12 of the best new features in Android Lollipop

By Dieter Bohn
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Google’s approach for rolling out the latest version of Android, Lollipop, is a little different. There are the usual things we see every year — a new Nexus phone and a new Nexus tablet — but instead of a big event, the company is posting details in blog posts and on the main Android site. So if you’re tracking the rollout closely, you probably have a sense of what’s new and what’s cool in the OS. If you’re not, though, getting a sense of what Lollipop is actually like and what it actually does isn’t easy.

Luckily, we got a chance to sit down with some Google execs last week to get a walkthrough of the coolest features. We won’t know everything until we actually have a chance to use the final version, but there are some clever additions we saw last week. Here are some of our favorites.

Tap and Go: Android has never been particularly good at transferring your settings and apps from an old phone to a new one. It’s always been a crap shoot as to whether all your apps would actually be downloaded from the Play store, to say nothing of your home screen and wallpaper. That’s partially Google’s fault, but it’s also a difficult problem to solve because of the diversity of hardware and software in the Android ecosystem. "Tap and Go" is a small step towards resolving that. If you have two Lollipop phones, you can pair them with NFC and the old phone will then use Bluetooth to send over all the details of what your phone should have installed over to the new phone.

Ok Google: Several of the enhancements on Lollipop were inspired by Motorola. The first is the ability to say "Ok Google" even if your phone is in standby mode. Your phone will wake and then you can use voice to search, send texts, and more. It requires compatible hardware, though, and so far we only know for sure that the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 support it.

Double tap to wake: Speaking of waking up your Android device, you can just double tap the screen of the Nexus 9 tablet to wake it up. Like the advanced "Ok Google" command, it requires compatible hardware. We also hear it works on the Nexus 6.

NEXUS GETS SOME OF THE BEST FEATURES FROM THE MOTO X

Ambient Display: Another feature that’s made it over from the Moto X is the idea of displaying bits of information on your screen as it comes in without turning the whole thing on. On the Nexus 6, it’s much more advanced — basically you get black and white versions of what would normally be on the lock screen anyway. It requires an OLED screen to work, so for now it seems like this is going to be a Nexus 6-specific feature.

Face unlock: Android’s face unlock feature has never really worked all that well. It’s kind of magical that it can recognize your face, but it’s often slow and usually needs really good lighting conditions to work. In Lollipop, Google has tweaked it so that it starts running silently as soon as you turn on your screen. Since you can interact with notifications on the lock screen now (see below), the idea is that you’d power it on, mess with a few notifications, and by the time you’re done Face Unlock has already kicked in and unlocked the phone.

Lock screen notifications: As with the iPhone, Android Lollipop will put notifications right on your lock screen. But on Android, the notifications on your screen are basically the same as those that appear in the drop-down notification shade. Why does that matter? Because on Android, you get a lot of control built-in to those notifications. You can archive email, tap reply, expand notifications to see more information, and so on. Now, you can do it directly on your lock screen. As a small bonus, if you have apps with sensitive information that you want to see notifications from but don’t want to display their contents, you can set them to be "redacted" when they show up on the lock screen.

Priority Mode: But the best notification enhancement in Lollipop is something Google calls "Priority Mode." It’s a little bit like "Do Not Disturb" on iOS but it seems much smarter here. You can easily choose which apps can still disturb you when in Priority Mode (the rest won’t bug you). Even better, when you set it, Android gives you the option to set a duration before it goes back into normal notifications. That way, you won’t forget to switch it off. There’s also a total silence mode that will turn everything off — including alarms.

Guest Mode: Android has allowed multiple user accounts on tablets for awhile, but in Lollipop there’s a new option called Guest Mode that works on both phones and tablets. The idea is that it creates a clean, safe, and disposable workspace that anybody can use. Your guest can even quickly log in to their account to check email. You or your guest can get rid of the data inside the guest account at any time.

