Diggit Mobile Marketing

Ahead of Robbie Williams’ next stadium tour, Take the Crown, Samsung has performed a makeover on 60 iconic black cabs at the road in London, Manchester and Glasgow. Fans that hail one of many taxis can be ready to enter a contest to fulfill the guy in person by tapping their phones at the NFC pads on board, or tweeting a photograph of themselves with the hashtag #SamsungRobbie. There would be 40 branded cabs in London, with ten each within the two other participating cities. Simon Stanford, VP of Samsung’s IM Division within the UK and Ireland, said: “So a lot of our customers are music fans, so it is a great opportunity to inform them about our partnership with Robbie and provides them access to him. “Robbie would be playing in London, Manchester and Glasgow in the course of the tour, so we are hoping our taxis may help really drive buzz and excitement within the weeks leading as much as those concerts.” 

Urban Airship, a Google Wallet Sandbox partner, teamed up with Alaska Airlines to illustrate the brand new loyalty, reward and engagement functionality of the Google Wallet API.  The push specialists demoed the industry’s first full support for rich loyalty notifications at the Android platform and showed how brands like Alaska Airlines can integrate existing loyalty programmes into Google Wallet The API enables merchants and types to create a two-click sign-up process for branded loyalty card schemes. Using the drag-and-drop visual builder campaign creators can dynamically update card information and send additional loyalty messages to card users. By adding a ‘Save to Wallet’ button, loyalty schemes may be sign-posted and joined by people anywhere on the net. People may also scan an existing physical card so as to add it to their Wallet. Urban Airship’s solution enables brands that desire to use Google Wallet to construct loyalty programmes, coupon and gift card campaigns, membership cards, ticketing solutions, boarding passes. Additionally they offer a generic template for one-off campaigns.

Two of mobile’s biggest players are another time making headlines for the small amount of tax they may be paying despite having large operations within the UK. Google has denied that that is misleading HMRC over its business and tax arrangements after its head of UK sales, Matt Brittin, appeared this morning in front of MPs at the Public Accounts Committee.  The search giant was recalled by the committee and asked to provide an explanation for why it’s paying so little tax within the UK despite huge revenues here. Between 2006 and 2011, Google made $18bn in revenues inside the UK but paid just $16m in corporation tax – though companies are just obliged to pay tax on profit.  Although the PAC’s chairperson, Margaret Hodge MP, said that she has seen confidential evidence on the contrary, Google says that each one of its UK sales – worth £4.2bn last year – are made in Ireland because they’re done online. Brittin said: “99 per cent of the firms that spend with us spend with google in Ireland and aren’t chatting with anyone inside the UK.” The committee also asked what the 1,300 UK staff are doing in the event that they aren’t making sales. Meanwhile, Amazon’s accounts […]

Samsung is the newest smartphone manufacturer to integrate Telefónica’s operator billing capabilities using its BlueVia payment APIs. Users of its app store, Samsung Apps, and the Samsung Hub shall be ready to purchase digital content and charge the payment on to their phone bill or use their prepaid credit. The company hopes that the benefit of constructing payments on this way increases sales, particularly in developing markets where people have less access to standard banking services. The phased roll-out is anticpated to begin with Telefónica Germany inside the coming months. “Samsung is committed to making sure that our customers have choice and convenience when purchasing content on our devices,” said Lee Epting, VP of media solutions centre for Samsung Electronics Europe. “Our partnership with Telefónica Digital allows us to deliver another easy and convenient purchasing experience to our Samsung Hub and Samsung Apps customers.” The partnership with Samsung joins similar agreements with companies including Google, Facebook and Microsoft. 

Never to be outdone by Google, which announced yesterday that it had passed 48bn downloads, Apple has revealed on its website that it has now surpassed 50bn app installs. The company said it had reached 40bn back in January, showing that 10bn alone has been downloaded within the last five months – greater than 78m daily. The Android figure, mentioned during Google’s I/O conference yesterday, was reached after 2.5bn downloads were made within the last two months – a rather slower growth rate despite more handsets getting used worldwide. At that rate Google should pass the identical mark in a number of month’s time. The platforms will then be going head-to-head to achieve the dizzying 100bn downloads figure.