Amazon's Bezos Knocking on Wood for a Record Holiday Season
Even though retailers are better prepared to go up against Amazon this holiday season than in years past, that isn’t stopping Amazon’s chief from being perpetually optimistic. In an interview with Matt...
View ArticleWal-Mart Is Testing Mobile Checkout
Employees at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. are testing a new checkout system that allows shoppers to use their mobile phones to scan items as they walk through stores and pay at self-service kiosks, skipping...
View ArticleWith New Merchant Local Updates Tool, Foursquare Is Getting Serious About Its...
Three years, 20 million users and nearly one million verified merchants later, Foursquare is stepping up its business game. The company plans to revamp its dashboard tools for small-business customers...
View ArticleT-Mobile Customer Losses Continue to Mount
T-Mobile USA said it lost more than a half million of the most lucrative customers in the first quarter, casting doubt on whether the company can regain momentum after regulators blocked its sale to...
View ArticleVerizon Introduces "Convenience Fee" for Some Online, Phone Payments
Verizon Wireless today instituted a new $2 “convenience fee” for customers who make a single bill payment by telephone, and for some who pay online via the Verizon Web site. Customers can avoid the new...
View ArticleDon't Listen to Your Customers
Entrepreneurs need to be reminded that it’s not the job of their customers to know what they don’t. In other words, your customers have a tough enough time doing their jobs. – From Mark Cuban‘s 2011...
View ArticleGroupon Races to IPO Based on Strong Q3 Performance
Groupon’s third-quarter performance is clearly what made it possible to move forward on its $540 million initial public offering. The daily deals giant cut back on marketing expenses and still showed...
View ArticleThe Average Groupon Customer Has Purchased Four Deals
Groupon’s aggressive marketing tactics have been effective at getting new subscribers to sign up to receive its daily emails. Already, this year it has doubled its subscriber base to 115 million, up...
View ArticleSecrets From Apple's Genius Bar: Full Loyalty, No Negativity
Steve Jobs turned Apple Inc. into the world’s most valuable technology company with high-tech products like the iPad and iPhone. But one anchor of Apple’s success is surprisingly low tech: its chain of...
View ArticlePayPal Acquisition Hints at Company's Approach to the Mobile Wallet
EBay-owned PayPal said in February it will conduct several pilot programs over the next year to enable consumers to use their PayPal accounts–at the register. But it didn’t say how it would overcome...
View ArticleAT&T Web Customers Face Data Cap
AT&T Inc. said Sunday that it will begin to cap DSL data usage for its Internet customers and implement charges for anyone who goes over the limit. The Dallas telecommunications company said that...
View ArticleNew App Helps You Decide Whether to Buy or Walk Out Empty-Handed
Say goodbye to impulse buys. Smartphone applications are quickly becoming an easy way to judge a product on the spot, and figure out when to walk away if it’s not exactly what you are looking for....
View ArticleApple, Google and the Publishers: Here's How to Make Subscriptions Work
In recent weeks, we’ve heard growing concern from magazine and newspaper publishers regarding the challenge of providing content for mobile media while preserving their print franchises. The concern is...
View ArticleApp Way to Gripe (or Praise) About Service
Call it a flair for the dramatic or a love of telling and hearing juicy stories. Whatever the reason, people have a tendency to talk more about their bad customer-service experiences than the good...
View ArticleVerizon Upholds Tradition of Bumpy iPhone Launch
“We’ve been working on this for a very long time. We expect unprecedented demand, bigger than anything we’ve ever seen before. We feel good about being able to handle it.” – John Stratton, Verizon...
View ArticleCiting Unprecedented Demand, Verizon Asks Employees to Hold Off Buying iPhones
Verizon has asked its employees to strongly consider holding off on their own iPhone purchases to allow non-employees to get first crack at getting the Apple phones, which are expected to be in short...
View ArticleAT&T Makes the Most of Its Final Fling With Apple: 4.1 Million iPhones in Q4
The last three months of 2010 marked the last quarter that AT&T had the iPhone all to itself, and the carrier got the most it could out of it: It activated 4.1 million more iPhones. As Dan Frommer...
View ArticleVerizon's iPhone Picture Comes Into Focus
Although it doesn’t go on sale for another couple of weeks, potential customers for the Verizon iPhone now have nearly all the details they need to decide if the phone is right for them. That wasn’t...
View ArticleApple's App Downloads Are Booming. Apple's App Revenues Are…
A year ago, Apple’s customers had downloaded three billion apps. Now that number has jumped to 10 billion. That’s an astonishing jump, and it speaks volumes about the growth, and usage, of Apple’s...
View ArticleApple Hits New Milestones: 10 Billion Apps Downloaded, 160 Million iOS Users...
Apple said today its App Store has hit more than 10 billion downloads worldwide, equating to roughly 62 apps for each one of its 160 million iPhone, iPod touch and iPad users. The App Store is now...
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