THE NEXUS 9 IS EASY TO HAND TO YOUR KIDS

Pin Apps: Sometimes Guest Mode is too much work, and all you really want to do is launch a game and hand your phone to your kid — but not let them leave that game to mess with your email. Lollipop has a new feature (enabled in settings) that adds a pin to each card in the mulititasking view. When you tap it, that app won’t let you leave without entering a passcode. It’s similar to the "Guided Access" feature in iOS, but a little easier to use.

Improved Quick Settings: Quick Settings have been reorganized again, and they’re a bit easier to figure out now. Plus, the brightness slider you’ll find there is a little bit smarter: by default it responds correctly to ambient light at any brightness level. Speaking of sliders, the volume slider that pops up when you hit the volume key is also smarter: it has the buttons for the various Priority Notification modes right there.

Overview: The multitasking view now has a new name, Overview, and a new Material Design look. Each app is a big card, stacked up, and you can scroll through many more recent apps than you used to be able to. But the best feature is that any app can create multiple "cards." So, for example, when you compose a new email your inbox is still in the overview, so you can switch back and forth between tasks in a single app.

Material Design: The best and most obvious feature in Lollipop comes last. It’s a complete redesign that we already got a good look at this past summer, but there are new designs pretty much everywhere. One example: the contact card. Android adds a dynamically-created color overlay to each photo based on an accent color from the photo itself. Red lipstick, red overlay. Orange sweater, orange overlay. It’s a nice touch.

This article was updated to reflect that double tap to wake reportedly works just fine on the Nexus 6. We regret the original error.

Credit:http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/28/7082875/12-best-new-features-android-lollipop-nexus

LG Brings the Fight to Samsung’s Door

South Korean Tech Stalwart Notches Gains on Bigger Rival

By MIN-JEONG LEE

Samsung Electronics Co. has been battling Apple Inc. in the cutthroat global smartphone market, but in its own backyard, the South Korean technology giant has been fighting off a half-century-old rival, LG Electronics Inc.

While it isn’t yet a big material threat like low-cost Chinese makers, LG has been nibbling at Samsung’s smartphone market share and is becoming a bigger player in a number of product categories, including TVs and home appliances, and gaining technological edge in key components like displays. The two keep very close tabs each other’s product launch plans, according to people familiar with the matter.

To be sure, LG’s gains are coming in Samsung’s massive shadow. Samsung’s revenue of 229 trillion won ($218 billion) for 2013 is nearly four times bigger than LG’s 58 trillion won revenue for the same period, and Samsung’s 30.5 trillion won net profit dwarfs LG’s 223 billion won. In the second quarter, Samsung had a 25.2% share of the global smartphone market, while LG had 4.9%, according to researcher Strategy Analytics. Samsung remains a dominant force in terms of shipments for TVs and memory chips.

But when Samsung released its third-quarter earnings estimates earlier this month, its struggles in the smartphone market became ever more apparent. Samsung said its operating profit in the third quarter more than halved from a year earlier, largely due to weakness in its smartphone business. Its TV and display unit isn’t expected to have done any better.

LG, which reports earnings on Wednesday, is expected to see its operating profit as much as double, according to analysts, thanks to a better-than-expected reception of the G3 smartphone it launched in May. In South Korea, LG grabbed a 27% handset market share in the third quarter, its highest in years, and up from just 18% a year earlier, according to Counterpoint Research. During the same period, Samsung’s share slipped to 60% from 66%.

LG’s display-making affiliate, LG Display Co. , is poised to top its bigger rival Samsung Display Co. in both revenue and profit in the third quarter on solid sales of high-end screens used in Apple’s iPhones as well as LG’s flagship G series phones. Meanwhile, LG Display’s growing expertise in large-size, next-generation displays has allowed LG Electronics to beat Samsung in the launch of a series of curved-screen and super-thin TV sets.

Still, in a sign that Samsung is becoming increasingly conscious of its much-smaller hometown rival, the company took a page from LG’s playbook by introducing a rear-button function with its latest Galaxy Note 4 smartphone, which LG first introduced in its G2 smartphone last year.

