Jon Byous Business Communications

In a New York Times article yesterday, it was indicated that the market for virtual currency will reach over $2 billion this year.  More interesting is the fact that big-name brands are eying the concept to insert their message in mobile apps like Booyah’s MyTown, signaling a brand new flavor of unique mobile marketing. Virtual [...] […]

Tyfone is a relatively new startup that’s making movements in the red hot mobile payment and commerce sector, and today announced a $5M second round of funding to further its cause. While many startups and even big-name financial companies are busy trying to compete in the emerging mobile commerce field, Tyfone stands out — at [...] […]

The International Data Corporation (IDC) has released numbers related to smartphone shipments, indicating massive continued growth and consumers’ appetite for full-featured mobile devices. According to the research, vendors shipped 119.4 million smartphones for the first six months of 2010, compared to 76.8 million smartphones for the previous year.  The IDC […]

The video sharing site Tudou, based in China, was indispensable when I decided to catch up on the first three years of Mad Men, marathon-style, before the current season began. Soon consumers will be able to watch Tudou–which has hot shows and movies–on their mobiles. It’s another reality check for video content owners who still [...] […]

Microsoft has leaked what’s being called the first “teaser video” for the company’s upcoming Windows Phone 7. On Friday, Microsoft unveiled a brief video ad that, rather than be broadcast on television, was displayed during a “secret-cinema” showing in London. However, instead of showing off the new device’s myriad bells and whistles, the makers of [...] […]

This could be the year that a single advanced Android will take over the world–or at least take a bite out of Apple. 2010 has certainly been HTC’s year. In the United States, the Taiwanese maker of cutting-edge Android handsets has drawn fanatical reviews for its Incredible (at Verizon) and EVO (at Sprint). In Europe, its [...] […]

As LBS continues to flourish, location-based advertising has picked up major steam as well.  New data out from ABI Research suggests marketers will spend $1.8B on the medium in 2015, up substantially from the $42.8M expected for 2010. While the concept has been around a while, marketers were unclear how to best leverage the technology. [...] […]

Google continues to work hard in trying to bring a rich mobile search experience to its users, and new ad-units rolling out today are a perfect example of the evolution. Back in July, we covered Google’s introduction of expandable ad-units that incorporate maps for click-to-call and other rich functionality.  While it was a great first [...] […]

According to the latest NetApplications report published this week, iOS now is the third most-used operating system on the internet. Based on the findings of the “Global Market Share Statistics,” browsers powered by iOS comprised 1.13% of the total last month, bumping “all flavors of Linux” – which accounted for only 0.85% – and surpassing [...] […]

In June we reported that the National Wildlife Federation had launched a mobile donation campaign to benefit creatures affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Today I’ve heard some of the results of the text-messaging, or SMS, campaign that go beyond raising funds. While the NWF declined to give exact monetary figures, [...] […]