Soon, Facebook Messenger might be known simply as “Messenger.”

That’s because the world’s largest social network announced on Wednesday that users in select countries can access the popular mobile app even if they don’t have a Facebook account.

The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company is in the process of rolling out an updated version of Messenger with all its features (from group chats and video calling to sharing photos and “stickers”) available to anyone with a phone number.

New users will be able to access Messenger through an added option on the landing page: “Not on Facebook?” They click that; then sign up with their name, photo and phone number.

The move might come as a surprise to some given that Facebook has already attracted more than 1.44 billion users worldwide to its platform — 1.25 billion of whom are monthly mobile users.

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But as demonstrated by Wall Street reactions to quarterly earnings reports by Facebook and its social-media brethren — notably Twitter — growth in user numbers is given great importance. Facebook’s multibillion-dollar acquisition of Whatsapp last year was regarded by some as a ploy to boost user numbers.

That said, it’s no surprise Facebook would want to ramp up usage of its standalone Messenger app, arguably the strongest and fastest-growing in the social conglomerate’s portfolio. The company is regularly paying attention to Messenger, bolstering the app with peer-to-peer payments in March and then location sharing (not-so-coincidentally one of the most popular functions on Whatsapp) in June.

For now, access to Messenger for people without Facebook accounts is limited to the US, Canada, Peru and Venezuela.

This story originally posted as “Facebook takes the Facebook out of Messenger to grab more users” on ZDNet.

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SAN FRANCISCO — Eventually, mobile will be everything, according to PayPal President David Marcus.

That might have been a bold statement a year or even six months ago. But based on traffic and ad revenue figures experienced by some other tech giants lately (see Yahoo and Facebook, for starters), perhaps it’s just stating the obvious at this point.

During a sitdown conversation with ReadWrite Editor-in-Chief Owen Thomas on Tuesday evening, Marcus reiterated a prediction made one year ago that within five years, consumers in dense metro areas in North America, Europe, or Asia will be able to complete all payment transactions with a phone versus carrying a physical wallet.

He quipped that there are still four years left to make that happen, remaining steadfast in the ambitious forecast.

“Mobile is the territory where we want to lead and be best in class across the board,” Marcus said, stressing a need to put developer needs first in this sector too.

Marcus implied that PayPal was able to overcome numerous competitors by making strides to tap into all of these different platforms. Just one example: Marcus asserted that PayPal was the first to be able to integrate itself into Apple Safari and utilize the iPhone camera to scan bar codes to enable purchase power.

“It’s considerably harder to do payments in an ecosystem that you don’t control,” Marcus explained in trying to differentiate PayPal’s approach to digital payment infrastructures from Google Play and Apple iTunes.

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Nevertheless, Marcus defended that he is “all for competition,” positing that competition gives way to the best experience possible for customers.

Marcus showed some humility too, arguing that while PayPal is “shipping more experiences” for online shoppers, he admitted that some of the products were developed either in “catchup” mode or simply “outdated.” (The latter referred to Marcus’ assessment of the de facto checkout process.)

Yet PayPal is experimenting with some technologies that are a bit of a stretch from its desktop channel and mobile apps.

Marcus didn’t go into too many details, but he did note while reflecting on the recent Target security breach that PayPal is looking into EMV chip technologies, which are used by payments providers worldwide but have yet to catch on in the United States.

But Marcus seemed wary about EMV usage, commenting he doesn’t see it working in the long run in the digital app age.

Marcus’ comments also suggested that PayPal doesn’t dramatically refresh its interfaces and infrastructures — compared to some other e-commerce and even social media companies — in consideration of its merchant base. The PayPal chief honed in on small business owners especially, noting the number of priorities and risks that they are concerned with while balancing smaller budgets and workforces.

Such an argument reflects a common trend (and even roadblock) for mobile and digital payments over the past few years: Merchants just can’t afford the time or money to invest routinely in new technologies, especially when they can’t be certain that customers will respond.

Thus, we’ll likely see more digital payment strategies and options from PayPal, but don’t expect anything too out of the ordinary on a regular basis.

This story originally appeared as “PayPal chief on the state of digital payments: Mobile is everything” on ZDNet.

