Sparklabs Global Ventures' Technology and Internet Market Bi
SparkLabs Global Ventures’ Technology and Internet Market Bi-Monthly Review September 22, 2014 Weekly Highlights Global Trends • The travel industry is booming on smartphones as mobile bookings hit 40 percent Americans are rapidly moving away from desktops and getting comfortable booking all of their travel reservations on tablets and smartphones. In other words, people are making their travel plans on mobile devices, not desktops and laptops. For the first six months of 2014, over 40 percent of Americans booked travel reservations — flights, hotels, cruises, for example — on mobile devices, up more than 20 percent for the same period last year, according to Criteo’s new Travel Flash Report. Criteo is Paris-based with offices in New York and the Bay Area. Criteo, a virtual brand retargeter that helps clients retain customers in marketing campaigns, also queried over 1,000 of their clients, many of whom reside in the online travel ecosystem, for example, like Expedia and Hotels.com. Other findings indicate that mobile devices now account for 21 percent of hotel bookings. Peer-to-peer apartment rentals booked through mobile is now 34 percent globally, not just in the States. Mobile penetration trends in Asia, Latin America, and Europe, mirror, more or less, the mobile numbers in the States. Indeed, Asia has seen a 20 percent growth on those booking through mobile devices. But in Germany, the biggest economy in all of Europe, online booking with a mobile device stood at a paltry 10 percent. • How Apple Pay is set to change commerce Recently, Apple announced two new iPhones that included Near Field Communication (NFC) for wireless payments for the first time.
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