Photo: @cdharrison / Flickr

Mobile payments company Square is beginning to gather some serious momentum. The company is reportedly processing $1 million dollars in transactions everyday, confirming that adoption is growing at a steady pace.

Impressive growth

Towards the end of last year, Square was processing a couple of million dollars each month, suggesting they’ve continued their steady – if not meteoric – growth. The $1 million (£615,000) milestone was tweeted by the company’s founder, Jack Dorsey. It’s almost poetic that’s the manner in which he revealed his startup’s milestone, in that he co-founded Twitter.

Transaction fee dropped

Last week, Square also announced that they were dropping their fee per transaction to just $0.15 (about 10p). The startup hopes this will goose the number of transactions and the number of subscribers using the service, which will in turn further increase the volume of transactions processed daily.

How does Square work?

What makes Square so unique – and of interest to us – is how it works. The service uses a dongle that plugs into the earphone jack on your iPhone, iPad or Android smartphone. Once plugged in with the Square app downloaded, you can process a transaction by swiping a buyer’s credit card right on your iOS device.

It’s effectively a replacement for a credit card machine that leverages the modern smartphone as its platform.

You’re not alone

Square isn’t alone in this space, though, with VeriFone making a play for the space with their PAYware system targeted at business. It also stands to reason that credit card companies like Mastercard, VISA and American Express won’t sit to the side while these new mobile payments solutions look to erode their business.

To some extent the same can be said for PayPal, who built their business on top of eBay, before expanding across the web and onto mobile platforms, too. We suspect mobile payments will become big business, and Square is already leading the charge with that.

Photo: re-ality / Flickr

While the talk of the day is no doubt the unveiling of the Apple iPad 2, what struck me hardest about the Apple press conference held on 2 March was the company’s propensity for talking up big numbers, and showing off its achievement. It’s almost as if Apple throws their sales numbers around to show off, but it puts in perspective just how remarkable the company has been, and what a sales machine it has become. Below are some snapshots.

100 million iPhone, 15 million iPads

Apple announced that they recently sold their 100 millionth iPhone. For a handset that costs a ton of money, subsidized or unsubsidized, that is insane. What’s even more insane is it has only been on sale since the middle of 2007, meaning the company has achieved these numbers in less than four years.

One step further down the line of Apple’s touchscreen revolution is the iPad. While people – consumers and analyst alike – were unsure of how successful it would be when it first launched, Steve Jobs took to the stage at the Apple press conference to say that the tablet PC had moved 15 million units in 2010. The device only launched in April, so those sales numbers represent nine months worth of sales, not even a full calendar year. To put that in perspective, that gave Apple 90 per cent of the tablet PC market, and sold more units than the entire tablet market had prior.

65,000 apps

The next major stat the company revealed at the Apple press conference was that there were over 65,000 dedicated iPad apps. This means the Apple iPad 2 will hit the ground running with respect to applications. Never one to shy away from taking jabs at competitors, Jobs pointed out that, by comparison, Android Honeycomb had only 100 apps.

To be fair, Honeycomb only just came around, but again Apple’s strategy of throwing big numbers around to show how far off the pace their competitors are is working. Whether the Apple iPad 2 will have the same level of success its predecessor had is as yet unknown, but what is clear as day is the success prior to it shows Apple has a ton of momentum.

For a blow by blow of just how the Apple press conference went, including big stats and all, have a look at Engadget’s blog on the event.

Photo: Yutaka Tsutano / Flickr

When Apple was teetering in 1996, Sun Microsystems nearly purchased the company. Had it done so, Apple would likely be a very different group to the company it is today. What’s most refreshing is how Sun’s head honcho from the time readily admits he wouldn’t have allowed Apple to become the company it is today had he managed to acquire it.

No iPhone for you, sir

When quizzed during a dinner of the Churchill Club at a convention centre recently, Sun’s CEO at the time Scott McNealy admits he would have limited the company’s potential had the Apple acquisition gone through. He says: ‘If we had bought Apple, there wouldn’t have been iPods or iPads… I’d have screwed that up.’

This nearly happened, though

What people do not realise is how close this Apple acquisition was to happening! Ed Zander, who was a top ranking executive and eventually president at Sun Microsystems during McNealy’s tenure, admits they were painfully close to acquiring the house Steven and Steve built. He says: ‘Honest to gosh, I was at an analysts’ meeting in San Diego on a Tuesday morning and was getting ready to announce that we were going to buy Apple.’