LG didn’t miss out on the rare opportunity to mock its bigger rival bytweeting through one of its official accounts: “Thank you 4 taking Note.” Samsung declined to comment on the tweet.

For decades, the crosstown rivals have taken pride in pioneering technologies used in everything from TVs and refrigerators to washing machines and mobile devices. They compete in nearly identical global markets and product categories.

Their rivalry culminated in a bitter fight in September when LG executives entered an electronics shop in Berlin and allegedly broke the doors of multiple high-end Samsung washing machines. Samsung swiftly filed a formal complaint with the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, requesting an investigation. LG denied allegations of ill intent, saying the executives were casually “checking out” the doors when they unexpectedly broke. LG also took the occasion to highlight that it outsells Samsung in washing machines, one of the few categories where LG tops Samsung.

The incident is under investigation by the South Korean authorities. The prosecutors’ office declined to comment on ongoing probes.

LG—which began in 1958 as a company called Gold Star, a maker of radios—has a history of falling behind Samsung in technological prowess. Its revenue was almost on par with that of Samsung, which was established in 1969, as a maker of black-and-white TVs, until the mid-1980s, when Samsung made a lucrative push into computers and semiconductors.

The gap widened after the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, when the government forced LG to divest its chip business as a part of a broad restructuring of the conglomerates known as chaebols. That chip business became SK HynixInc., the world’s second-largest memory chip maker after Samsung.

When word was circulating last year that LG Electronics would introduce an “industry first” curved-screen smartphone in the fourth quarter, Samsung surprised the market at a media event in September 2013 with news of its own curved-screen phone. Samsung launched its Galaxy Round smartphone the following month exclusively in South Korea.

LG launched its LG G Flex in November, and rolled it out in global markets. Sales figures haven’t been disclosed for either of the curved-screen phones.

Following LG’s successful G3 phone launch this year, Samsung responded in September with a new phablet, dubbed the Galaxy Note Edge, with a screen that wraps over one edge to display messages.

“It comes down to what kind of benefits our product can provide to customers, because we can’t earn money without customer satisfaction,” said Chris Yie, vice president for marketing at LG’s mobile unit. Mr. Yie said LG is preparing to counter Samsung’s Galaxy Note Edge, without going into specific details.

The two companies appear to have selected their next battleground: A team of LG Display engineers is working to bring flexible screens that can fold in half for smartphones, while Samsung Display aims to start production at its flexible-display production line early next year.

Credit:http://online.wsj.com/articles/lg-electronics-brings-the-fight-to-samsungs-door-1414516339

Acer Liquid Jade Review: In Depth

By Chris Barraclough



THE GOOD                                                                  THE BAD

• Slim and light
• Attractive UI
• Crisp and colourful screen 

• 
  Occasionally chuggy performance
• Mediocre battery life

We review the Acer Liquid Jade, a mid-range mobile with a sleek and surprisingly slim, lightweight design, but regrettably not much in the tank.

Acer Liquid Jade design: Glossed over

When we first picked up the Acer Liquid Jade, we were really impressed by its slender and lightweight design – it’s just 7.5mm thick and 110g, making it one of the lightest phones we’ve played with recently. The phone is nicely curved in each corner and sports a rounded rear, so it fits nicely into the hand without jabbing at your palm - often an issue with 5-inch phones.

One-handed use is just about possible thanks to the Liquid Jade’s reasonably compact build, an impressive feat indeed. However, the phone’s glossy cover does make the phone a little slippery, so you’ll want to clutch it tight to make sure it doesn’t go flying out of your grasp.

We also found that the glossy rear was a magnet for pocket filth and general scum, which can look a little untidy, especially under bright lights. Best keep a hanky on stand-by.

You can’t open up the Liquid Jade’s back cover to access the battery and other innards, which means the SIM card slot is instead housed in a tiny drawer on the left edge of the phone. The power button is found up top, awkwardly placed if you’re using the phone right-handed, while the volume rocker is stuck on the right edge and much easier to access.

