Telecoms Tech

Forget £, $, €, or the whole host of other international currencies, the new kid on the block is virtual currencies; which live on the web and in our virtual wallets.

The mobile payments market has long been gestating in developed markets, and is now finally starting to gain momentum in terms of product launches and levels of investment from significant players across the financial services, IT, and telco markets. However, it is clear that the market is unlikely to reach a big bang moment, and will instead continue to evolve on several fronts at once.

Receiving your very first SMS – at the time it seemed such a marvel of modern technology. These days it’s something we take for granted as ever more advanced features are released for our daily use, but is the era of SMS over?

Digital advertising revenues climbed to a milestone high of $36 billion in 2012, according to the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report for the full-year of 2012.

It’s an interesting combination; a payment solution within your smart TV. Yet, for South Korean manufacturer LG and payments facilitator PayPal, it has only been officially announced this week. So is this a match made in heaven?

The majority of US citizens aren’t using mobile banking services because they simply don’t need it, and their banking needs were being adequately met without the use of mobile banking. That’s the big takeaway from the Federal Reserve (FRB), who has brought out a mammoth 79-page document on how consumers interact with mobile financial services.

According to the latest market study by Juniper Research, a growing user acceptance of push mobile banking and a sharp rise in media tablet adoption will drive users of transactional mobile banking services to almost 200 million in 2017. The tablet user base will represent approximately 19 percent of total mobile banking customers in 2017, compared to 9 percent this year - as consumers engage in increasingly mobile lifestyles.

At Mobile World Congress 2013, I attended a distinguished panel about The Future of Communications, showing that in today's communications, we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg of what's lying ahead.