Last fall, fashion commerce startup Monogram launched an iPad app that was aiming to be kind of like a mobile, shoppable magazine for those hip to fashion. It had all the makings of a great mobile commerce app: It looked good, it was easy to use, and it allowed viewers to buy all the latest fashions really easily. → Read More
Most people may not yet be using smartphones to pay for goods when they are out shopping, but that doesn’t mean that they are not glued to their handsets anyway. Some research out today from Google indicates that among smartphone owners, some 79% can be classified as “mobile shoppers,” using their devices for some aspect of the shopping experience, from finding store locations through to finding… → Read More
Visa believes that by 2020 more than half of all payments made in Europe will be done through mobile devices, so it is continuing to put more investment into how it will remain a central part of those transactions. In the latest development, mobile money specialist Monitise has announced an extended deal in which Visa Europe will license all of Monitise’s technology in an agreement it says will… → Read More
Shopping app shopkick, now 4 million users strong, made some big waves when it first opened for business in 2010. With its combination of in-store hardware and user-friendly mobile app that pinged customers with deals when they walked into a participating merchant, it looked like one crucial part of the mobile commerce puzzle — actually getting people to use their phones to get deals on goods… → Read More
Groupon got put through the meat-grinder last week as founder and CEO Andrew Mason defended himself and managed to hold onto his role after another terrible earnings quarter. Now Groupon is getting down to the business of streamlining: Mike DeLuca, the VP of sales for Groupon’s restaurant reservation system Savored (just bought in September), is now also VP of sales for Breadcrumb, the company’s… → Read More
Over the weekend we saw how much mobile impacted holiday shopping over the Thanksgiving weekend in the U.S. Today, Deloitte is publishing figures that show this is more than a U.S. trend. → Read More
People who own iPhones are much more likely to research buying decisions, comparison shop, and actually purchase things on their devices than are mobile users on Android, BlackBerry or Windows Phone devices, according to a new study which polled over 50,000 mobile device owners. 85% of iOS users employ their iPhones for shopping research, and 69% percent have actually bought something. → Read More
Editor’s note: Matt Cohler is a General Partner at Benchmark Capital. He’s responsible for identifying investment opportunities in Internet-related companies in addition to working closely with companies across the firm’s portfolio. You can follow him on Twitter here.
Building and controlling a marketplace is hard. Marketplaces consist of two sides: supply (sellers) and demand… → Read More
Branding Brand is an under-the-radar company whose name you might not know offhand, but whose platform powers the mobile commerce in several names you probably do know. Their client list includes brands like American Eagle Outfitters, Ralph Lauren, Sephora, Anthropologie, Dick’s Sporting Goods, GNC, Steve Madden, TigerDirect, West Marine, Timberland and Crate & Barrel, for example.
Given… → Read More
Mobile devices, by some estimates, will become a replacement for your wallet in the future, with NFC, dongles and sophisticated apps helping you buy things and manage the rest of your financial life, and with companies like Visa getting in on the action and eBay/PayPal expecting $8 billion in mobile transactions this year. But in reality, when it comes to using a mobile to buy something, most of… → Read More
Hot on the heels of the launch of its new Here mobile payment dongle in the U.S., PayPal is joining the ranks of companies looking to get a piece of the action in what will, this year, become the world’s largest smartphone market: China.
The company says it is “cautiously optimistic” that it will become the first non-Chinese company to get a license to process domestic electronic payments … → Read More
There’s been lots of debate about whether mobile apps or the web have the upper hand when it comes to making content for smartphones, and when it comes to using it. Some interesting insights from Nielsen out today on how in the case of mobile shopping, for now the main audience in the U.S. seems to be much more interested in using the mobile web over store-specific apps.
The research, which… → Read More
Another acquisition for Groupon, and a sign of how the e-commerce company is getting more focused on mobile as a route to future growth: it has picked up Kima Labs, which makes mobile barcode reading app Barcode Hero and mobile payment app TapBuy. The terms of the deal were not disclosed; we’re trying to find out.
The news comes just hours after news broke that Groupon had bought another mobile… → Read More
ShopSavvy, which you probably know as the barcode-scanning, price comparison app, is launching a major new feature today: SavvyListings, a mobile marketplace. With the addition, the company is hoping to turn its user base of some 20 million into customers who buy and sell items directly with each other. → Read More
Mary Meeker gave her annual slide presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit today. The standout slides for me are the ones which track the breakout growth of the mobile web, a trend she was focused on last year and has continued to track closely. Mobile just keeps on ramping up growth. I’ve pulled out five of her slides which illustrate this trend.
For certain large Internet services, mobile already… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