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All of us have resolutions and things we’d like to work better at in 2014, but there are few who have as tough a road ahead as BlackBerry’s latest chief executive officer, John Chen.

Getting the ball rolling early on a Monday morning when many in the tech world are still on vacation if not slowly meandering back into the office, Chen penned a memo for CNBC outlining the beleaguered phone maker’s revised strategy.

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Bottom line: BlackBerry will concentrate on what it already does best, likely shuttling away any rumors or hopes (if there are any) about new consumer sector projects.

Acknowledging (in a very understated manner) that BlackBerry is “facing challenging circumstances,” Chen highlighted three units where the mobile company will reinforce its efforts: enterprise services, BlackBerry Messenger (especially for iOS and Android users), and the QNX operating system.

Chen hinted we’ll see more of that last item next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but he emphasized BlackBerry’s leadership with the government crowd in mobile device management.

Here’s more from Chen:

Many in the regulated industries — those with the most stringent security needs — still depend solely on BlackBerry to secure their mobile infrastructure. For governments, BlackBerry cannot just be replaced — we are the only MDM provider to obtain “Authority to Operate” on U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) networks. This means the DoD is only allowed to use BlackBerry. Across the globe, seven out of seven of the G7 governments are also BlackBerry customers.

Asserting that BlackBerry is already the leader in MDM, Chen cited that BlackBerry has already signed more than 80,000 companies as MDM customers.

Thus, Chen said that BlackBerry will be continuing to push harder internationally, notably by leveraging its Foxconn ties for new smartphones that will feature “iconic design, world-class security, software development and enterprise-mobility management.” Such a move reinforces Chen’s previous decision not to scrap the smartphone department altogether.

To recall, the former Sybase head was appointed to the CEO chair back in November, replacing Thorsten Heins. That was after BlackBerry, formerly known as Research in Motion, co-founders and co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis resigned from their posts separately.

The Canadian corporation’s revolving door of CEOs, not to mention falling stock prices and weak sales numbers quarter after quarter, have caused investors, analysts, consumers, and even employees to lose faith in the company. Such a pattern is reminiscent of many companies on the brink of complete collapse.

But in the tech world, that leadership problem sparks memories that could draw comparisons to Yahoo before Marissa Mayer stepped in back in the summer of 2012. Based on the improved stock prices as well as much more positive media and analyst coverage in contrast to the previous four CEOs in four years, Yahoo executed what might have been assumed before as an impossible comeback.

Looking at Chen’s memo, he thinks the same could ring true for BlackBerry in the new year.

This story originally appeared as “BlackBerry CEO: 2014 strategy will rely on enterprise, BBM, QNX” on ZDNet.

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Here’s some buzzkill news to get your day started (at least for those of us on the West Coast).

Market intelligence firm IHS iSuppli has published a new report suggesting it is unlikely that Google will deploy Fiber on a nationwide level.

The natural first reaction might be annoyance with this, but when you think about the cost, scope and scalability of such an endeavor, these analysts are likely right — at least for the near-term future.

Certainly, Google Fiber has been on a roll lately. Following up its initial deployment in Kansas City, Google then spread the Gigabit Ethernet connectivity elsewhere in the state of Missouri.

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Then Fiber got even more attention with deployments in the tech startup friendly cities of Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah, both of which were announced around the same time in April.

The addition of Austin as Fiber-powered town alone sparked an immediate competition with AT&T (among other mobile broadband providers) to step up its own fiber-optic deployment.

Given how much money and resources that the Internet giant has worldwide, it’s easy to see how people might take a long leap to the conclusion (or hopes, at least) that Google would just go all in at this point.

IHS senior analyst Dexter Thillien brings everything back into perspective in the report — especially in regards to some of the more experienced players in the broadband market.

While the deployment of Google Fiber to the cities may capture attention, the company’s plans are miniscule compared to what its competitors undertake in the overall market. AT&T and Verizon have spent many billions of dollars establishing fiber networks in larger population centers, something Google is unlikely to be able to match.

Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean nationwide Google Fiber service will never happen — not to mention it could be a payoff for the Android maker in more ways than one.

