Category: Mobile

ZooZ, a provider of a mobile payments platform, has raised $2 million in Series A funding from XSeed Capital and existing investers lool ventures and Rhodium. The San Francisco-based startup has now raised $3.5 million in total funding. The company, founded in 2010, previously raised $1.5 million in late 2011 from lool, Rhodium and several other seed investors.

PRESS RELEASE

ZOOZ SECURES SERIES A FUNDING

Mobile and Online Payments Trailblazer Closes $2M Round, Pushes Ahead with Product, Customer and Partner Roadmap

San Francisco, CA, April 23, 2013 – ZooZ, an innovative startup that offers a consumer-driven payment platform, announced today that it has closed a Series A funding round in the amount of $2 million.  The funding round was led by Portola Valley, CA-based XSeed Capital, with participation from existing investors lool ventures and Rhodium, both of which also contributed to ZooZ’s seed round.  This brings ZooZ’s total funding to date to $3.5 million.  The company will use this latest round of funding to add new product functionality, increase traction with retailers, solidify new partnerships, and otherwise build its presence in the rapidly expanding global payments market.

“ZooZ has already established an impressive track record with its market-leading mobile functionality in ways that are incredibly easy for customers to implement,” stated Robert Siegel, the General Partner of XSeed Capital.  “Our investment in ZooZ highlights the confidence we have in Oren and his team and their vision to optimize and transform the entire checkout experience.”

Oren Levy, Co-founder and CEO of ZooZ, commented, “Our ability to close a robust Series A round in an increasingly crowded payments market underscores the strength and market potential of our approach.  By focusing on creating a superior consumer checkout experience that ultimately leads to better conversion for retailers and developers, we’ve been able to clearly differentiate ourselves from the competition while attracting investors, partners and customers alike.”

In the U.S. alone, the mobile payments market is exploding.  In a recently issued report, Forrester Research predicts that spending in the U.S. mobile payments market will reach approximately $90 billion in 2017, a 48% compounded annual growth rate over the $12.8 billion that was spent in 2012.  Whereas existing, in-app mobile payment providers have focused heavily on developer needs and backend transactions, ZooZ aims to capitalize on the massive market opportunity by offering a consumer-driven checkout platform that puts users’ needs front and center throughout the entire checkout experience.  As a consequence, ZooZ’s unique checkout platform helps retailers reduce shopping cart abandonment and grow their business based on smart consumer insights, leading to better conversion rates for both retailers and developers.

ZooZ’s Series A funding is the latest in a series of developments reflecting the company’s brisk, multichannel expansion in the payments space, as evidenced by its exponential,  month-over-month growth rate.  Last May, ZooZ added an HTML5 mobile web and desktop version to its iOS and Android-compatible offering, giving developers in over 150 countries a fast, secure, and easy-to-use solution for integrating payment functionality into their mobile apps and sites, and enabling retailers to reach their consumers across all platforms.

About XSeed Capital
Based in Portola Valley, CA, XSeed Capital was founded in 2006 as one of the pioneers of the new venture industry. XSeed Capital works with entrepreneurs to build differentiated technology startups that dramatically change markets.  The firm consists of serial entrepreneurs who appreciate the dedication, passion, anxiety and sleepless nights it takes to build something valuable from scratch.  For more information, please visit www.xseedcap.com.

About ZooZ
Through its unique checkout platform, ZooZ offers a complete, secure, and easy-to-use payment solution for e-commerce websites and mobile apps.  ZooZ provides retailers with a set of tools that enables them to increase shopping conversion rates, reduce shopping cart abandonment, and grow their business based on smart consumer insights generated by its platform.  By focusing on users’ behaviors and needs, ZooZ provides a standardized, branded, fast-and-easy checkout experience. Founded in 2010 by a team that includes a former executive leading VeriSign’s Fraud Detection group, the privately-held company has partnered with leading payment gateways, processors, and e-wallets worldwide to ensure that both users and retailers enjoy full flexibility and the broadest of payment options.  The company’s patent-pending, bank-grade security technology also keeps user information secure in PCI-compliant servers.  For more information, please visit www.zooz.com.

The post Mobile Payments Startup ZooZ Cashes $2M Series A appeared first on peHUB.

