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Americans are gradually warming up to the idea of buying things via their mobile phones, particularly young adults and men, found a new study conducted by Harris Interactive for the mobile credit card security firm Billing Revolution.

Harris surveyed 2,029 adults from April 29 to May 1; 1,883 of those surveyed were cell phone owners (93%). Close to half (45%) said they think that shopping via cell phones is “somewhat safe,” though just over a quarter (26%) feel that mobile shopping is completely safe.

Regardless, fewer than half of those surveyed (46%) said they would be willing to shop using their cell phones even if safety was not an issue. But attitudes vary based on age and sex, according to Harris. As with many emerging technology-driven habits, younger adults appear more willing to embrace change; 59% of the 18-34 crowd feels that mobile shopping is somewhat safe, versus just 34% of adults over 55. Also, half of men find the concept of cell phone shopping somewhat safe versus 39% of women.

The relative youth, as well as the male-skewing nature of the potential mobile shopping audience seems to influence the sort of purchases respondents indicated they would be willing to make. Harris found that entertainment is likely to emerge as a key mobile commerce category, as willing mobile shoppers said they would be most interested in purchases such as movie tickets, music, mobile video and games.

Officials at Billing Revolution said the survey results indicated that mobile shopping is poised for growth in the near term, as more and more Americans purchase sophisticated smart phones like Apple’s iPhone and spend more time accessing the Internet via these devices. “There’s clearly a large U.S. population of consumers open to the idea of making purchases via their cell phones,” said Andy Kleitsch, CEO Billing Revolution. “With consumers getting more comfortable navigating the Web from mobile phones, mobile commerce is poised for explosive growth, and consumers are very much leading the charge in this direction.”

Today and today only — ok, well probably for slightly longer, but we make no guarantees — you can get your hands on LG’s hot new enV3 VX9200 for Verizon at a great price! The LG enV3 for Verizon Wireless is the avid texter’s dream — featuring a spacious flip QWERTY keyboard for unsurpassed messaging capabilities, [...]

Storm owners, besides the weekend, you have even more to be excited about - an official OS update from Verizon!  Slated to launch on Sunday, May 31st at 3 PM EST, OS 4.7.0.148 will be the first revision since 4.7.0.75 launched in December.  It can be downloaded via www.blackberry.com/update, or over-the-air (OTA) beginning at 10 PM on Sunday.  To download the update directly from the phone, go to Options > Advanced Options > Wireless Updates.

Check out the change log pages below - all four of them!






Images courtesy of BGR

May 2009 is almost over and we’re ready to move into June,  something usually met with little more than anticipation of some summery weather.  However this year, June is likely to bring a whole heap of new and exciting mobile phones, so summer will be relegated to icing on the cake!

1.  Sony Ericsson Announce the Yari.

Fresh from Sony Ericsson’s London Event last night comes the new Yari, which may look like a rather traditional Sony Ericsson slider phone, but inside, this little beauty will run the latest Walkman v.4 software and feature gesture control!  A 5 megapixel camera, Assisted GPS, stereo speakers, Bluetooth and 3G/HSDPA are among its other features.

2.  Idou Becomes Satio and is Joined by Aino!

Oh, Sony Ericsson, where did you get these names from!  The Idou is now known as the Satio and the 12 megapixel camera phone flagship is destined for launch towards the end of the year.  It will be joined by the Aino, an 8 megapixel camera phone which promises to do all sorts of exciting things with your PS3, including Slingbox-style remote media playback!   The 3″ touchscreen hides a standard slider keypad too.

3.   KG GD900 Crystal Out Soon?

Remember the gorgeous transparent keyboarded mobile phone spotted at MWC earlier this year? Well, it looks like the phone is ready for release very soon and thanks to the Crave team, we have this video showing us exactly how impressive it looks.  Two touchscreen options, 3G and (more…)

Post from Dial-a-Phone, UK's no. 1 for Mobile Phones.