Here’s a forecast from the report, suggesting how Fiber could benefit Google’s core product lines and strengths — especially search, data and the mobile device market:

However, if the fiber experiment is successful for Google, it may very well become a long-term undertaking for the company. This would allow Google to expand its activities beyond and leverage its entire ecosystem, which increasingly is encompassing a variety of business models and devices.

Google’s fiber experiment also may serve as a test to see how consumers might use more bandwidth, and inform the company about the sort of needs consumers might have over the next decade or so. This would help Google to develop products that meet these needs.

This story originally appeared as “IHS: Don’t expect Google Fiber to go nationwide” on ZDNet.

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There are a number of different predictions floating around about how many Internet-connected devices there will be worldwide within the next few years. But regardless of those numbers, we can all be sure that mobile Internet data traffic is going to explode exponentially as well.

Cisco Systems has chimed in with its latest predictions through 2017 in regard to mobile data traffic — and the forecasts don’t hold back.

According to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index report covering 2012 through 2017, the networking giant is predicting that global mobile data traffic will jump 13 times, to a rate of 11.2 exabytes consumed globally per month at an annual run rate of 134 exabytes.

To put this in perspective, the monthly rate for 2012 was 0.9 exabytes of mobile data traffic.

Doug Webster, vice president of Service Provider Networking Marketing at Cisco, explained further in prepared remarks that this projection equals “more than 46 times the total amount of mobile IP traffic just a few years ago in 2010.”

He continued:

With such dramatic adoption, we are rapidly approaching the time when nearly every network experience will be a mobile one and, more often than not, a visual one as well. This trend is a result of the seemingly insatiable demand by consumers and businesses alike to achieve the benefits gained when connecting people, data, and things in an Internet of Everything.

Cisco expects that from now through 2017, mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets (but also laptops) will account for the overwhelming bulk of this traffic.

One point also worth highlighting is that it appears researchers are forecasting mobile data traffic to increase sharply because of more devices online — not users.

By 2017, Cisco is predicting there will be 5.2 billion mobile users — up from 4.3 billion in 2012. But they also predicted that there will be more than 10 billion connected devices (including more than 1.7 billion M2M connections) within four years — up from 7 billion total in 2012.

However, there are expected to be some major changes in demographics as well — especially in emerging markets. — which could provide new business opportunities for everyone from mobile OEMs to service providers.

Specifically, researchers predicted that we’ll see the highest growth rate for mobile data traffic in the Middle East and Africa, with a 17.3-fold increase. But the Asia-Pacific region is expected to dominate with the most mobile traffic overall, accumulating 5.3 exabytes per month by 2017.

For a look at more predictions from Cisco’s Visual Networking Index, check out the promo clip below:

This story originally appeared on ZDNet under the headline “Cisco: Mobile Internet data traffic to grow 13-fold by 2017.”

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SAN FRANCISCO — Nokia has put its mapping unit front and center with the introduction of its Here cloud-based location brand and platform, which was unveiled during a media event here this morning.

“Maps and location experiences should inspire us to sense our world,” said Nokia president and CEO Stephen Elop, adding that the Helsinki-based corporation is now working on “creating more personal maps that change how we navigate our lives.”Elop said that the “quality and quantity” of data available will enable Nokia to “transform mapping in ways we haven’t even thought possible yet.” He added that Here is also being built to be span most mobile operating systems and devices.”We want to give everyone with any type of device the ability to use this, the best location platform in the industry,” Elop remarked, arguing that “openness is what sets Here apart” from any mapping service in the world.

For instance, Nokia revealed that it will be rolling out an SDK for Android during the first quarter of 2013. The Lumia maker is also jumping on the opportunity presented by the kerfluffle surrounding Apple Maps with Here Maps for iOS, which will debut in the next few weeks. Nokia has also formed a new location-focused partnership with Mozilla based on HTML5.Michael Halbherr, head of Nokia’s location and commerce unit, posited that building such product a requires a great deal of scalability as it will be updated based on user-generated data as well.”We need to translate usage into better services so that more people are using Here,” Halbherr said, explaining that by learning more about how people use its mapping solutions, the better Here will get for everyone.

Halbherr also stressed the importance of weaving together information from many different sources and methods for building the kind of comprehensive mapping platform that Nokia is aiming to achieve.