Geeksphone, the smartphone OEM startup based out of Madrid, put the first Firefox OS developer phones on sale early this morning, offering the Keon for $119 and the more powerful Peak for $194. Both devices are the first hardware to be offered with Firefox OS on board, and both devices are now listed as “Out of stock,” just a few hours after first going on sale.

The Keon and Peak devices are essentially preview devices, designed to give developers the opportunity to test out what they can do with the new Linux-based open-source mobile operating system before it sees its general public launch this June in five initial countries, including Spain, Brazil, Portugal and Venezuela. The Geeksphone devices are modest in terms of their hardware specifications, but Firefox OS will likely be positioned as more of a mid-market play.

The $119 Keon (yes, that’s unlocked pricing) has a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, offers 3G and EDGE cellular connections, has a 3.5-inch HVGA screen and a 3 megapixel camera. It’s got just 4GB of onboard storage and 512MB of RAM, but it offers a MicroSD slot for capacity expansion. The $194 Peak has a 1.2GHz dual core Snapdragon S4, a 4.3-inch qHD IPS display, an 8 megapixel rear and 2 megapixel front camera, and otherwise looks pretty similar to the Keon in terms of tech specs.

Both devices are currently sold out, but TheNextWeb reported in a profile posted yesterday that Geeksphone was aiming to be able to fulfill orders at a rate of about 5,000 per day, and a call I made to Geeksphone’s offices revealed that the company is working hard on getting more phones back in stock, and hopes to have them on sale again this week, hopefully by Friday. Demand has been has been tremendous so far, a company rep told me.

It’s hard to make any kind of predictions about Firefox OS’s potential success based on these very early results of two developer handsets, likely produced in small batches and aimed at an enthusiast crowd, but it’s definitely not a bad thing that they’re already flying off the shelves.

 

Another day, another key Apple supplier posting disappointing earnings. Per Reuters, iPhone and iPad display supplier LG Display has posted a 74% quarterly drop in earnings, thus adding to worries that “demand for iPhone and iPad screens weakened amid concerns that Apple was losing its luster in the mobile device market.” Apple devices account for roughly 30% of LG Display’s overall revenues, so it’s likely that at least some of LG Display’s drop in earnings can be attributed to substandard iPhone sales. iPhone audio chip supplier Cirrus Logic and iPhone manufacturer Foxconn both recently also posted disappointing earnings that were reportedly at least partially due to lackluster iPhone sales.

While AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile subscribers gear up for the Galaxy S4 debut later this week, Verizon Wireless is still nowhere to be found. Customers on the three aforementioned carriers will all be able to buy Samsung’s latest and greatest beginning this week, but the nation’s top wireless carrier has yet to announce any news as far as when its customers might be able to purchase the Galaxy S4. In fact, Verizon hasn’t even shared any launch details for the HTC One either, and it’s already available from other U.S. carriers and in other markets around the world. Despite the troubling trend, Verizon customers can at least sign up on Verizon’s website now to be notified as soon as more info becomes available regarding when the Samsung Galaxy S4 might launch.

Though some Samsung phones in recent years have been exceptions to the rule, handsets launched by the world’s top smartphone vendor often have a “cheap” feel to them. Despite their gorgeous premium displays, Samsung devices tend to utilize plastics that feel flimsy and fragile — a regular point of contention among reviewers, though consumers certainly don’t seem to care. As Galaxy S4 units begin to make their way into users’ hands, we’ve seen several hands-on videos pop up and the latest takes one aspect of the smartphone’s construction to task to see if it really is “cheap.”

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Congratulations, Apple: your supply chain partners are now giving you the same anonymous backbiting treatment that PC OEMs have long delivered to Microsoft. Reuters reports that Apple suppliers have started referring to the company as the “Poison Apple” due to its “hard-to-meet high standards and low price expectations.” Unnamed suppliers have also told Reuters that they’ve grown weary of Apple’s “ever-moving deadlines” and said they are now trying to “reduce their reliance on the company.” Given reports that several key Apple products are facing delays because they’re difficult to produce, it’s not surprising that there’s tension between the company and its suppliers, especially amid reports that several suppliers have taken hits to their earnings over the past quarter due to subpar iPhone demand.

