Mobile Technology: A Thriving Industry
Mobile Technology
A look at the latest mobile technology news indicates that the platform is thriving as it continues to provide the stage for novel new applications. While many of the highly visible and hyped up mobile apps are of limited usefulness – usually to satisfy some whimsical consumerist craving – developers continue to come up with more industry defining software, many aimed at providing solutions to real-life issues or upping the ante and breaking through the status quo.
On September 19, 2011, Google publicly launched its much talked about mobile payment system, Google Wallet. The system is Google’s play to replace credit cards with mobile phones. The phones – “wallets” – will contain special microchips to store cash or credit account information and can be used to pay for purchases much in the same way as credit cards. The service has been tested in New York City and San Francisco since the middle of this year, and on YouTube there are promotional videos featuring Seinfeld star Jason Alexander whose character George Costanza is known for stuffing his wallet with everything from coupons to receipts and notes.
MasterCard is also making mobile technology news for its efforts to establish mobile payments in the consumer markets. MasterCard is a partner in Google Wallet, providing payment facilities in various outlets. It also supports the NFC initiative called Isis. But the company has also launched its own projects aimed at integrating mobile phones into the retail shopping experience. Among their explorations into mobile retail are the use of QR codes to purchase products directly off TV shopping programs, audio scanning technology to push relevant content based on embedded audio signals emitted by television commercials, and the use of motion control to recognize hand gestures and facilitate the sales process.
In California, technology company Frost & Sullivan has recently released a white paper that examines the problems and challenges of fleet management and suggests how mobile technologies can provide solutions to these problems. With the present state of the economy, trucking companies are faced with having to balance the bottom line and still comply with government regulations. The paper suggests how already available mobile technologies can be harnessed to capture data such as driver behavior and vehicle diagnostics, and then transmit these to regulatory bodies via the wireless networks.
The new developments in mobile technology also benefit the healthcare industry. Recent news announced the awarding of a patent to Cell Trak Technologies, a mobile solutions provider for healthcare, for a mobile app that helps manage mobile staff scheduling, tracking and travel management, electronic visit recording, health plan management and communications. The app for home and community care was first launched in2006, and is now widely used all over the country by thousands of home care professionals to manage the health care processes of more than a quarter of a million patients each day.
These exciting new developments are just the tip of the iceberg. More mobile technology news is being made to address a wide variety of needs across a wide range of industries and sectors, and the best is yet to come.