“We need to deal with millions and millions of updates,” Halbherr said. “If my daily life depends on it, what is on a map has to be accurate.”

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Halbherr briefly touched on the newly announced acquisition of Earthmine, noting that “with Earthmine, we’re not just getting great technology in driving our 3D roadmap forward.” Rather, Halbherr continued, together Nokia and Earthmine will combine their photographic capture and modeling solutions into one process to take street-level capturing to the next level.

It turns out 3D modeling of urban areas, or computational cartography, is a chief priority for Here as Halbherr said that Nokia wants to “be able to compute the city — not just visualize it.”

“This is very different from using the same static map and just putting bubbles on it,” he added, describing that these are actually “millions of maps” layered on top of each other for on-demand computation and information based on the need of the user.The benefits, Halbherr listed, with this approach include true offline usage, fast local rendering, and low bandwidth requirements (just roughly 12GB for mapping the whole planet).

But Halbherr assured that, ultimately, the concept of mapping hasn’t changed. Instead, it’s the content that needs to evolve.

With the new Lumia smartphones that launched earlier this year, Nokia already rolled out several new and upgraded location-based applications, including Maps, Transit and Pulse.To further emphasize Nokia’s achievements in digital mapping, Elop asserted that the Finnish phone business was the first company to digitally map the six continents where people live. He also cited that Nokia utilizes more than 80,000 data sources to update its maps daily.

Halbherr further touched on this later in the presentation by noting that there are more than 2.7 million changes to Nokia’s maps each day, stemming from local sources to industrial methods.

This story was first published as “Nokia replots mapping strategy with debut of Here” at ZDNet’s Between the Lines.

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Tablets are “reinventing” Americans’ relationship with print publications, according to a new report from digital-business analytics firm ComScore.

Based on new figures, more and more tablet owners in the United States are using their tablets to read digital periodicals on a daily basis. For example, ComScore cited that approximately 1 in 10 tablet owners read digital magazines and/or newspapers on his or her device every day as of August 2012.

Mark Donovan, senior vice president of mobile at ComScore, explained in the report that tablets are “redefining” how people consume news because the format is much more suited for long-form content than PCs or smartphones:

In the case of online newspapers, tablets are now driving 7 percent of total page views, an impressive figure considering the relative infancy of the tablet space. Publishers that understand how these devices are shifting consumption dynamics will be best positioned to leverage this platform to not only drive incremental engagement among current subscribers but also attract new readers.

But which devices they’re using tends to factor in to which kinds of periodicals they’re reading, how often they’re reading, and how long each reading session is.

Here’s a snapshot of which tablets seemed to be the most popular for a given purpose:

• Kindle Fire: Highest readership rate for digital magazines, at 43.9 percent, and newspapers, at 39.2 percent
• Nook: Greatest percentage of high-frequency newspaper readers, with 13.4 percent reading papers on a near-daily basis
• iPad: Second-highest readership rate for digital magazines, at 40.3 percent

For reference, ComScore’s monthly syndicated service TabLens conducted this survey during the 3-month period ending August 2012, with a sample size of 6,000 tablet owners nationwide.

This story originally appeared at ZDNet’s Between the Lines under the headline “ComScore: Kindle Fire has highest readership rates for digital magazines, newspapers.”

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Months after Hewlett-Packard originally announced the open-source version of WebOS, the beta version of the platform is on its way out the door.

Today’s release includes two environments for developers. The first is the desktop build, which is said to provide “the ideal development environment” for designing the WebOS user experience with more features and integrating other open-source technologies on the Ubuntu desktop.

Some of those new features include support for core apps such as Calendar and Contacts as well as third-party Enyo apps.

The second is the OpenEmbedded build for porting WebOS to new devices. It’s equipped with an ARM emulator for running db8 and node.js services, and HP said that it included OpenEmbedded because of its “widespread community adoption” and cross-compiling support for embedded platforms.

Overall, the beta version of Open WebOS is comprised of 54 WebOS components available as open source, touted as bringing more than 450,000 lines of code released under the Apache 2.0 license.

When open-source WebOS was first announced last year, it met with a bit of a negative reaction because of criticisms that HP didn’t have a clear plan for the platform as well as uncertainty about how the platform would affect the mobile spectrum in general.

