T-Mobile Executive Reportedly Cans iPhone 5 Rumor

The iPhone 5 is not coming to T-Mobile USA this fall, according to a provocative new report that casts doubt on a longstanding mobile rumor that has persisted for nearly ten months.

                                

TmoNews has obtained information suggesting that T-Mobile USA Chief Marketing Officer Cole Brodman has confirmed that the carrier will not debut the iPhone 5 on its mobile network – at least not for the remainder of 2011.

“Our business is working very hard to improve performance over the last couple of years and we’ve had some great success,” Brodman said, adding that “new products and value plans are fueling customer response.”

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Mobile Devices Claim 10% of All YouTube Downloads, Says Google

YouTube is a popular destination for mobile users. According to YouTube director of global platform partnerships Francisco Varela, mobile users are responsible for about 10% of all videos downloaded from Google’s ultra-popular video sharing platform.

                                               

Coverage from Mobile World Live at the Huawei Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2011, where Varela spoke, revealed that YouTube subscribers are using mobile devices to create content at a rapid pace..

More than two hours of video is uploaded from devices every minute, Google revealed, with Varela adding that Google and YouTube are “working to optimize use of the mobile network, for example offering different default quality depending on infrastructure type.”

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Intuit’s Mobile Efforts Look to Make Big Splash on The Small Screen

Intuit’s dominance in the realm of mobile solutions for business owners is growing at a rapid pace.

                                  

Late last week, the venerable name in business and financial management solutions, raised the curtain on its next generation of mobile products that will expand its portfolio of connected services.

According to Intuit, these range from innovations that will make it easier for the smallest of businesses to accept credit card payments, to others that will help doctors and patients communicate quickly, to a banking application that allows consumers to deposit a check from anywhere with just their mobile phone.

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RIM Rolls Out NFC-Based BlackBerry Tag

Delving ever deeper into mobile payments territory, Research In Motion has unveiled a new way for BlackBerry smartphone users to connect with one another and share multimedia content.

                                             

Meet BlackBerry Tag, which will be incorporated in the next BlackBerry 7 OS update. The new offering will allow users to share contact information, documents, URLs, photos and other multimedia content by – you guessed it – tapping their BlackBerry smartphones together.

According to a press release issued by RIM following the announcement Monday, BlackBerry Tag will also enable friends to instantly add one another as contacts on BlackBerry Messenger.

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comScore Highlights Growth Spurt in Mobile Social Media Audience

According to the findings of an insightful new report from comScore, 72.2 million Americans accessed social networking sites or blogs on their mobile device in August 2011.

                                  

Not only does that figure represent a whole lot of people, it also reveals an audience size increase of 37 percent over the past year alone. The study similarly showed that more than half read a post from an organization, brand or event while on their mobile device.

“Social media is one of the most popular and fastest growing mobile activities, reaching nearly one third of all U.S. mobile users,” says Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president for mobile. “This behavior is even more prevalent among smartphone owners with three in five accessing social media each month, highlighting the importance of apps and the enhanced functionality of smartphones to social media usage on mobile devices.”

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BlackBerry Gets Nod from MasterCard as PayPass-Approved Devices

This week, Research In Motion announced the BlackBerry BoldTM 9900 and BlackBerry CurveTM 9360 smartphones are the first SIM-based NFC smartphones to be certified by MasterCard Worldwide as PayPass-approved devices.

                               

According to a press release from RIM, the certification “was granted on the basis of the BlackBerry smartphones meeting the functionality, interoperability and security requirements of MasterCard.”

What does it all mean? With this certification, any MasterCard PayPass-issuing bank globally will be able to deploy MasterCard PayPass-enabled accounts to the SIM card of these smartphones.

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eBay Sees $5 Billion in Mobile Sales in 2011 via Mobile Apps, Smartphones

It is shaping up to be a banner year in mobile sales for eBay. This week, the online marketplace’s CEO, John Donahoe, revealed that eBay will have done $5 billion in business this year via mobile phones. eBay owned PayPal isn’t far behind with $3.5 billion in mobile payments for the calendar year.

                                      

The smartphone boom and corresponding popularity of eBay’s mobile applications have made this impressive feat possible. Donahoe admits that that eBay’s applications for iOS, Android and Windows Phone have been downloaded in excess of 56 million times.

“We are seeing profound change in how consumers are behaving and will behave. We believe we are at an inflection point,” Donahoe reportedly said this week at the Open Mobile Summit. Our perspective on mobile is that it’s not incremental, it is another screen in the shopping experience. It’s a consumer that is coming back more frequently and shopping more because now it can be done at any time of the day. We know it is driving consumer engagement and customer value.”

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Millennial Media Looks At Local Market Targeting in Q3 SMART Report

On Thursday, Millennial Media published its Q3 SMART report.

The latest in-depth report from the folks at Millennial Media highlights key areas of the mobile marketing realm that have made significant gains in recent months.

According to the findings presented in the report, local market targeting grew a staggering 50% quarter-over-quarter, and certain “post-click” options, like the ability to watch video, similarly grew 78% quarter-over-quarter.

Finance, however, was the top US ad vertical on Millennial Media’s network and has grown 356% year-over-year. Entertainment, on the other hand, was the top International ad vertical.

                                      

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Amazon Bringing Voice Recognition to Kindle Fire?

Six weeks ago, juggernaut online retailer Amazon introduced the world to the Kindle Fire, an Android-powered tablet that undercuts the majority of competing tablets with its introductory price of $199.

“We’re building premium products at non-premium prices,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said as the new Amazon tablet was introduced.

Upon first glance, no shortage of analysts saw the Kindle Fire as a quality tablet capable of eating into Apple’s dominant share of the tablet marketplace. Naturally, however, given that the tablet hasn’t yet reached consumers, it remains to be seen if buyers are equally as excited by the new Amazon tablet.

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Square Now Processing $11 Million in Mobile Payments Daily

Twitter co-founder and mobile payment platform pioneer Jack Dorsey announced over the weekend that Square is now processing close to a whopping $11 million a day in mobile payments. Not bad for a company that was only processing $4 million in mobile payments daily last July.


                                   










Dorsey made the announcement at the Techonomy conference in Tucson, Arizona.
Dorsey revealed at the conference his belief that Square’s success and rapid growth are rooted in the same fundamental factors that make Twitter work.

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Older Model iPhones Prove Top Selling Smartphones of Q3

Apple’s iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS were huge sellers during the third quarter of 2011 in the United States.

That information comes to use by way of the latest data from research outfit NPD Group.

NPD Group says that Apple benefited greatly from the sizable growth experienced across the entire domestic smartphone market.

The share of U.S. mobile handset sales that were smartphones topped 59 percent in the third quarter of 2011 – 13% higher than Q3 of 2010.

                                  

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