Smarter Speakers…and Payments

Strategy Analytics has released sales figures for voice assistants in the first quarter of 2018, and has reported that Apple sold an estimated 600K HomePod speakers.

If that number is correct, then Apple would have captured just 6 percent of the global smart speaker market, well behind Amazon and Google, according to a report by MacRumors.

During the same time period, Amazon shipped an estimated 4 million Echo smart speakers, giving it a 43.6 percent market share, and Google 26.5 percent with 2.4 million sales.

And year-over-year, Amazon’s sales increased by two million, and Google’s by 2.1 million.

Meanwhile, back at the payment settlement ranch ​PayPal is looking to square its game against Square and Stripe by buying iZettle for $2.2 billion in an all-cash deal.

According to a report from TechCrunch, the deal is expected to settle in Q3 2018, and would be PayPal’s biggest-ever transaction.

iZettle currently has operations in 12 markets, including several in northern Europe and Mexico, as well as in the U.K.

Pay As You Go

Thus far, this has been a pretty “mobilized” summer, with news breaking every day about the increasingly important role mobile computing is playing in our business and personal lives.

Today, we heard about the new Samsung Galaxy 10.1 tablet (even Walt Mossberg kinda likes it!), and TechMeme has early screenshots and guestimates about what the newer, smaller iPad’s going to look like.

But devices aren’t the whole picture. Infrastructure, application lifecycle management, security and privacy, and other related issues are key to mobile success. And, until these devices are enabled with an easier payment capability, money will be left on the table.

Lots of it.

Ironically, it’s been Apple that has been the closest to providing such a system thus far, with their Apple ID linkage to our credit cards.  But that’s just for the stuff I buy from Apple…what about everybody else?

So today, the Wall Street Journal’s Robin Sidel explained that more than a dozen big merchants are expecting to announce their plans to develop a mobile-payments network that would go up against the likes of Google.

Called the “Merchant Customer Exchange,” the new venture is being led by Wal-Mart, Target, 7-Eleven Inc., and Sunoco, and will attempt to find its way to a more standarized mobile payment system.

Though this may move may be an intended counter to Google’s Wallet capability on the Android platform, Sidel’s story reminds us we also have another joint venture called Isis, led by a number of telcos, as well as the recent $25 million investment by Starbucks in mobile payment start-up Square, also in the running.

And of course, let’s not forget some of those other existing systems which have millions of credit card accounts, including Amazon, whose 1-Click payment capability stands apart, and PayPal, with their unique person-to-person payments capability.

In this emerging roulette wheel of mobile payments, I’m not quite sure where I’d place my bets just yet, as the wheel’s just getting going.

But there’s a lot at stake.

I just attended comScore’s quarterly webcast on the “State of the U.S. Online Retail Economy.” For the second quarter of this year, nearly one in ten of all e-commerce dollars spent were done so via a mobile or tablet device.

Moreover, nearly two in five tablet owners have purchased something online via their device in the past month (a number more than double of that of smartphone owners).

One wonders if that smartphone purchasing number might not be a few percentage points higher were it easier to hand over one’s payment information via smartphone handsets.

Looking at the bigger picture for a moment, comScore also reported in the webcast that the channel shift to online appears to be accelerating, with online sales overall up 15 percent for the quarter, while on a comparable category basis, offline sales only increased two percent.

At the forthcoming IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Orlando (see this post for more details), IBM has some 20+ sessions that contain a mobile component, including one entitled “Mobile Payments, An IBM POV” (IB-3440).

That event will be held September 5-7 at the Walt Disney Swan and Dolphin Resort in Orlando, Florida, and you can learn more about it here.

Finding Your Way Through The IBM Cloud

Greetings from the Austin Hilton.  It’s the last and final day of SXSW Interactive 2010.

My digits are numbed, my pixels depixellated, my neutrons no longer firing…all of which is a good thing considering that I have to speak this afternoon here at the Hilton.

Folks keep asking me where I’ll be speaking about “Smarter Social Media,” and the answer is Hilton Salon D, 4th Floor.  The session’s an extended one, from 3:30 CST until around 6:00.

I’ll likely go on somewhere near the 5 o’clock hour, but it’s one of those sessions that it’s difficult to know exactly.  Look for our panel chair, Adam Lavelle (Chief Strategy Officer of search firm iCrossing), and follow the bouncing ball.

Of course, I’m never too busy to mention some great news emerging from behind the Big Blue firewall.

Today, IBM announced plans to go online with its commercial cloud service for software development and testing.

IBM, which already delivers a test and development cloud, is now allowing enterprise and government clients to test and develop on an IBM Cloud.

Following a successful beta program, IBM is working with partners in cloud management, cloud security and software development and testing support to provide businesses with a unique mix of flexibility, scalability, enterprise-grade security and control for development and test on the IBM Cloud.

Here’s a sound byte: The average enterprise devotes up to 50 percent of its entire technology infrastructure to development and test…and yet typically up to 90 percent of it remains idle.

IBM has seen that taking advantage of cloud computing within development and testing environments can help reduce IT labor costs by 50 percent, improve quality and drastically reduce time to market.

IBM’s enterprise-friendly approach to cloud complements clients’ current data centers and traditional development efforts, helping clients:

• Reduce provision cycle times from weeks to minutes
• Eliminate software defects by up to 30 percent.
• Reduce time required for test and quality assurance
• Enable rapid redeployment of environments across multiple IT projects

PayPal, the e-payment service, is extending its global payments platform, PayPal X into the cloud.

PayPal is working with the IBM Cloud Labs to allow its ecosystem of developers to not only innovate on the IBM cloud, but to quickly monetize new applications developed and made available via smart phones.

“We want to provide a very simple way to make payments available on all platforms including mobile applications,” said Osama Bedier, PayPal’s vice president of platform and emerging technologies. “The IBM cloud provides a platform for developers to come together as a community, to create, develop and test new applications. We look forward to seeing the payments innovations our developers create through the IBM cloud and bringing the wallet into the cloud.”

Having heard the interest being expressed in cloud testing by customers at the recent IBM Pulse 2010 conference, this is exciting news and also great to hear the likes of PayPay taking advantage of this new capability.

You can learn more about this and our new cloud partnership services here.