What stopped the Apple acquisition? A clause-happy investment banker on Apple’s side, McNealy added. ‘There was an investment banker on the Apple side, an absolute disaster, and he basically blocked it. He put so many terms into the deal that we couldn’t afford to go do it.’

And that is the story of how the iconic Apple CEO nearly didn’t return, and the iPod, iPhone and iPad trio nearly never existed.

The tale of the acquisition

The Sun CEO’s honesty is refreshing for numerous reasons, but it isn’t uncharacteristic of any acquisition. Furthermore Apple is not the only company that would have been something different due to a near acquisition. Tech icons like Google and Facebook were nearly acquired years ago, too, and it stands to reason they would never have become what they are.

On the other hand, one cannot help but wonder how services like Flickr, or Mint or any number of companies acquired daily would have turned out had it not been for them being acquired. Being pretty fond of my iPod Touch I send my thanks to you, Sun, for never having bought Apple.

Photo: Gubatron / Flickr

While the iPhone and the Blackberry are sexy enough that they’re attracting pretty girls, the high-flying Google Android mobile OS platform is too geeky to attract customers of the fairer sex. That’s what INQ’s head honcho says, and even though his company’s devices are built on Google’s OS, he thinks this is a problem.

This is not nightclub chic

Speaking to Mashable, INQ CEO Frank Meehan said that: ‘If you go to a nightclub in any city in the world, the pretty girl has an iPhone or a BlackBerry.’ He continued, saying: ‘She doesn’t have an Android phone. She has no emotional attachment to an Android phone. It’s too complicated. It’s a geek device, it’s all wrong.’

Clearly that doesn’t bother him

From anecdotal evidence, the INQ chief’s statement has basis in truth, but it’s surprising to see a man whose own current flagship devices are built on this platform being so forthright about it. Admittedly, INQ is small fry when compared to other Android manufacturers like Motorola, Samsung and HTC, but that doesn’t give his statement any less merit.

He argues that: ‘Android manufacturers are all just focused utterly on the tech, because they’re all hardware guys. They don’t get software. They’ve tried to outdo Apple with hardware, but the problem is the customer doesn’t care.’ Citing Samsung’s Galaxy handset, the fastest-selling Android phone to date, he argues that sales have been price-driven and not ‘desire-driven’.

The INQ CEO says people couldn’t be bothered about the name, with the current name-brand association being tantamount to ‘calling a phone “Alpha Centauri” or “Uranus”’.

How accurate is his point, though?

With a sneaky ‘bum’ reference like that, the INQ CEO sounds like an interesting – and decidedly hilarious – man who must make for a great interview. And to his credit, with his Cloud Touch and Cloud Q handsets, his company is aiming more mainstream than the rest. The thing is, it’s difficult to verify how accurate his claims are, outside of personal experience.

More importantly, with Android handsets eclipsing Symbian to become the biggest mobile OS platform on the planet, should Google be worried that their smartphones haven’t found a home in Chelsea’s clutch bag for Friday night partying?

And what about the ‘ugly’ girls?

Photo: liewcf / Flickr

The Samsung-Apple relationship, the greatest example of industry ‘frenemies’, is said to be deepening with the two working on a display deal valued at $7.8 billion (£4.86b). This deal is Apple’s response to the insatiable demand for its iPad tablet PC and iPhone iOS devices, as the mobile computing giant looks to shore up components ahead of its next major product releases.

Component contract

Basically this $7.8 billion contract will make Apple Samsung’s single biggest customer. In this component agreement, many believe a big portion of the funds is for LCD display panels for the incoming iPad 2. Other components likely part of the agreement are NAND flash memory chips, of which Apple is the single biggest consumer in the world, and mobile application processors, too.

Some unknowns

AllThingsD reports that it is unknown whether this Samsung-Apple agreement includes the ‘rumored Super PLS Panels that offer not just a wider viewing angle, but superior visibility outdoors’ earmarked for the iPad. A second consideration that is unknown is whether this big deal is related to the ‘$3.9 billion component supplies and capacity contract’ Apple COO Tim Cook mentioned during Apple’s first-quarter earnings call.