Fortune magazine has discovered that the hotly anticipated Palm Pre syncs with iTunes - whether Apple wants it to or not. And we’re not talking “you can turn a NES into a server”-works, with patches and soldering, but “you plug it in and hey presto”-works. The Apple Store actually recognises the Pre just like an official iProduct, and Apple’s Legal ICBMs are presumably swiveling towards Palm as we speak.Whether this is awesome or stupid depends on how it plays out. It’s obviously awesome, as it shows just how silly enforced electronic boundaries actually are, but it leaves Palm pretty vulnerable. This isn’t just failing to waste effort preventing hackery, this is actually building said hack into your machine - it’s pretty hard to claim a cat ran across the keyboard and accidentally coded access to rival’s major selling point.

The only alleged downside is that the Pre can’t access old DRM-defect songs, but be honest: nobody who cares about this news would touch those files with a ten foot cursor anyway.

Post from Dial-a-Phone, UK's no. 1 for Mobile Phones.

Although twenty Android phones to be released in 2009 may sound like idle chatter, chances are it’s not, as it comes from someone who should know; Andy Rubin, Google’s Director of Mobile Platforms, currently speaking at the Google I/O conference taking place in San Francisco.  If we head to the shops today, we have can pick up just two Android handsets - the G1 and the Magic - so even if these are included in Mr. Rubin’s figures, it leaves us with 18 still to come from reportedly 8 or 9 different phone manufacturers!

Also discussed was the next upgrade to the Android operating system, codenamed Donut.  This new version will feature, logically, an overhauled search function which will work online as well as across your phone’s data, plus a gesture based system where a letter ‘drawn’ on screen will be sufficient to create a search list.

At the end of yesterday’s conference, Vic Gundotra, Google’s Vice President of Engineering surprised his audience by giving away an HTC Magic to each one of them!  Inside the special box was the phone, a SIM card with 30 days unlimited 3G access and talktime, plus the developers SDK!  To represent the current hard times, you can already find one on eBay.

Post from Dial-a-Phone, UK's no. 1 for Mobile Phones.

Mobile shopping is increasingly popular among certain segments of the population but there are still a large percentage of people who believe that mobile phone shopping isn’t safe. In fact, a significant percentage of the population believes that their credit card companies are more reliable than cell phone companies for online billing in spite of the fact that there are few problems reported with mobile shopping security so far.

A recent poll by Harris Interactive reveals that over half of the people who have both cell phone bills and credit card bills believe that their credit card bills are the more accurate of the two. However, with mobile phone security steadily improving, a growing portion of the population does believe that mobile phone shopping might be safe. About one quarter of those surveyed believe that it’s safe already and nearly half believe that it’s at least somewhat safe to make purchases with your mobile phone.

Mobile security is only one issue affecting the interest in mobile shopping. Some people just aren’t into the idea even if it is proven to be safe. As with most trends in new technology, it is the younger generations that are most comfortable with using mobile phones for shopping. Sixty percent of people aged 18-34 are interested in mobile shopping; that number is nearly slashed in half for people over the age of 55. Interestingly, men are significantly more comfortable with the idea of mobile shopping than their female counterparts are.

As these people do start getting more and more comfortable with the idea of mobile shopping, there are key areas of mobile commerce that seem specifically susceptible to growth. Entertainment and food top the list of ideal mobile purchases. Travel-related purchases including hotel rooms and flights are also areas of potential mobile commerce growth.

Post from Dial-a-Phone, UK's no. 1 for Mobile Phones.

Granted, it's not the most feature-rich device in the world, but when the text messaging works, the Clutch is the device to have on Boost Mobile's network.  Featuring a QWERTY keyboard, Direct Connect, Bluetooth, threaded text messaging, and a VGA camera, the device is sure to please those that get tired of messaging on a standard keypad.  The price?  $129.99 plus tax - more than reasonable given its features.

Source: BGR