February 27, 2013

SAMSUNG IMITATES APPLE PASSBOOK WITH NEW WALLET APP WITHOUT NFC

It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Apple’s Passbook app has a new fan in Samsung.

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Samsung introduced its new Wallet app. The preliminary details show that the Wallet app imitates Passbook in several respects. Apple’s Passbook app allows users to handle mobile payments and to store movie tickets, coupons and other items.

No NFC

NFC stands for Near Field Communication. If a device is equipped with an NFC chip, the device can have an app to support a tap-to-pay feature. Apple devices do not support NFC. I am not privy to Apple’s thinking on the subject, but my presumption is Apple concluded that most merchants prefer bar codes over NFC.… Please click here or the title below to read more.

February 27, 2013

CHINA’S HUAWEI SPEEDILY ASCENDS TO TAKE ON APPLE AND SAMSUNG

At the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Huawei introduced the world’s fastest smartphone.

Most Americans have never heard of Huawei. Huawei is no small fry; it is a large Chinese company. Its principal business is networking and telecommunications equipment. It has overtaken Ericsson to become the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world. It is also aggressively competing with Cisco in networking equipment. It employees 140,000 people and operates in 140 countries.

Huawei is new to smartphones but has made great strides. In smartphones, Huawei’s bread and butter has been providing white-label products to service providers. According to the research firm IDC, in the last quarter of 2012, Huawei was third in smartphone sales just behind Apple and Samsung.… Please click here or the title below to read more.

February 27, 2013