Google’s annual I/O Developers Conference is just around the corner and expectations are at an all-time high. In the past, the company has unveiled a number of flagship projects and devices at the event, such as Google Music, Google Now and the Nexus 7 tablet. Earlier rumors have suggested that, among other things, Google would announce a followup to its Nexus 4 smartphone and even the rumored Motorola X Phone at this year’s event, but a new report suggests this may not be the case.

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Samsung’s next-generation Galaxy Note III phablet may be a complete departure from the handsets that have made Samsung the world’s top smartphone vendor by shipment volume. The South Korea-based company’s current smartphones feature cheap-feeling plastic cases, but a report from last week suggested that the upcoming new Galaxy Note handset might ditch plastic in favor of a premium material for the casing. On the flip side, a new report now claims that the Note III will do away with the customary Gorilla Glass face in favor of a thinner shatter-proof OLED display assembly made of flexible plastic.

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Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is slowly pulling back the curtain on Jelly. Very slowly.

Today, Stone has revealed the identity of the mobile-oriented startup’s co-founder and CTO: Ben Finkel, founder of Fluther and New Users Experience manager on Twitter’s Growth Team. Finkel’s Fluther, a Q&A app, was acquired by Twitter back in 2010.

“Ben Finkel is my co-founder here at Jelly. Ben and I have been friends and collaborators for many years. During one of our frequent walk-and-talks around San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Park, we accidentally came up with the idea for Jelly. It was one of those ideas that we couldn’t get out of our heads,” says Stone on a post on the JellyHQ blog.

What that idea is remains opaque. Reports that Stone was working on Jelly emerged late last month, and Stone confirmed it earlier this month.

“News of Jelly emerged unexpectedly early so I’ll wait a bit to share more about the team. In the meantime, I’ll say this. Jelly will be for everybody, it will be developed first and foremost for mobile devices, and it will be free. But, it won’t be ready for a while,” said Stone, when announcing the startup.

Little else is known about Jelly, except that it will be a mobile-based, free service of some kind.

“Ben will serve as Jelly’s CTO, focusing on shipping fantastic products, attracting world class engineers, and in general, running a tight technical ship. We’re putting together a core “dream team” at the moment. Next, we’ll be heads-down on developing Jelly—the idea that we couldn’t get out of our heads.”

Introducing my Co-Founder at Jelly, Ben Finkel jellyhq.com/post/486162989…

— Biz Stone (@biz) April 22, 2013

Users of Tumblr’s iOS and Android apps will begin to see ads in their streams – ones that look and feel like organic blog posts inside the apps.

The new ad push marks a first for Tumblr – putting sponsored content in the same context as regular posts. First reported by AdAge, users will now see as many as four of the new ads per day. You’ll be able to tell the difference between the ads and the normal posts by a dollar sign that accompanies the sponsored content.

You may recall that this dollar sign is the same way that Tumblr identified its current ads – the decidedly less-intrusive “Radar” ads that Tumblr debuted in May of last year. These ads appear on the “Spotlight” page, which highlights editor-selected blogs, as well as the Radar, which is seen on the sidebar of Tumblr pages. Back in May, the starting bid for these “Radar” ads was reported to be around $25,000.

“This mobile advertising opportunity is native to how our consumers experience content on our apps; as a continuous stream,” said Tumblr sale head Lee Brown in a statement.

Tumblr is launching the new ads with a handful of high-profile partners, including ABC Entertainment and ABC Family, GE, Pepsi, and Warner Bros. You can expect to see heavy promotion from Warner Bros, who will be serving up ads for upcoming films to the Tumblr mobile community.

This is a mobile-only push, but only for now. Tumblr confirmed to AdAge that these new types of in-stream ads will eventually pop up on the desktop version of Tumblr, but they were unwilling to give a specific date.

Tumblr recently announced that they had crossed the 100 million blogs milestone. As of now, there are over 48.6 billion posts on the site.

If there was any doubt that devops — the practice of getting development and operations teams to work together to design and deploy software fast, here’s more evidence: IBM is buying UrbanCode.