Our only real bugbear is the camera lens, which juts out a fair way from the back of the handset – even more so than the Apple iPhone 6’s lens. Still, it didn’t impede our grip and the Liquid Jade is still a good-looking budget blower. If you prefer a splash of colour, however, you’d probably prefer the Nokia Lumia 630 or Lumia 635, which boast changeable covers, including a very eye-catching green and orange.

Acer Liquid Jade screen and media: HD visuals

That 5-inch screen stretches almost edge-to-edge across the front panel and there’s very little glass between the display and your finger, so your homescreens almost appear to be floating on the surface. The Liquid Jade sports a 720p resolution, giving 294 pixels-per-inch, which is comparable to the phone’s closest rivals, including the Motorola Moto G. In simple terms, that means you can comfortably browse desktop versions of websites and HD movies look impressively crisp, bolstered by some accurate and attractive colour reproduction.

A strong top brightness means you can also use the Liquid Jade out in harsh sunlight, without being forced to squint through the glare.

The Jade makes a big deal of its DTS HD speaker, which sits at the bottom of the phone’s rear side, perfect positioning for your palm to smother it. In fact, there's even a DTS logo branded right on the phone's rump. However, even with the speaker pointed at your face and the volume pumped up to max, it’s not exactly ear-explodingly powerful - although we’ve heard far, far worse. Audio quality is generally fine, but we’d still recommend plugging in earphones when you’re kicking back with a movie.

As for storage space, you only get 8GB built into the phone itself for carrying around your media collection, but you can quickly and cheaply expand via a micro SD memory card, up to a further 32GB. It’s a shame you can’t slot in cards with more storage, especially with some phones now accepting up to 128GB, but at least the option’s there.

Acer Liquid Jade user experience: A whole new ‘droid

Acer has skinned Android 4.4 KitKat with its own user interface, which isn’t a massive departure from the norm but still looks nice to our jaded eyeballs.

We love how you get tons of quick-access power features tucked in a handy menu, which can be accessed at any time by dragging two fingers down from the top of the screen. As well as the usual brightness, Wi-Fi, GPS etc. toggles, you can also check how much data you’ve used from your allowance, turn on the wireless display mode (which can throw the Liquid Jade’s screen to a larger display) and fiddle with your alarms.

Acer has also chucked in a few of its own apps, which you’ll either love as special bonus features or else condemn as crapware and immediately uninstall. As well as a document editor, file manager and media players, you’ll find some businessy apps for hooking up to and making the most of Acer’s cloud service.

There’s also a ‘Quick Mode’ which will be well suited to older users, with its simple, stripped-down desktop and larger fonts. You can still add whatever apps you like to the desktop, so all of your favourites can be quickly accessed with a tap.

Also worth noting is that the Liquid Jade is a Dual SIM delight, handy if you currently carry both personal and work phones. Just slot both SIMs into the little drawer and you can use either for your calls, texts and data.

Acer Liquid Jade performance and battery life: Awkward

Although the Liquid Jade just about copes with everyday use, we noticed a fair bit of slowdown rearing its ugly head rather often. When booting up the phone, our widgets were little more than swirling loading circles for a minute or so each time. Flicking through menus occasionally gets laggy and apps sometimes take a while to chug into life.

Battery life is unfortunately another awkward turd in the swimming pool. Usually we’d charge the Liquid Jade overnight and use it for emails and texts and a tiny bit of web browsing each morning, and come noon it was usually already at least half depleted. It’ll just about last the day if you’re restrained, but that’s with the CPU power saving mode activated. Try streaming video or playing games and the Jade will be history in just under three hours, a pretty poor result all-round.

Acer Liquid Jade camera: Stay out of the dark

A 13-megapixel camera juts out of the Liquid Jade’s rear and that's a pretty high pixel count considering the cost of the phone. In good lighting conditions, the happy news is that you'll capture sharp photos boasting realistic colours and plenty of detail, even with closies. It's an easy match for the new Moto G in terms of daylight performance.

