Chances are you're doing mobile commerce today, even if you don't realize it. If you pay for your Starbucks via your smartphone with an app like Square, you're doing m-commerce. That's fairly obvious. But if a roving clerk at a store handles your checkout, that's m-commerce, too -- retailers such as at Nordstrom Rack are getting rid of cash registers and using iPod Touch- or iPhone-based systems instead. They may also be using handheld point-of-sales terminals from old-line prov ...read more
Twenty-five percent of the HDTVs that ship worldwide this year will be capable of connecting to the Internet, according to research firm Parks Associates.
From the article "Yahoo gets new rivals for Connected TV" by James Niccolai
Many consumers consider it an "appealing" idea to mesh TV with information from the Internet, according to the study. Web-connected TV shipments could total less than 500,000 in 2009, but top 6 million by 2013, E&Y said in the study, citing statistics from Parks Associates.
From the article "Internet TV could boom in the next few years, study says" by Agam Shah.
Demand for high-speed connectivity around homes will grow as service providers roll out "triple-play" services that include voice, data, and video, both live and on demand, said Parks Associates analyst Kurt Scherf. The ideal technology to provide it may vary from one country to another, and a key to wide deployment will be adoption by large service providers in the gear they offer consumers, he said.
From the article "ITU approves HomePNA standard," by Stephen Lawson.
Service providers want to help subscribers get good performance beyond the broadband piped into their homes, but they want to do it in an economical way, said Kurt Scherf, an analyst at Parks Associates, in Dallas.
"They've all been struggling with how home networking is going to work," Scherf said. That's one reason broadband companies are becoming a big channel for network gear, he added. "I think we're seeing a significant shift, and we're going to see that over the next ...read more