Cleveland-based UrbanCode’s software helps automate the production and delivery of new applications in a way, IBM said is  aligned with own SmartCloud and Mobile First initiatives. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

According to IBM’s statement, UrbanCode will work nicely with IBM’s Worklight mobile application development platform,

” … by combining UrbanCode software with the IBM MobileFirst Worklight technology, businesses can now author and deploy an application for any mobile device in hours, versus a previous multi-day timeline. The UrbanCode solution also works with traditional applications including middleware, databases and business intelligence.”

Legacy IT giants like IBM are trying to find ways to strip out overhead of the development process, particularly for mobile and cloud apps, and better compete with leaner, more nimbler startups. For example, last August, BMC, which competes with IBM in systems management tools bought Varalogix to bolster its devops story.

IBM, the 100-year-old IT giant that has managed to stay relevant by changing when needed, is really focusing on cloud and mobile– and the middleware to power those efforts– to such an extent that it is reportedly thinking of selling off its server business to Lenovo.

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• Cloud and data third-quarter 2012
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Yahoo recently acquired mobile startup Summly, and the company is already putting it to good use. CEO Marissa Mayer announced a new Yahoo iPhone app today, which takes advantage of Summly’s capabilities.

“Consuming news and information on the go has become the norm — whether waiting for a morning coffee or commuting home from work, content discovery is an insatiable daily habit,” writes Mayer on the Yahoo Yodel blog. “Our mobile phones have opened up a window to the world, with the latest news, sports updates, and entertainment coverage right there in our pockets. Because consuming content is such a core part of our everyday lives, today we’re launching our new Yahoo! mobile app for iPhone. Beautifully designed with smaller screens in mind, the new Yahoo! is all about delivering the best of the web — right on your phone.”

“The new Yahoo! mobile app is also smarter, using Summly’s natural-language algorithms and machine learning to deliver quick story summaries,” she adds. “We acquired Summly less than a month ago, and we’re thrilled to introduce this game-changing technology in our first mobile application. And, with the immersive imagery of our virtually endless newsfeed, the new Yahoo! app has both great technology and beautiful design front and center. Because searching for great content is also core to the Yahoo! experience, we’ve also improved the search experience with better video and image search.”

The app also comes with a great deal of personalization. You can select the types of stories you’re interested in, and within each article, you can select more topics you want and less of what you don’t.

The app is available in the App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch in the U.S.

No word on other potential mobile apps utilizing the same technology.

Last week, Yahoo launched new mobile apps for Weather and Mail. The Weather app, which utilizes Yahoo’s Flickr property, is just for iPhone while the Mail app is for iPad and Android tablets.

Yahoo is said to have been in talks with Apple on deeper iOS integration.

Apple has made plenty of headlines over its reported supply chain woes this year and now The Register has translated a new report from China Business claiming that Apple recently returned at least 5 million iPhones to Foxconn this year due to some kind of unnamed defect. The Register notes that “with a cost to manufacture of $US200 apiece, Foxconn is apparently preparing to take a hit of up to $1.6bn to cover the cost of making replacement handsets,” which would certainly be a major blow to the world’s leading smartphone manufacturer. The report of the returned iPhones comes after Foxconn earlier this month posted a 19% drop in year-over-year revenue that was attributable in large part to “disappointing” recent iPhone sales.

Facebook’s new Home software saw mixed reviews from those who took an early look at it, but tech bloggers and reporters aren’t exactly Facebook’s target market. Among Facebook’s heavier users, the software seems to have piqued a fair amount of interest. As TechCrunch noted over the weekend, Facebook Home downloads from the Google Play app store topped 500,000 on Sunday. The figure doesn’t seem terribly impressive at first sight considering that more than a billion people use Facebook each month, but the software is only available on five different handsets for the time being so it’s certainly a respectable start.

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HTC really wants you to buy an HTC One, and it’s making sure that you have every opportunity to do so. First, it opened up pre-orders for the HTC One Developer Edition, a carrier-unlocked 64GB version of the phone with an unlocked bootloader for custom ROMs. Now, it’s also offering a network-unlocked 32GB version of the handset (via Engadget), which doesn’t have the unlocked bootloader, but which is less expensive at $574.99.