In low light, the Liquid Jade’s camera starts to suffer, with images often appearing grainy – and that’s if the auto-focus actually manages to work at all. You’ve got a basic LED flash to help out, but even with that enabled, we found the auto-focus sometimes crapped out on us, giving blurred results.

You also have a 2-megapixel front-facing cam for capturing slightly fuzzy selfies.

Acer has added in a ton of bonus modes to play with, including the usual panorama and burst modes, plus a terrifying beauty mode that makes your whole family look like demented anime sex pests. Then there's the more unique features, such as the multi-angle mode which can be used to snap something from six or seven different positions and then flick through them at will. Of course, this feature only works on the phone, so its use is rather limited.

Acer Liquid Jade verdict

For £229, the Liquid Jade is sadly a little overpriced, although you can find it cheaper if you look hard enough. We really like the thin and light design, while the 5–inch screen is bright and crisp enough for everyday use and kicking back with some movies on the go, but the excellent Moto G boasts exactly the same pros and pretty much none of the cons.

KEY SPECS

• Screen size:5-inches
• Screen resolution:720p HD (720x1280)
• Weight:110 grams
• OS:Android 4.4 KitKat
• Rear Camera:13-megapixel w/ single LED flash
• Front camera:2-megapixel
• Processor:Quad-core 1.3GHz Cortex A7
• Memory:1GB
• Storage:8GB
• 4G LTE:No
• Bonus features:Dual SIM

Credit:http://recombu.com/mobile/article/acer-liquid-jade-review

Lenovo: Could it be a multi-brand mobile player?

Summary: A rumor that Lenovo could acquire BlackBerry woke up traders. But the broader question is whether Lenovo has the chops to manage the Motorola and BlackBerry brands along with its own and not be crushed by indigestion.

By Larry Dignan

Lenovo is rumored to be pondering a bid for BlackBerry, a possibility that could lead to some major indigestion considering the PC maker is about to close the purchase of Motorola Mobility. But the concept does raise the question about whether a multi-brand effort can work in the smartphone market.

According to Benzinga, a financial news site, Lenovo could make an offer as early as this week. Other news outlets picked up on the report since BlackBerry shares were moving on the rumor.

Buying enterprise mobility management: How important is independence?

I'd argue that Lenovo buying BlackBerry this soon is a stretch. First, there are regulatory issues. In addition, BlackBerry finally has some momentum and it's doubtful it would sell out with the launch of the latest BlackBerry Enterprise Server, the linchpin of its turnaround plan, on deck November 13.

Now a Lenovo takeover of BlackBerry may make sense just not at this moment. Lenovo is integrating IBM's x86 server business and Motorola Mobility soon. Google executives said they expect theLenovo takeover of Motorola to be completed shortly.

Should Lenovo buy BlackBerry it would become the Acer of smartphones. Acer acquired Gateway and Packard Bell to create a group of brands to hit various market segments. Ultimately, Acer remained the alpha brand and the one people know best today. The multibrand strategy worked somewhat for Acer, but wasn't a home run.

Fast forward to Lenovo and the smartphone play. Lenovo would have its own smartphones, which do well in China, Motorola, which does ok in the US and is stronger around the world, and BlackBerry, a enterprise-focused vendor. Lenovo would have to keep all three of those brands and complicate its management strategy. 

There's an argument that BlackBerry would give Lenovo a solid enterprise stack — servers, PCs, smartphones and the software and security to manage it all — but a purchase right now looks a bit unwieldy.

Stranger things have happened in technology and BlackBerry looks like it would be a great asset to be acquired. But all these rumors get stopped by the simple question for both sides of the deal: Why now?

Credit: http://www.zdnet.com/lenovo-could-it-be-a-multi-brand-mobile-player-7000034904/

Microsoft looks set to drop Nokia name from smartphones

CREDIT: REUTERS/JASON REDMOND

Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) looks set to ditch the Nokia name from its Lumia range of smartphones just months after buying the Finnish company's handset business.