One of Apple’s greatest strengths is getting as much bang for buck out of its suppliers as possible. The company’s massive cash reserves, and high sales volumes have allowed the Cupertino-based company to get preferential pricing from many of its key suppliers, either improving profit margins of its core products, passing on the savings to customers or a combination of the two.

Here we go

The Samsung-Apple relationship is fascinating for several reasons, not least of all for how reliant Apple is on Samsung, but also how desperate Samsung is to usurp Apple at the top of the smartphones and tablet PC pile. It’s no surprise that, depending on who you ask, these are the top two mobile computing companies in the world today.

Photo: Nokia

For years we’ve known that Nokia was in trouble with regards to its smartphone strategy. Other tech sites knew it, too. Nokia investors were also in on it, as was the average consumer who paid attention to sales trends. It seemed, however, Nokia employees were either oblivious to this or just refused to acknowledge it – we venture the latter.

Now, with an amazing, no-punches-spared leaked memo Nokia CEO Stephen Elop sent out to employees, it seems leadership is no longer prepared to jump around the problem and pretend it does not exist. He says the company is ‘standing on a burning platform.’

The iPhone did it

When the memo was first revealed, many were sceptical as to how real it was, but various sources have confirmed its authenticity. The scepticism is justified, however, if you read the stark words Elop uses for a company that is so unfamiliar with defeat or struggles.

One of the more intense sections reads: ‘The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.’ Saying more on the iPhone, Elop writes: ‘They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.’

Android is killing us, too

As to the effect Google Android is having, the Nokia CEO admits that: ‘Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry’s innovation to its core.’ Why Nokia smartphones are struggling, irrespective of their great hardware is not lost on him, as he writes: ‘Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem.’

Our own platforms aren’t holding the fort

To Elop’s credit, he addresses everything the tech world has been harping on about, admitting that Symbian is increasingly struggling to meet consumers’ needs, and that MeeGo is simply taking to long to get to market. He says ‘We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing [innovation] to market fast enough,’ before admitting that ‘at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.’

Engadget has the whole memo available to read if you’re at all interested in what the Nokia CEO has to say, and what the Nokia smartphones strategy is likely to be moving towards.

Photo: AZso / Flickr

Well how about that! While the iPhone now outsells the BlackBerry around the globe, in the UK the BlackBerry versus iPhone rivalry is notably different, with RIM pipping Apple to the post for top honours. Given how critical a market the United Kingdom is in smartphone sales, this is significant for a number of reasons.

You got to eat it, too

What’s more, RIM’s BlackBerry OS outdid Android, too, for good measure. According to data released by GFK [via TechRadar], RIM had 2010’s most dominant smartphone platform in the UK. Having sourced data through consumer sales channels exclusively, GFK concluded RIM had a towering 28.2 per cent market share throughout the year.

Christmas you beauty

What’s more, RIM’s dominance escalated over the Christmas period, swelling to 36 per cent, as the company went on to sell over 500,000 BlackBerry handsets in that period. The company has plenty reason to brag, with almost half of all pre-paid smartphone sales being BlackBerries.

The bigger picture

The bigger picture in the BlackBerry versus iPhone battle is not necessarily as rosy for RIM, though. In the last reported quarterly performances, Apple sold 16.2 million iPhones to RIM’s 14 million BlackBerries, with Steve Jobs previously saying: ‘We’ve now passed RIM and I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future. They must move beyond their area of strength and comfort into the unfamiliar territory of trying to become a software platform company.’ He went on to taunt more the BlackBerry makers more, saying: ‘RIM has a high mountain ahead of them to climb.’

High mountain or not, El Jobsio, in the UK, the BlackBerry versus iPhone battle is very much in the BlackBerry’s favour. After all the stress the company has had, especially with government-related issues, this will come as a welcome victory.

Photo: ThiagoMartins / Flickr

We know the iPhone 5 is on the way, and it will likely land in June. What is not commonly known (yet) is how much power is under the hood, it’s capabilities, how it will look and any other new information. If a recent report is to be believed, Apple is dead-set on keeping their smartphone on the bleeding edge of tech.

It’s going to look different

Engadget, citing ‘extremely accurate’ sources, says that the iPhone 5 will drop in June – as should be expected since this is when they tend to arrive. On arrival, however, the handset will be redesigned for the third time in three years, after being virtually unchanged through its first three iterations.

