Amazon

Amazon rethinks mobile payments strategy

Only six months after launch, Amazon has appeared to have pulled its beta Amazon Wallet app, in the wake of a raft of poor reviews, having averaged 3.1 stars on the Google Play store. This product could only use Amazon vouchers and credit as a means of payment, and was consequently not well received by users, who did not see the point of it. Pointedly, all its main competitors seem to have more comprehensive products and strategies in this space – Apple Pay accepts … Read more…

Business Models for the Internet of Things

I unsuccessfully tried to avoid calling this blog “Business Models for the Internet of Things” as there is no shortage of web articles on this topic. A recent Harvard Business Review online issue on the Internet of Things has triggered a fair deal of debate on whether IoT radically changes business models or to what extent unlocks new value. Like all technologies in the hyped ramp-up phase, it is often difficult to separate fact from fiction, and prediction from fanciful guesswork. Here I … Read more…

Amazon Echo – Who’s listening & why?

As discussed previously in this blog, the proliferation of connected sensors will produce a stream of information back to a cloud-based service provider about what a person is doing throughout the day. Last week saw the announcement of two products that make use of sound sensors (i.e. microphones) as a key part of the product experience. The one that has got most interest, is the Amazon Echo. This is essentially a voice-controlled Bluetooth speaker with Cloud-based Artificial Intelligence in a similar vein to Apple’s … Read more…

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