Content about smartphones

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The developer of a retail app is partnering with marketing company Baesman Group to offer a location-based, geo-fencing mobile app that it said would drive in-store traffic by sending sales and promotional offers to consumers' smartphones.

After downloading the app, which has a built-in GPS system, users opt-in to retail brands and choose how often they would like to receive offers. Once near a store, the app will contact their smartphone with a discount or promotion designed specifically for them, which they can redeem immediately.

Retailers are facing challenges in a rapidly changing photo-processing category. One huge shift has been in category leadership. One dominant brand is no longer directing — and pouring advertising dollars into — the category, so retailers need to take a more active role in marketing 
photo processing. 


Another challenge is what to market. Consumers are still ordering prints, but they are increasingly viewing, manipulating and saving their photos online.


ANAHEIM, Calif. — Jondo-USA, a maker of personalized photo and decor products, is making it easy for consumers to create and order framed prints from their smartphone and digital camera photos with the new Snapbox framed prints.

SnapBox products will be available for pick-up and pay at 12,000 retail locations, including Rite Aid and Bartell Drugs, with free shipping to those locations.

Apple sold 5 million iPhone 5 phones in the first weekend; thus, the new smartphone was available, so the newly compatible iHealth Wireless Blood Pressure Wrist Monitor has a lot of potential. Right now, it’s one of the hottest selling items in the blood-pressure monitor space with more than $137,000 in sales for the 12 weeks ended Aug. 12, up a whopping 45,882.2% across food, drug and mass (excluding Walmart), according to SymphonyIRI Group. The new wrist monitor adds motion sensor technology to increase accuracy.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT — What if Moore's law — meaning the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits would double every two years — applied to healthcare applications? That actually was all the talk earlier this year at the TedMed conference, at least according to a blog written by Dave Copeland, a well-vetted business and technology journalist.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT — Once again, mobile capabilities made headlines as a study by ComScore revealed that nearly 86 million Americans are now shopping on their smartphones. To put it another way: That’s 4-out-of-5 smartphone users.

(THE NEWS: Survey: 4-out-of-5 smartphone users access retail content. For the full story, click here.)

SAN FRANCISCO — As consumers anxiously await the debut of Apple's iPhone 5, two retailer applications — both of which were updated Wednesday — rank among the top 20 free "best-seller" apps as ranked by Apple.

Target ranks No. 8 overall and Walgreens No. 10. as of early morning Thursday. 

DEERFIELD, Ill. — Walgreens is underscoring the importance of medication preparedness to its customers that may be impacted by hurricane Isaac, which is on path for the Gulf Coast.

SARASOTA, Fla. — A Midwestern hospital system will implement a system in which nurses, physicians and others will use smartphones for communications.

Voalte, which develops a clinical communications system, said the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics would use its system to improve clinical workflow by using iPhones to merge voice, text and alarms, allowing patient care providers to send and receive high-definition voice calls, secure text messages and alarms on one device.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT — Nothing beats the experience of shopping in a store: touching and feeling the merchandise, enjoying the ambiance of the store with the Muzak playing in the background, engaging with the retailer's wonderful customer service representatives and then pulling up that product on Amazon.com and clicking "check out." Coupling online retailing with ease of access through smartphones and tablets and a lot of points of differentiation that retailers had used to distinguish their brands — namely, convenience amd price — go straight ou

ODENTON, Md. — M-Edge is gearing up for back to school with its latest items.

The company said its SuperStylus, which retails for $19.99, is a wide-grip stylus features an ergonomic grip and precise touch to make using a touchscreen device easy for students of any age, the company said. Also new is the SuperShell series of cases that are made with ultra-protective closed-cell foam and high-impact corners and are compatible with such devices as iPhone 4/4S, iPad 2 and 3, and Kindle Fire. The series carries a suggested retail price range from $29.99 to $34.99.

Procter & Gamble’s Duracell brand, together with Powermat Technologies, have introduced Duracell Powermat, a 24-hour power system that works with iPhone 4 and 4S products. The Powermat includes three components: a charging mat that serves as a wireless power transmitter, a smartphone case and a portable backup battery that acts as a personal portable charger.