HP provided a few more details in January, including the news that the first version of the platform would be available by September of 2012.

HP more or less acknowledged in a blog post the lengthy time it took to push out Open WebOS to developers, citing that it required “a lot of hard work, long hours, and weekend sacrifices by our engineering team to deliver on our promise, and we have accomplished this goal.”

However, HP didn’t provide a specific date yet for when in September the release of Open WebOS will take place.

This story originally appeared on ZDNet.

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Google Wallet is likely on a more mainstream path to wider adoption with U.S. consumers as the system is moving to the cloud, meaning it should be able to accept all major credit and debit cards.

Specifically, the new cloud-based version of the Google Wallet app supports all credit and debit cards from Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover.

Robin Dua, head of product management for the Google Wallet team, explained in a blog post that consumers can use any card when shopping in-store or online with Google Wallet.

To support all credit and debit cards, we changed our technical approach to storing payment cards. The Google Wallet app now stores your payment cards on highly secure Google servers, instead of in the secure storage area on your phone. A wallet ID (virtual card number) is stored in the secure storage area of the phone, and this is used to facilitate transactions at the point of sale. Google instantly charges your selected credit or debit card. This new approach speeds up the integration process for banks so they can add their cards to the Wallet app in just a few weeks.

Furthermore, in the case of a lost or stolen smartphone, the upgraded version of Google Wallet is designed to ensure that users should be able to remotely disable their mobile wallet apps using an online portal. But the Google Wallet app continues to have a PIN number for access to the app, and Google advises Wallet users to have an overall screen lock for the device on top of that as an extra layer of security.

Google Wallet debuted in mid-2011, touted as an innovative yet simple way to pay for purchases using just a smartphone and NFC technology.

However, there were a few catches that hampered mass adoption with consumers and merchants as the mobile commerce platform supported only a few methods of payment, including Citi’s MasterCard and a Google prepaid card that can be reloaded by any existing credit cards, among other options that have been tacked on since.

Given that Google Wallet still depends on the requirement of the smartphone (or tablet, in the case of the Nexus 7) having NFC, it’s still going to be a while before Google Wallet becomes a standard procedure. Nevertheless, the addition of more payment options with the top four credit card companies in the world is a step in the right direction for the company.

This story originally appeared on ZDNet.

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The number of U.S. mobile phone subscribers switching from feature phones to smartphones is almost at the halfway mark, according to a new report from ComScore.

Roughly 110 million Americans owned a smartphone device as of April 2012, an increase of 44 percent from the previous year. Specifically, 47.5 percent of feature phone owners switched to a smartphone when buying a new device in April — up from 38 percent at the same time in 2011.

At the same time, the number of American consumers who upgraded from an old feature phone to a feature phone decreased from 60.6 percent to 50.7 percent. That’s a drop of 9.9 percent compared to the increase seen with smartphone ownership of 9.5 percent. That disparity of U.S. consumers who upgraded any mobile device is hardly negligible, although it might be curious to know why those few consumers gave up cell phones altogether.

Never the less, Mark Donovan, ComScore’s senior vice president of Mobile, remarked in the report that smartphone ownership is becoming the norm for a few reasons that revolve around one concept: money.

The growing number of smartphones available to consumers, accompanied by the decrease in price points and surge in mobile media content, have made smartphone ownership possible and desirable for many more. Within the year, we expect to see smartphone owners become the mobile majority, a milestone that represents not only the evolution of the mobile landscape but highlights the enormous potential for marketers as these powerful, ubiquitous devices open new opportunities to reach a growing audience of consumers.

Out of the group of consumers upgrading to smartphones, most of them are interested in Android. Approximately three out of five (61.5 percent) of first-time smartphone buyers are opting for Android, while 25.2 percent went with an iPhone.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 trailed way behind in third with 7.1 percent of new smartphone owners, while RIM represented 4.8 percent. However, those last two placements switch and change dramatically when you account for existing smartphone owners upgrading to a new device. In that case, RIM accounted for 9.6 percent of acquired devices, while Microsoft represented 3.0 percent.

This story was originally posted as “Smartphones now more attainable, desirable for Americans: comScore” on ZDNet’s Between the Lines.

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