Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The acceptance of mobile payments in countries such as Japan, North America and some Western European countries will lead to 50% of consumers in such mature markets using a wearable device or their mobile device to make payments by 2018.

Three types of mobile payments or wallets were identified by Gartner, namely smartphones or wearable tech, branded mobile wallets from banks or credit cards and branded mobile wallets from retailers.

However, rather than mobile payment wallets that are tied to a device, Gartner forecasts that cloud-based solutions will have a better rate of adoption as they are able to "reach a wider audience and can support many use cases beyond face-to-face or in-store options".

Last year, a report on wearable payments from Tractica predicted transaction volumes will increase significantly over the next five years rising from around $3.1billion in 2015 to $501.1billion by 2020 and accounting for about one-fifth of all mobile transactions and 1% of all cashless payments in retail....

THE future of fashion is not simply trendy clothes.While style connoisseurs follow the likes of Prada, Gucci and Josh Goot for their cues, the rest of us will look to technology brands this year to define what we wear.

“Technology is now completely ingrained in our interaction and relationship with fashion and retail,” says Arabella James, a futures consultant at The Future Laboratory.

“It is now part of every shopping moment, from inspiration and production to purchase decision and transaction.”So what do you need to look out for this year? These are the hi-tech fashionable extras coming to a store near you....

Comedian Lewis Black called it out: “This new millennium sucks! It’’s exactly the same as the old millennium. You know why? No flying cars!”

OK, to be fair, there are folks currently working on that, but true, not the sky-scape envisioned by science-fiction writers and comic book artists. On the other hand, technology has focused on loftier heights– if not precisely the sky.

We know the Internet of Things is big and going to be massive in scope, impacting all aspects of marketing and communication.

Some recent data points from some of the very large companies fueling the growth yet again highlight just how big a deal this is.

Within five years, 200 billion so-called smart objects will be deployed,  according to Intel’s latest guide to all things IoT. That translates to 26 smart objects for every human being on earth....

Investment firm Piper Jaffray has published the results of their recent fashion-focused survey, and while the poll was mostly about fashion and jewelry, it did touch on Apple’s much-rumored “iWatch.” The poll found that 14% of consumers would buy an iWatch that was priced at $350. Interest in such a device varied greatly based on price....