Tag: mobile app

Mobile app startup, Accompli, purchased by Microsoft

| December 8, 2014

This deal could make it easier for people to manage their email using their smartphones and tablets.

Microsoft has now announced that it is purchasing Accompli, which is an email management mobile app, in a deal that has now been reported to be worth over $200 million.

The deal could potentially give Microsoft a boost in making email easier to manage over mobile devices.

This will give Microsoft the chance to make it easier for users to manage their email over smartphones and tablets that are based on Android or iOS. According to the vice president of Microsoft, Rajesh Jha, when discussing this mobile app in a blog post, “In a world where more than half of email messages are first read on a mobile device, it’s essential to give people fantastic email experiences wherever they go.”

The company feels that this mobile app provides an innovative way to interact with what is in an inbox.

Mobile app starup is purchasedJha also added that “The Accompli team is passionate about this quest. Their app provides innovative ways to focus on what’s important in your inbox, to schedule meetings, and work with attachments and files.” Within the blog and at the time of the writing of this review, there was no official announcement with regards to the price of the purchase, but a number of reports were made by the media to suggest the aforementioned approximate total.

Javier Solerto of Accompli explained in his own blog that the mobile application is going to become a component of the overall strategy that Microsoft is putting into place in order to reinvent the way that people view productivity in an era of mobile devices.

Solerto went on to say that their company began only a year and a half ago and their team moved forward to create a product that would help to make email better when used through a mobile app. He added that the journey of that team has now taken a leap forward by joining a much larger organization in a way that will allow the talent, tech, and market reach to “take the vision of Acompli to hundreds of millions of mobile users across the world.”

Can Dunkin’ Donuts replicate the mobile payments success of Starbucks

| December 5, 2014

The question that many are now asking is whether or not the achievement is of the brand or the system.

Dunkin’ Donuts has had its own mobile app for a while now, and this application allows smartphone users to be able to accumulate loyalty points as well as make mobile payments in order to complete their transactions while in stores, but recent data is now causing many to ask whether the same successes seen at Starbucks could be possible in this rival franchise.

Some data regarding the usage of this mobile app has provided insight into this coffee shop trend.

According to a report issued by BI Intelligence, which provided then results of some number crunching with regards to the data that Dunkin’ Donuts has made available, there are a number of points that can be understood about the way that the mobile payments app is being used at that company’s locations. Though that company does not report the actual dollar volume that is achieved as a result of transactions over mobile devices, the data that they have provided still shows some interesting trends.

The Dunkin’ Donuts data has provided some indications with regards to the traction of the mobile payments app.

Mobile Payments - Dunkin' DonutsAmong the points reported by BI Intelligence included the following:

• The Dunkin’ Donuts mobile app has, according to the company’s own figures, already been downloaded more than 10 million times. It was originally launched in August 2012.
• The Starbucks application is currently reported to be maintaining 12 million active users in North America.
• At Starbucks, more than 15 percent of all of the transactions completed in the United States locations are m-payments.

The BI Intelligence report stated that one of the primary drivers of success of the Starbucks mobile payments app is the company’s loyalty program. Dunkin’ Donuts has clearly used a similar strategy in encouraging the adoption and use of its own application. When using that app, customers are able to build “DD Perks” rewards points, which can later be redeemed in order to obtain free items such as beverages. QR codes are also central to the verification process for transactions in the apps of both companies.