It’s going to be quick

In addition to being redesigned, the iPhone 5 will be really quick. It will supposedly run on Apple’s new A5 CPU, which is built on ARM’s Cortex A9 architecture. This would be a multi-core processor, significantly boosting the speed the device runs at.

It’s going to suck for Intel

The final change is the telecommunications chips the handset is built on will shift from the Infineon one used in the iPhone 4 to one built by Qualcomm.

This could be down to the antennagate drama that plagued the launch of the last Apple smartphone, but reports suggest this is down to Qualcomm building a dual CDMA and GSM chip, meaning Apple won’t have to ship different phones for different network types, the way they’re doing with the Verizon smartphone and the regular GSM smartphone.

No chance of early sightings, though

The last interesting point about the iPhone 5 rumours is that senior execs in the company are playing with the next Apple smartphone already, but on campus only. This means the big gaffe that happened last year where the 4^th generation Apple smartphone was ‘left unattended in a bar’ will not be happening again in 2011.

Does this sound good to you, Apple smartphone fans? Or do you think the company needs to do even more to convince you to pick up the next iteration of their smartphone?

Photo: dsleeter_2000 / Flickr

We knew Apple was going to have a blow-out quarter over the Christmas period, but how big could they go was the question. In one word: huge! Apple revenue and profit figures in Q1 2011 are the best numbers in the company’s history, far outstripping the company’s own guidelines and analyst estimates.

You guys guess too conservatively

Profits of $6 billion off insane Apple revenue of $26.4 billion, a 71 per cent increase on the same period last year. This revenue far outstripped the analysts’ consensus of $24.38 billion, meaning earnings per share of the company were $6.43, and not the expected $5.38.

Device sales were insane

Huge iPad sales, iPhone sales and Mac sales contributed to the ridiculous numbers Apple posted.

The first, and perhaps most notable figure, is thanks to the iPad, which sold a mind-blowing 7.33 million units in the quarter. That’s nearly 2.5 million units per month, which is insane, when one realises the competition will be happy with a million sold in a quarter.

iPhone sales numbers were also record breaking, with an astonishing 16.24 million units sold. That is an 86 per cent increase on Q1 2010 figures. Insane.

The Mac, which doesn’t get the attention Apple’s newer products command, also posted big numbers. Unit sales of Apple’s computers totaled 4.33 million units in Q1 2011, a 23 per cent gain over the same period last year

The iPod was the only major product category that took a sales dip in moving close on 20 million units, a 7 per cent year on year decline.

Boom pow!

How exactly does one respond to these kinds of numbers? If you thought the world had Apple fever before, what do you call this? Apple revenue figures are insane, as are the individual unit sales. The iPad’s success alone floors us, and even with Steve Jobs taking a medical leave of absence, the company clearly has enough momentum going in 2011 to carry on just fine. Just fine.

Photo: pittaya / Flickr

2010 was a fantastic year for Google’s Android, the young operating system managing to surpass the all-conquering iPhone. Two surveys released towards the end of last year showed clearly how the Android platform has consumed the US and worldwide market and successfully competed against the likes of Apple’s iPhone OS and RIM’s Blackberry.

Android hugely benefited from the lapse in sales performance from the competition, dating back to Apple’s last iPhone launch, but 2011 will see some serious threats to Google’s smartphone platform from every angle in the smartphone market.

Threats

Experts have predicted that Android will be second in the global market share within two years, but the ride will be bumpy considering the approaching storm.

Apple’s iPhone 4G is the biggest threat in Android’s eyes, with the new iPhone promising to include a front-facing camera, high-resolution screen and even a custom processor.

Top of the market

While Microsoft have traditionally targeted business users, the release of their Windows Phone 7 is clearly a declaration of war, with the prize being the domination of the smartphone market. The smartphone’s focus on fun apps, social networking and Xbox Live support clearly indicates that the consumer market, now dominated by Android, is the centre of Microsoft’s latest target.

The Blackberry 6 OS has improved the web browsing experience significantly and the addition of the ‘social networking feeds’ application as well as cleaner, crisper graphics and flashier animations could be enough to keep Blackberry at the top of the US markets.

Newcomers

The Palm Pre and Pixi have seen disappointing sales lately, but HP’s purchase of Palm will ensure the WebOS gets the propelling it surely needs, although we have yet to hear either company promising any new products. When they do, however, Android will be the operating system to beat.