Visa moves to accelerate mobile payment adoption
Visa will expand its Technology Innovation Program to U.S. merchants beginning in October as part of an effort to accelerate migration among merchants and others to mobile payments technology.

Among the moves being taken by Visa is the elimination of a requirement that merchants validate PCI compliance if they are enabled to support both contact and contactless chips. Visa said it will also require that U.S. acquirer processors and sub processor service providers support merchant acceptance of chip transactions no later than April 1, 2013.

Additionally, Visa plans to shift liability for point-of-sale counterfeit fraud from card issues to merchants that have not adopted, at minimum, contact chip terminals. This will encourage chip adoption since any chip-on-chip transaction provides the dynamic authentication data that helps to better protect all parties, according to Visa.

The company said it is encouraging investment in EMV contact and contactless chip technology to speed up the adoption of mobile payments and improve international security.

FCC combines review of AT&T?s T-Mobile, Qualcomm deals
The Federal Communications Commission said it will combine its review AT&T?s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile as and its proposed purchase of spectrum from Qualcomm Inc.

The FCC said that its evaluation of the relationship between the two proposed transactions has confirmed that they raise a number of related issues. These issues include questions regarding AT&T?s aggregation of spectrum throughout the country and in overlapping areas.

As a result, the FCC has determined that the best way to determine if either or both of the transactions serve the public interest is to consider them in a coordinated manner. 

HTC the focus of another Apple patent complaint 
The U.S. International Trade Commission said it will investigate a complaint filed by Apple alleging HTC infringed its patents in mobile devices, including several Android smartphones and a tablet.

This is the second time Apple has taken claims of patent infringement by Taiwanese firm HTC to the ITC, which last month found that the company violated two of Apple?s patents.

Apple is requesting that the ITC ban imports of the items in question. HTC insists it has not infringed any patents.

75pc of mobile users consider using the cloud: Study
Three-quarters of mobile users plan to use the personal cloud to store rich media and digital data, according to a new survey from Funamol.

The survey of 232 people in 49 countries asked consumers about their use of digital lockers such as Apple iCloud and found that 67 percent of mobile users would be willing to pay to use personal cloud services, with $5 per month being the most popular price point.

Other findings include that 88 percent plan to store contacts in the cloud, 85 percent would store files, 80 percent a calendar and 69 percent photos. Additionally, 30 percent said they would buy commercial content for their personal cloud and 51 percent said they might make such purchases. While 72 percent said they would use the personal cloud for both personal and business use, 26 percent said they would use it only for personal use.

Barnes & Noble has a back-to-school promotion for Nook
Barnes & Noble is offering students who purchase a new Nook more than $100 in free ebooks, and study tools.

The back-to-school promotion includes a free collection of 12 classic titles for Nook such as A Tale of Two Cities and Crime and Punishment. Additionally, students will be able to access 12 SparkNotes, study guides and four Nook apps. 

Customers who purchase the Nook or Nook Color during the promotional period will receive an e-mail with unique access codes to download the free content. The promotion runs through September 11.

U.S. Cellular sees increase in smartphone sales
U.S. Cellular reports in its second quarter financial results that smartphone sales, as a percent of total devices sold, increased to 39.6 percent from 15.8 percent.

While smartphone sales were strong, the company also said it saw an increase in data plans for feature phones in the quarter.

U.S. Cellular?s net income totaled $73.9 million, or $0.87 per diluted share, compared with $40.8 million, or $0.47 per diluted share, in the comparable year-ago period.

The postpaid average revenue per unit increased to $51.84 from $50.55 and the company?s postpaid churn improved to 1.38 percent from 1.43 percent. The company lost 58,000 retail customers in the second quarter, including 17,000 prepaid customers and 41,000 postpaid customers.

Personalized offers preferred by mobile phone users: Upstream
Smartphone and feature phone users prefer to receive mobile advertisements that are personalized, according to new research from Upstream.

More than 2,000 American adults were polled and the results show that 59 percent of feature phone users prefer receiving personalized offers while offers that are based on time are preferred by 18 percent, lifestyle 16 percent and location 8 percent.

Smartphone users responses were similar, with 60 percent preferring personalized offers, 17 percent preferring ones based on time, 10 percent lifestyle and 14 percent location.

Smartphone users also said they want ads for content for their mobile devices, followed by movies/entertainment, offers from their mobile service provider and consumer goods.

The top choice for feature phone users is offers from a mobile service provider followed by movies/entertainment. Content for a mobile device and consumers were tied for third place followed by offers from retail stores.

By mobile advertising channel, smartphone users prefer mobile coupons followed by an opt-in text alert, an email received on a mobile phone, an ad on a mobile Web site and an ad that appears during an Internet search. Feature phone users prefer an opt-in text alert followed by mobile coupons, a notification from their service provider, text-based messages that flash on the screen and email.