Mobile Payment Trends Are Shifting Quickly

According to the latest payment news dominating headlines all over the world, the trend of the moment in the financial world is the mobile payment platform. It seems like the mobile payment bug has bitten everyone in the financial world and beyond. Shoppers love this platform because of the convenience, it offers them. While merchants are into it because they want to maximize the shopping experience of their customers. The carriers and financial institutions are keying into it, because of the new market opportunities, it opens up for them.

Mobile payment offers a platform where goods and services are paid for, through a cell phone. It is a very convenient payment method for retailers. This is why many people are catching the mobile payment trends bug. When this payment platform is fully established, the days of cash, checks and credit cards as a means of payment for goods and services bought, will no longer dominate the mode of payment news headlines.

The source of funding for transactions involving mobile payments include credit cards, debit cards as well as ACH e-checks. Other mode of funding transactions in this platform are still being explored by industry experts and regulators.

This platform offers several variations to customers. Therefore, customers can choose the most convenient platform which best suit their needs. These variations include SMS-based transaction payments and near-field communications.

Another option also available on this platform is the direct mobile billing payment method. In this method, the amount charged for goods and services bought is deducted directly from the customer's credit. While the web payment where money is sent to the merchant account from the buyer's online bank account is also available on this platform.

This industry opens up a lot of potentials for financial institutions, mobile carriers and mobile software application developers. These key institutions are seeking new ways to improve the services offered in the industry. Thus new innovations which will make the mobile payment industry more convenient and reliable should be expected. This will improve customers' confidence in the industry, thus attracting more people who are skeptical about this payment platform. The resultant effect is rapid growth in the industry customer base, which will be beneficial to all the stakeholders in the industry.

The future of payment for retail transactions lies in the mobile platform. With improved and reliable services, many people will be ready to dump the traditional mode of payments for goods and services and embrace the new mobile payment trends.

Mobile payment trends are changing so fast; keep up by visiting our website and reading more articles.

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Mobile Advertising Trends: iAd's Compromise Against Competition

According to Apple's late chief executive, late Steve Jobs, in-house advertising on the iOS platform with iAd was 'not a get-rich-quick scheme for Apple,' but to provide an incentive to app developers reduce the cost of iPhone apps enough for user attraction. This meant that developers would retain sixty percent revenue from the advertisements while Apple would retain the rest.

The concept deserved success for its originality and brilliance. It was not the typical form of advertising, rather, as one review opined, it was 'an app within an app.' It was meant as an interactive and entertaining feature that would appear within the app and with minimal distraction for the user. It has been two years since, yet iAd has not gained favorable points with advertisers or developers. In fact, the announcement received harsh criticism. The New York Times quoted a senior representative of an advertisement agency stating iAds were not enough for companies to invest on a single platform. Also, iAds were supposedly in the interest of amateur developers who would use them as 'testing tools' to measure their apps' success.

Incidentally, it was the developer community who expressed disappointment. Referring to their iAd experience, they stated that they did not receive sufficient ROI for their apps, especially when there were just a few downloads. This was because monetary gains on the iOS platform were based on CPC (Cost per Click) and not CPI (Cost per impression). On the other hand, as developers sought to defend the quality of their apps, this led to an interesting development regarding how advertisements perceived revenue generation. Although developers claimed that iAd is an expensive option compared with others, they also admitted that the iAd quality was far superior compared to its competitors. By this, one can presume that quality does come with a price, and even though Apple had the upper hand, the iAd failing lay in that majority were willing to spend less and compromise on advertisement experience over choosing iAds.

The following year, when large corporate firms switched to other competitor platforms for advertising, Apple dropped the required minimum rate of advertising contract twice. This year, they lowered it down to USD 100,000. In addition, Apple decided to revise their iAd policy last month, by decreasing advertisement rate and increasing commission for developers by ten percent. However, they remain firm on their policy of disallowing location-based advertisements to third party developers. The latter stance has led to several analysts presuming that Apple plans to use the data for their own exclusive purpose, unlike their competitors who are sharing the data that has aided target advertisement. Whatever the reason may be, Apple can afford the risk as leaders in the market.

Doubt remains on the future success of iAd because of their 'exclusive' take and not allowing advertisements on other platforms. If Apple continues to hold their ground, then it will not be long before companies put in their major share of investment for advertisement into the iOS platform.

Socialjitney is an iPhone Application Development Company providing App Development services including iPhone Application and Application Development.

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SaaS Implementation Services and the Recent Trends

SaaS products were firstborn as point solutions and the most prominent startups in those times were UpShot and Sales Net. They were application-specific solutions which met specific needs of different businesses but were largely unappealing to the average customer. These providers had average products up their sleeves with limited resources and hence their ideas bombed. The market gradually gave way to new ideas to implement SaaS solutions and better products were offered which gave the original companies a tough competition to survive.

The performance of Sales force.com, the largest provider of SaaS services in recent times is open testimony of how SaaS has grown over the years. The company reported $13.8 million in revenue in the fourth quarter which is an astounding sum in itself. The total revenue stood at $289.6 million which was reportedly a 34% hike over the previous quarter. Sales force has reported strong earnings throughout the year too.

Recent reports by Forrester and other research agencies also pointed out that SaaS is projected to rise by more than 20% in the coming years. The SaaS market is now expected to grow faster in US and the whole western world since after recession, companies are wary to invest in infrastructure and hence prefer SaaS solutions and cloud platforms which can be scaled up and down. Most lean companies who have employee strength of less than fifty employees would never be keen to spend on licensed software and heavy infrastructure which would necessitate additional maintenance costs and high upgrade costs.

SaaS ERP and CRM solutions are both in demand since the SaaS applications along with platform as a service and infrastructure as a service solutions are projected to have the highest demand.

SaaS has been instrumental in helping companies to combat the ongoing recession. The companies opted for a SaaS implementation to keep a tight leash on the costs as well as the overall expenditure. SaaS applications have helped people to meet their IT requirements as well as save on additional costs. There are many companies who provide Custom SaaS Application Development services and are perfect with technicalities because of their vast experience with several domains. Most companies require SaaS integration for their existing applications so that they remain accessible in the cloud. Also, platform as a service solutions like AWS help companies to save on platform costs. The deployment is vastly simplified and the customer acquisition costs are greatly reduced. Most services offered by SaaS implementation include a "pay as you go" subscription licensing model which help companies to plan out their costs in advance.

Recently analysts mentioned that SaaS is the best medium to save on costs during the recession through Sales force and hence the company has managed to boost its revenue in spite of the odds. SaaS can surely make a mark in the IT industry under a difficult economy through accurate implementation and deployment. It is necessary to make the most of the investment here. Additionally, the existing IT infrastructure can be leveraged to the optimum level too.

Elan Technologies is a Leading Web Application Development company that provides SaaS Solution by experienced Subscription Developer with best technical support.

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