According to a post on Nokia France's Facebook page on Tuesday, the page will change its name to Microsoft Lumia "in the coming days."

Microsoft declined comment.

Under the terms of the $7.2 billion deal, which was struck in September 2013 and completed in April, Microsoft acquired Nokia's handset business, though not the name of the company itself.

Finland's Nokia (NOK1V.HE) continues as a networks, mapping and technology licensing company. It owns and manages the Nokia brand and only licenses it to Microsoft.

Microsoft has said in the past it plans to license the Nokia brand for its lower-end mobile phones for 10 years and to use the name on its smartphones only for a "limited" time, without saying how long that might be.

New Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella has begun to reduce the scale of its phone-making operations. Of the 18,000 job cuts he announced in July, about 12,500 came from the unit acquired from Nokia.


Credit:http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/22/us-microsoft-nokia-idUSKCN0IB2AY20141022

Samsung's Galaxy Tab 4 Nook goes big-screen

The new 10.1-inch device launches with an introductory price of $300 and includes over $200 in Nook content.

By:Don Reisinger
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook is now available at Barnes & Noble stores.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook now has a larger screen size to go with the grand expanse of its name.

The co-branded Android tablet now comes with a 10.1-inch screen option, following on from the 7-inch tablet that kicked off the collaboration between Samsung and Barnes & Noble earlier this year.

Priced at $300, the 10.1-inch device comes with free access to more than $200 in Nook content, the companies announced Wednesday. Customers will receive four bestselling e-books, along with an episode each of "The Newsroom," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and "The Octonauts." They'll also be able to choose up to four 14-day free trial subscriptions from a selection of 15 magazines.

The big-screen Galaxy Tab 4 Nook is available now at Barnes & Noble bookstores and online.

The $200 bundle of Nook content is also available for free to new customers of the 7-inch tablet, the companies said. That smaller device is priced at $170, after a $30 "instant rebate."

Barnes & Noble and Samsung announced their hardware partnership in June, effectively ending the bookseller's foray into hardware design. While the original Nook tablets and e-readers were generally well-received among reviewers, they failed to capture enough attention (and customers) to continue to be produced in-house. Now Samsung provides the hardware, and Barnes & Noble its customized Nook software.

One question with the 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab 4 Nook is what kind of shelf life the "introductory" price of $300 has. In an e-mailed statement to CNET, a Barnes & Noble spokesperson said only that the company has "not announced anything at this point" on future pricing.

Samsung did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the pricing issue.

Credit:http://www.cnet.com/news/samsung-barnes-noble-announce-large-screen-galaxy-tab-4-nook/

Apple Pay: Who Won and Who Lost?

By: Sam Frizell 

Not all Apple Pay winners are created equal

Mobile payments are happening to the retail industry like bankruptcy happens to Mike Campbell in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises: gradually, and then suddenly all at once. Google has offered mobile payments for three years, and Walmart and Best Buy have been talking about mobile pay since 2012. But Apple is one of the few companies that many observers say can quickly lead a critical mass of people to wave their phones in the air for everything from bed sheets to burgers.

Retailers, credit card companies and banks all have made big bets on Apple’s new mobile payment system, which makes it more likely to succeed. “We will put our shoulders into a big step change like this,” says Matt Dill, a senior vice president at Visa, an Apple Pay partner, in an interview with TIME. “Apple Pay is a tipping point for major institutions going all in.”

If Apple Pay becomes as ubiquitous as most observers expect, it won’t just change the way consumers pay for things, it’ll reshape the financial institutions that facilitate our purchases. That’s not good news for everyone — many companies felt pushed to join up with Apple so they weren’t left behind. For some, it was either the Apple Pay-way or the highway.

Here’s a list of the major players, roughly in order of who won the most to who won the least.