Most people definitely won’t miss the unlocked bootloader from the developer version, unless you’re really into tinkering with the core aspects of your device. And the 32GB unlocked HTC One is almost $200 cheaper than the iPhone 5 with equivalent storage unlocked and contract free. Plus, reviews have been very favourable so far for HTC’s latest flagship device, making it arguably the best Android smartphone currently available.

HTC’s sales strategy this time around with the One is a full-court press, with traditional sales via carriers supplemented out of the starting gate with off-contract sales from its own web-based retail presence. By contrast, Apple usually holds its own unlocked device sales until later on, and Samsung usually sticks to carrier routes for selling its own hardware, especially in the U.S.

Why the abundance of buying options for HTC? Simply put, it doesn’t have the luxury of trying to guide buyers to certain channels. Apple and Samsung incur enough demand that it doesn’t matter if there’s necessarily an unlocked option out of the starting gate; people will get a device any way they can, even if it means tying service to a specific carrier. With HTC, however, the onus is on the company to give buyers a reason to part with their money, and making it possible for those shoppers to do so on their own terms is a key part of boosting the HTC One’s appeal.

The HTC One is going to be a strong contender for best smartphone for a while to come, so if you’ve been holding out for a way to pick one up relatively cheaply and without network commitment, this is the way to get it.

HTC is rumored to be preparing to release a mid-range variant of its critically acclaimed One smartphone. Earlier reports claimed that the device, codenamed M4, was similar to the HTC First without the integration of Facebook Home, however this my not be the case. According to Digitimes, the M4 will be equipped with a “metal-alloy chassis” that is being supplied by Catcher Technology. The latest rumors suggest that the mid-range smartphone will feature a 4.3-inch 720p HD display, a 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 processor and an “Ultrapixel” rear camera. The device may also include 16GB of internal storage, 1GB of RAM and Sense 5 atop Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. Shipments of the HTC M4 are reportedly scheduled to begin in June with wider availability in the third quarter.

Verizon customers want to know if their carrier can hear them now. A Change.org petition started by Wichita, Kan. resident Mike Beauchamp asking Verizon to follow T-Mobile’s lead in ditching wireless contracts is approaching 100,000 signatures and stood at 97,500 by late Friday afternoon. Beauchamp says that he started the petition because he’s a long-time Verizon subscriber who doesn’t want to pay early termination fees for changing carriers in the future. The petition was prompted by Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam’s recent remarks that he’d be happy to dump wireless contracts if customers showed significant interested in contract-free plans.

A new report suggests that the scaled-down version of Samsung’s flagship smartphone has been delayed until later this year. According to SamMobile, the mid-range Galaxy S4 mini will not be released until mid-July. Earlier rumors claimed the handset will be available in two versions: a single-SIM model and a dual-SIM version. The Galaxy S4 mini is said to be equipped with a 4.3-inch qHD display, an 8-megapixel rear camera and Android 4.2.2 under Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface. The single-SIM version will reportedly include a quad-core processor, while the Galaxy S4 mini DUOS will feature a dual-core processor.

Photos of several components supposedly set to be included in Apple’s next-generation “iPhone 5S” were published on Friday, again suggesting that Apple’s new smartphone will feature several internal changes when it launches later this year. The photos come from French blog Nowhereelse.fr, which has posted images of authentic components from unannounced Apple devices in the past. The pictures show a front-facing camera assembly that is noticeably different from the similar component found in Apple’s current iPhone 5, and a second component with an unknown function. Apple’s next-generation iPhone 5S is expected to launch in the coming months with an upgraded rear camera, a new processor and possibly several new color options. Photos of the leaked components follow below.

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Verizon Wireless subscribers are still waiting for a flagship Lumia smartphone, but the wait may have been worth it. According to leaked images published on Friday by Evleaks, who has a solid track record when leaking images and details surrounding unannounced smartphones, the Nokia Lumia 928 is currently being prepped for launch on the nation’s top carrier. The leaked press shots reveal a phone that still looks quite thick and bulky, like its predecessor, but it also appears to feature a PureView camera, Carl Zeiss optics and a xenon flash. Branding on the handset confirms 4G LTE compatibility and there also appears to be an upgraded speaker on the back of the phone. No launch details have been confirmed at this time.