is very keen on looking at the prospects. US major carriers initiative ISIS planned to do a trial in Utah with great support from public transit authorities. This trial would be more to test the technology aspects than consumer facing experience. Sprints mobile wallet solution from cardinal commerce may extend the NFC capabilities. Lets hope the trial revives the sprits of mobile payment enthusiasts.

Intel blames Nokia for ill partnership

The blame game starts when things do not work properly, this is no different. But the fact is that the proposed partnership indeed is very strategic at that time, i believe it is the execution where both the parties failed. There are mistakes like Intel pushing for Moblin when there is solid mameo platform with Nokia, the integration of mameo and moblin to meego took long time, which gave ample time to android to dominate the market. Intel was in a lead role, where Nokia is more co-operative. I think it will be same outcome even Intel chooses other partner.

Tabbedout and Micros partnership

Tabbedout is mobilizing the current Micros’s PoS devices with mobile extensions. The end value proposition is that you don’t have to hand-out your credit card to bar staff as well as mix social bells where you update various network about your where about. As there are many existing PoS available with many bars and restaurant chains, the business owner need not to invest in new technology.

For Operators in europe, we know that they cannot work without payment network like Master card , Visa ..etc. operators can partner with Verifone or similar partner in Europe to extend their PoS reach to mobile devices by offering similar service without waiting for NFC. they can get some small percentage of transactional revenue and may find some solutions in social commerce Arena.

HP veer on AT&T

HP announced their Veer device during the dev conference in San Francisco during March. I believe, HP tried to differentiate their device compared to all bigger smart phones. It is almost in credit card size, but it can handle all the apps and services without a flick. I don’t feel like it’s a small device when I use apps like maps, or face book. I was impressed with the hardware. But, I am not sure the target segment for this device, I believe it will be mostly used by professional segment who are into technology. Lets hope, HP gets the deserved attention in much crowded handset market.

ISIS turned into mobile wallet

The U.S operators were highly ambitious in terms of setting up their own payment network by competing with traditional payment networks like master card and Visa. Now, they realized that it might be challenging if they have to bring the required scale. Hence they turned into mobile wallet solution. It may be bitter truth that the payments ecosystem may not shell any transaction revenue to operators. Its worth to investigate value added services on top of payments like mining the transaction history or collecting fee from provisioning the cards. At the same time we should not forget that the inherent threat from Apple and Google in the payments space.

Adapteva's break though accelerator chip

Today, the smart phone or tablets are designed to handle limited computing and offload it to server-based infrastructure when necessary. Adapteva's 64-core accelerator chip is technology break though in low-power high computing chips. Even the size of Adapteva's 64-core chip is twice the size of ARM chipset. They proved that accelerator chip is reality without consuming much power or the space. But the real-challenge would be to convince OEMs and the ecosystem with the need for more computing power on the mobile devices.