Apple. Every time a customer make a purchase with Apple Pay, Apple earns a 0.15% charge. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but researchers say it’ll add up in the long run. Equity analysts at Nomura estimated that charge will account for $1.6 billion in projected revenue by 2017. On the lower end of estimates, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster says that Apple Pay will generate revenue of $118 million in 2015 and $310 million in 2016.

Perhaps more importantly, Apple Pay, if successful, will increase demand for Apple devices. And once customers are using Apple Pay and all their purchases are wrapped up to their phones, it’ll be that much harder to leave Apple for Android or another smartphone platform.

“Just getting part of the transaction itself will be big” for Apple, says Rajesh Kandaswamy, researcher at Gartner. But “the largest issue is it’s harder to switch away if you’re an iPhone user.”

Banks. Consumers won’t have to pay for Apple’s 0.15% fee on Apple Pay transactions; banks will. The six big banks who have signed up for Apple Pay aren’t enthusiastic about that. But in the long run, banks expect Apple Pay will push people away from using cash and toward transactions that run over their networks. Online shopping will be faster, too, as customers won’t have to input their billing information every time they make a purchase.

Finally, because Apple Pay uses a difficult-to-hack system that encrypts all financial transactions, banks will experience less cybercrime breaches for which they’re held financially liable. “Banks are going to make less money on the transaction than if it were made on a regular card swipe” because of Apple’s fee, says Michelle Evans, an analyst at Euromonitor, “but they can make more money in the end if they can drive volume over the card network and reduce fraud.”

Credit Card Companies. Visa, MasterCard and American Express have loudly trumpeted Apple Pay’s rollout. They stand to make money off Apple Pay for the same reason the banks will: the program pushes customers to their global credit business. Dill, the Visa SVP, calls Apple Pay an “on-ramp” to Visa’s network and a growth-fueler. “If we didn’t encourage innovation” like Apple Pay, “then we would be the worst enemy to our own growth,” Dill says.

But there’s another reason credit card companies are enthusiastic about Apple Pay: the alternative, CurrentC, could be pretty scary.CurrentC is a payment system mega retailers like Walmart and Best Buy are working on that could cut out credit card companies altogether. While Apple Pay leaves the traditional credit card system intact by simply moving it to your phone, analysts speculate that the CurrentC program will link payments through a network connected directly to your savings account. Voila: no middleman.

“If a technology comes along that’s focused on getting you to not use Visa, then that’s a competitor to us,” says Dill. The threat of CurrentC makes Apple Pay look more like a rickety lifeboat for the credit card companies than the super-fast motorboat Apple has promised.

Retailers and Merchants. Walgreens, Macy’s, McDonald’s and other merchants that began using Apple Pay on Monday get the same bonus that they have always gotten from debit cards and credit cards: new customers who can spend money faster. If customers spend money more easily, retailers make money more easily.

Apple Pay is also a good way to move customers through lines more quickly. It could eventually lead to retailers adopting more self-checkout lines; for merchants, that means paying fewer cashiers and lower overhead.

But Apple Pay also reinforces a system that retailers never really liked: they have to continue to pay a fee for every credit and debit card transaction. “Retailers don’t like the fees they pay,” says Kandaswamy. “Apple Pay is going to consolidate power among the same players even more.” CurrentC, on the other hand, could allow retailers to collect customer-specific data. That would let businesses like Walmart target customers with products in the same way that Google or Facebook target their ads.

Two days into Apple Pay, there aren’t yet any data on the program’s success. It’s too early to know how many people have used it or how much money Apple has made from it. But financial institutions believe the way we pay for things is changing quickly, eve

n if we don’t quite notice it yet. “The U.S. is in midst of an innovation in payments,” Carolyn Balfany, senior vice president at MasterCard, tells TIME. “Payment security is going to change more in the next five years than it has in the past 50.” If Apple Pay does take off, then it is happening gradually before it’s here all of a sudden.

Credit: http://time.com/3532199/apple-pay-winners-losers/