South Korea: Apple Watch just launched. Sales reached 2.79 million through June more than Samsung six watches with 2 million sold since 2013..

U.S. tech giant Apple Inc. officially began sales of its first smartwatch in South Korea on Friday, heralding a fierce battle with Samsung Electronics Co. to gain the upper hand in the wearable market. 

Along with six other countries, the Apple Watch is now available at online and offline shops in South Korea, roughly two months after it went on sale in major markets including the United States and China.

While the Apple Watch boasts similar key technologies as other wearables such as healthcare-related features, the device is unique in that it allows what it calls a "new kind of conversation," including sending a finger sketch to other users. 

It does not, however, come with a separate universal subscriber identity module (USIM) card that allows it to make calls independently like Samsung's Gear S or LG Electronics Inc.'s LG Watch Urbane LTE, but must be linked to smartphones through Bluetooth within a 10-meter distance.

Unlike the United States, the U.S. firm's Apple Pay system is not yet available in South Korea.

The Apple Watch has been gathering strong popularity abroad, with industry tracker Slice Intelligence claiming its sales have reached 2.79 million units through June. It hovers far above the around 2-million sales boasted by Samsung's six wearable devices launched since 2013.

Samsung earlier said that it plans to release its first round-type smartwatch, but it is yet to provide a detailed launch schedule, thus giving Apple the upper ground in the local market for the wearable segment. 

MWC 2014: CHARGE Anywhere will be demonstrating its mobile payments platform.

Francisco De Jesùs.

CHARGE Anywhere at GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Feb. 24 - 27.

CHARGE Anywhere® LLC, a provider of award-winning, secure mobile payment applications and retail POS solutions, will be demonstrating its mobile payments platform at the 2014 Mobile World Congress from February 24 – 27 in Barcelona, Spain. Transaction types demonstrated will include swipe, NFC, and EMV with PIN or signature via mobile phone or tablet.

CHARGE Anywhere offers a white-label EMV-ready mPOS platform with point-to-point encryption technology, the most advanced payment security available. The company's mobile solutions are designed for Windows® Phone, Android™, Apple® and BlackBerry® smart phones and tablets and flexibly integrate into any existing payment infrastructure.

"CHARGE Anywhere has been ensuring secure mobile payments since 2004 when we introduced the first mobile payment device on a BlackBerry Corporation pager," said Paul Sabella, CHARGE Anywhere's founder and CEO. "We are committed to delivering the most advanced payment technology possible and to continue to prepare our customers for what lies ahead in digital payments, such as the introduction of EMV."

The company will be located in Hall 7, Stand 7-J06 at MWC.

About CHARGE Anywhere: Founded in 2004, CHARGE Anywhere is a financial technology solutions company that makes mobile payments simple. The company is a leader in mobile payments with an award-winning MPOS platform, technology and services that deliver payment flexibility and security backed by deep expertise in global implementations. 

Processors, integrators, developers and enterprises leverage CHARGE Anywhere's white-label applications to enable MPOS that meet payment card security standards worldwide. Regardless of whether customers have legacy systems or the next generation mobile payment applications, CHARGE Anywhere's technology can enhance their capabilities.

SOURCE CHARGE Anywhere.

UK: mPowa new mobile payment service app.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

Ecommerce provider Powa has announced a new mobile payment service for the UK that is similar to popular US service Square. The new service, which is called mPowa, allows small business users to accept credit and debit card payments on their smartphones. Powa is backed by serial entrepreneur Dan Wagner. 

 Businesses are given a free card reader which plugs into the audio jack of their handsets. The reader is used in conjunction with an app. The company has not specified a launch date for mPowa although it claims it “will mark the first time a product of this type has been launched in the UK”. The service is similar to Square as well as a number of competitors which have been available in the States for some time.

Powa is pitching its service to small businesses such as plumbers, butchers or farmers’ market salespeople. Rather than being tied to a particular location using mPowa enables small businesses to take their products directly to customers without having to rely on cash payments. 

 The app, which is not yet available in smartphone app stores, is free (as is the card reader) but retailers must pay a fee of 0.25% of any transaction. The app will handle payments on iPhones, iPads, Android and BlackBerry devices. In terms of security, Powa says its new service is 1 PC1 compliance which puts it on an equivalent level to a bank website. The service also uses additional identity verification measures. The location of each transaction is recorded by the app which makes fraud “near-impossible” says the company.

mPowa

Google: Nexus S will come with chip and SW for mobile payments

WorldWideTech.  Francisco De Jesús.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt showed off a yet-to-be-released phone on Monday with a special chip that allows consumers to quickly pay for items by tapping the phone against a special terminal.

Schmidt said support for the technology, dubbed Near Field Communications, will be integrated into the next version of its Android software, "Gingerbread", which he said will be introduced in a few weeks.

"One way to think about it is, this could replace your credit card," Schmidt said, speaking at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.

Google had no immediate plans to develop any of its own mobile applications to take advantage of such payment capabilities, but Schmidt expected other companies to do so.

"My guess is that there are going to be 500 new startups in the mobile payment space as these platforms emerge," Schmidt said. He added that Google would partner with traditional credit card industry players, like payment processors, rather than compete with them.

While NFC technology has been available for years, interoperability with Google's Android software should make the technology more widespread. Google's Android was the second most popular smartphone operating system in the third quarter, according to industry research firm Gartner, behind Nokia's Symbian and ahead of Apple Inc's iOS software, which is used on the iPhone.

In a roundtable briefing with reporters, Schmidt said Google's ability to marry its smartphone software with Internet-based services enabled features like turn-by-turn driving directions and real-time foreign language translation, which distinguished it from rivals' offerings.

"We would argue that our platform is better for applications that are network-resident and that need that kind of power," Schmidt said.

Google, which controls roughly two-thirds of the Internet search market, is increasingly competing with Apple and with social networking giant Facebook.

Earlier on Monday, Facebook unveiled a revamped version of its messaging system that could make it increasingly competitive with Web-based email systems like Google's Gmail and Yahoo Inc's mail service.

Asked about Facebook's potential effect on Gmail, Schmidt said that additional competition would be beneficial, and chided the press for focusing too much on the competition between Google and other technology companies.

"You all are focused on the competition, as opposed to the fact that the market's getting larger," Schmidt said. "And there's no question that more entrants into communications technologies, mobile technologies and so forth, bring more people in."

Related post: 

Samsung Google Nexus- S pics and specifications

http://worldwidegadget.blogspot.com/2010/11/samsung-google-nexus-s-pics-and.html