M-Commerce

MasterCard on Monday announced facial recognition and fingerprint technology that essentially would allow customers to take selfies to help authenticate their identity when engaged in mobile shopping. The rollout, which is planned for this summer in the U.S., Canada and part of Europe, follows a pil...

As the U.S. retail industry puts another long holiday shopping season behind it, a few changes appear to be taking place. For one thing, it appears there's a new recipe for success. Growing a business requires more than setting up a fancy website, placing inventory into a warehouse, and engaging a s...

Worldwide downloads of Android apps in 2015 were double those for iOS, but revenues from iOS apps were nearly twice those of Android, according to an App Annie report released this week. First-time device owners in emerging markets drove the huge increase in Android downloads, researchers found. "Th...

When Amazon launched Prime Day six months ago, skeptics came out in force to criticize what they considered Jeff Bezos' desperate ploy to add members to a club that appeared to be peaking in a saturated domestic market. Gimmick or not, Prime Day worked. Amazon sold more than 34.4 million items acros...

Apple is phasing out its iAd sales team and moving toward an automated system, according to news reports this week. Then-CEO Steve Jobs launched iAd six years ago to provide an alternative to existing mobile advertising platforms, but it never caught fire. Under the new iAd platform, publishers repo...

Apple this week revealed that technical difficulties with its News app have led the company to underestimate usage figures for the more than 100 publications offering content through the software. The company discovered an error in the app that's resulted in underestimating the number of readers usi...

Apple on Wednesday announced that customers spent a record $1.1 billion on apps and in-app purchases the during the holidays. Jan. 1 was the App Store's best day ever, with consumers spending about $144 million, the company said. Since 2008, the store has generated close to $40 billion in revenue fo...

Amazon on Monday reported a record competition-shattering performance during the Christmas holiday, adding more than 3 million Amazon Prime members last week alone. Holiday sales of Prime devices more than doubled last year's record number, the company said. The Prime Now program, which offers free ...

Apple and Samsung last week announced separate mobile payment partnerships with China UnionPay, the only domestic bank card network in the People's Republic of China. China UnionPay cardholders will be able to utilize Apple Pay and Samsung Pay via a mobile device. Both services will begin early next...

Apple on Thursday announced some personnel moves that suggest CEO Tim Cook's future vision for the company. He named Jeff Williams chief operating officer, elevated Johny Srouji to Apple's executive team by making him a senior vice president, broadened the powers of Senior Vice President of Worldwid...

Mozilla on Monday launched Focus by Firefox, a free ad blocker for Safari users on iOS 9. It lets users block the same trackers blocked by Private Browsing with Tracking Protection in Firefox for the Windows, Mac, Linux and Android platforms. The protection is based on Disconnect's open source block...

Walmart on Monday announced it will release all 2,000 Cyber Monday deals at 8 p.m. EST Sunday. That and other retailer moves are making it look as if Cyber Monday might be a nonevent this holiday season: Amazon is running an eight-day Black Friday sale that will take it through Cyber Monday, leading...

Bankrate.com on Monday released results of a survey showing that even though consumers may have more mobile payment options this holiday season, more than two-thirds of shoppers won't be using them. That's because seven out of 10 Americans surveyed said they'll be using cash or a debit card for most...

Although Black Friday is still days away, Amazon shoppers are already in the thick of it. The company last Friday launched an eight-day-long Black Friday Deals Week. New deals are surfacing as often as every five minutes. Customers will have access to 10 Deals of the Day starting at midnight on Than...