Movie ticket marketplace Fandango saw record-breaking ticket sales come from mobile devices this past weekend, following the premiere of Universal Pictures’ film Fifty Shades of Grey. Fandango attributes its success to millennial behavior along with the long, holiday weekend contributing to the high numbers achieved on mobile. With the combination of Valentine’s Day and Presidents Day shaping millennials’ weekend plans, those consumers were more likely to venture to the Fandango mobile app to check movie times.

Staples was an early retailer to adopt Apple Pay, announcing its support of the digital payment technology even before it launched. While the retailer has seen some adoption in stores, its experience with Apple Pay in its iOS app is much more impressive. "Right now it's the number one payment method for us in our iOS apps," said Prat Vemana, vice president of mobile commerce for Staples, speaking during apanel discussion hosted by Chetan Sharma Consulting in Seattle on Tuesday. Vemana said that 30 percent of purchases made in the Staples iOS apps use Apple Pay.

The iPhone maker is trying to work out agreements with certain banks and financial institutions, a People's Bank of China official said, MarketWatch reported Monday. However, Apple has not yet "acknowledged regulators," the official added, and "it's unclear whether the product meets the government's requirements." Unveiled in October in the US, Apple Pay allowsiPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus owners to pay for items on the go via the wireless NFC (near-field communication). technology. 

With iPhone 6 Plus users displaying much higher-than-average data consumption rates and order values, it is clear they provide an important new targeting opportunity for mobile marketers. New data from Citrix shows that iPhone 6 Plus users consume mobile data at twice the rate of iPhone 6 users thanks to their video consumption habits. At the same time, digital commerce platform Skava reports that iPhone 6 Plus users are big spenders.

ABI Research has now released a report that looks quite promising for companies that have been considering the use of location based marketing, as they have said that geolocationsensor fusion remains “very much a rarity on smartphones today,” but that this will be changing in the near future. It explained that trends toward local search, health, retail, personal asset tracking, and connected home apps will spread geolocation based tech massively by 2019. This will open up a practically limitless number of doors for location based marketing technology providers and users. Patrick Connolly, a senior analyst from ABI Research, explained that “Conditions are perfect …

Coca-Cola Freestyle, the branded solution that dispenses more than 100 different drink choices in participating restaurants, has joined forces with Lady Antebellum to give fans the chance to win backstage passes at one of the country music group's shows, an effort that relies on a collaborative mobile application to tell fans where the dispensers are located. When fans visit participating restaurants with Coca-Cola Freestyle now through March 31, they can choose from three Lady Antebellum mixes for a chance to “mix it up backstage” and “Own the Night” with the country group.

Nashville Zoo, a fast-growing zoological park serving middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky, is leveraging a mobile ticketing and ecommerce system to make it faster and easier for visitors to buy tickets, become members and take part in other zoo activities. The zoo will leverage the accesso Passport ticketing suite to offer its guests convenient access to advance ticket sales on mobile and support onsite sales with point-of-sale, membership pass processing, group sales and access control. The zoo’s adoption of the system points to how zoos’ application of mobile has advanced beyond simply finding ways to connect guests with nature and wildlife to …

BebaPay was a payment card that was launched by Google and Equity Bank in Kenya back in 2013. The card, which enabled users to pay for bus fare via NFC, will be discontinued from March 2015. We saw Google withdraw BebaPay from the Philippines market around 10 months ago as well. Google had more than 100,000 active BebaPay users. In Kenya, BebaPay customers have been advised to switch to Equity prepaid MasterCard at no additional cost. Google also offered the BebaPay app which can turn any NFC enabled Android phone into a card reader. This enabled shops, traders and small …

Users’ lack of trust remains the largest single obstacle to growth in the mobile content and commerce industry. Forty percent of mobile users recently surveyed said it prevents them from downloading content more often, according to AVG Technologies and MEF, which conducted the study. Mistrust of apps is especially high (49 percent), according to survey results. More than a third of users (34 percent) said a lack of trust stops them  from  buying any mobile apps and services. The U.S. market experienced the largest increase in a lack of trust of the markets studied. At 35 percent, users’ lack of …

Mobility is evolving rapidly, and its impact on the workforce is profound. But beyond a powerful move toward consumerization and its growing effect on the enterprise, some interesting trends are emerging, particularly in the smartphone and tablet spaces. The recently released "SMB Mobile Trends Report" from managed services and hosting firm Intermedia snaps a number of these key developments and trends into sharp focus—and highlights what business users are actually doing in the personal technology space.