Japan's M-Commerce

In the era of technology, mobile phone is becoming more and more essential in part of our daily routine. There are over 4.6 billion active mobile subscriptions in 2010 (greater than the world’s population) and over a billion mobiles are sold annually.

For this post, I will be introducing you some interesting mobile service in Japan, that hopefully, we will be able to see it in Australia and other countries around the world.

Few years ago, the new mobile payment system was introduced in Japan; it allows people to pay for goods and services without any cash or cards, people just simply pay by swiping their cell phones on an electronic pad and that’s all… no paper work, no signature needed - everything is so convenience.

Just check out this video:

And how about applying this to a business?

McDonald's has created a mobile coupon system that is used in an astounding 15% of all transactions in their stores in Japan. The site has 14 million users, and the coupon/payment application they developed has been downloaded 4 million times. From this amount of users, surely McDonalds had made people talking.

On the other hand, having mobile payment system is convenience, but how about if your mobile were stolen, as it acts just like a credit card (and perhaps more valuable), this could lead to a disaster. All of your account details etc. stored in the phone can easily be taken. And possibly in the future, if people can hack your computer then your phone will be next!



Source: http://www.slideshare.net/shanew/the-mobile-industry-ecosystem

Teacup 2.0

Google Chrome OS

Many of you might be familiar with the Google Chrome; a speedy web browser that was launched by Google in 2008. It was designed for “people who live on the web” — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends.

With this changing trend, Google exploited this opportunity and launched the Google Chrome Operating System in 2009. Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system initially targeted at netbooks (considered being a potential threat to Microsoft). Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects, so when you start up your computer you can get onto web in just a few seconds.

Chrome OS is free unlike Microsoft Window, it will put all your applications, pictures, music personal data - everything – online, in the Google “cloud,” anything you put on the machine is available to you anywhere, given an internet access. The clever thing is it encourage you to hand over your personal information and it also ensure you spent even more time online.

However, the biggest flaw is that without internet Google Chrome OS is nothing better than Microsoft. Even more, your privacy become your major concern as all of your information is being stored online; this means Google know the patterns of your calendar, who you are contacting with and all your searches. By making sense of that data, they will be able to hit you with targeted adverts. So backing to the same old topic - Privacy - Do people knowingly trade privacy for convenience?

Check out the following video to see how the system works:

And a demo:

Teacup 2.0