AllThingsD » Wal-Mart

Walmart.com Lets You Pay With Cash When Shopping Online

Tricia Duryee — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:00:19 +0000

Walmart.com is launching today “Pay with Cash,” a new feature that enables users to place orders online and then pay for them at a nearby Walmart.

In an interview, Joel Anderson, president and CEO of Walmart.com, said the new feature is targeting people who don’t have access to debit or credit cards.

“The fact that only 15 percent of our transactions are done in the form of credit at our stores means there’s a large percentage of Walmart customers who are dependent on cash to transact online. We definitely think it is a big opportunity,” he said.

When using “Pay with Cash,” customers purchase items online and then have 48 hours to go to a local Walmart store or a Walmart Neighborhood Market to pay for the order. Once the order is paid for, the items will then ship.

The concept is fairly simple in a world where so much energy is being focused on futuristic stuff, like waving your mobile phone to pay for things and digital wallets.

But by opening up the site to cash-only users, Anderson said customers will now have access to the hundreds of thousands of items that are not carried in the store. Additionally, if it is a gift, they will no longer have to buy an item in the store and ship it themselves.

Anderson said Walmart built the technology in-house, but other services are cropping up that offer similar benefits.

For instance, Mountain View, Calif.-based PayNearMe allows people to make purchases at various online retailers and pay for them at 7-11’s, where a clerk scans a barcode and collects the cash.

Surprise! Walmart's Cloud Movie Service Is Pretty Good!

Peter Kafka — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:37:56 +0000

I am very, very skeptical about Walmart’s new “disc to digital” service, where you pay money to convert your old DVDs into files you can access from the cloud.

Who wants to haul their discs to a store — and take out their credit card — to do something that should work at home, for free?

BTIG Research’s Rich Greenfield has the same take, more or less. But Greenfield has actually gone ahead and tried the service out (registration required), and he thinks the experience itself is … really good:

“We believe Vudu is a very well done iVOD/EST service and, at worst, Vudu will gain far greater consumer awareness from the industry’s disc-to-digital marketing campaign.”

I still think the overall concept is flawed here. If Hollywood wants people to embrace this idea, which is designed to promote high-margin movie purchases instead of lower-margin rentals, it shouldn’t involve travel and an upfront payment.

And some of the fine print will trip people up, as well. As I noted last month, Walmart’s scheme comes with some important asterisks, like the fact that Disney/Pixar titles won’t work, and that iPad users can only stream the files to their machine, and can’t download them.

But give Walmart credit for a digital product that seemingly does at least some of what it ought to do, right out of the box. Greenfield has a seven-minute walk-through of the process (spoiler: contains no violence, nudity or adult themes), if you’re interested:

Walmart's Disc-to-Digital Hard Sell Will Be a Hard Sell

Peter Kafka — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 03:19:03 +0000

Earlier today, I described Walmart’s new “disc to digital” program as DOA. Maybe I was too harsh.

Let’s assume that some of you are interested in taking your old DVDs to Walmart, and paying up to $5 a disc so you can access the movies on them from Vudu, Walmart’s cloud-based service. Fair enough — different strokes and all of that.

But we’re going to have to shrink the size of this theoretical group a bit. Because Walmart’s new “disc to digital service” won’t work for:

People who want to watch Disney or Pixar movies. Disney is working on its own cloud service, and isn’t joining the five other major studios on this one.
People who want to download the movies to iPhones and iPads. Users of iOS can stream Vudu movies to their devices, but can’t keep them on their machines.
People who want to stream or download their movies on Android phones or tablets. I’m sure there’s a good biz-dev reason that Vudu doesn’t support Google’s OS, because I can’t think of a technical one.

You can download and stream movies to Windows or Mac PCs. Walmart says Vudu will work on “more than 300” devices, but I only count 211 on the service’s Web site, and most of those are Internet-connected TVs and Blu-ray players.

I guess there are some people who would rather go to Walmart and upload their movies instead of ripping them directly from their DVDs to their PCs, even though it’s very easy. Maybe they are very, very interested in obeying the law, because — weirdly — it’s technically illegal to copy a movie you own, even for personal use.

But I can’t figure out who’s going to use disc-to-digital to watch movies on their TVs, since it’s very likely they already have a machine that plays discs sitting right next to their TVs. (Based on the promotional video Walmart has rolled out, it can’t either. As you can see at the bottom of this post, it’s playing up disc-to-digital’s mobile advantages.)

I’m also pretty skeptical that anyone who doesn’t have kids will have much interest in making digital copies of movies they already own. The reason that Hollywood is working on schemes like this to promote movie ownership is that most people have figured out they’d rather rent. Not because they’re constrained by device compatibility, but because they only want to watch a movie once or twice.

Kids’ movies are the big exception here. I think lots of people would jump through lots of hoops to get copies of kids’ movies on as many devices as possible. But the absence of all those Disney movies, and all those Pixar movies, sure looks like a problem for that pitch.

But I don’t want to end the evening on a negative note! So take a look at Walmart’s video. It’s pleasant enough. And perhaps at some point, Walmart figures out how to rope Disney in, add more devices to its lineup, and actually deliver on the promise sketched out below:

Retailers Join Payment Chase

Robin Sidel — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 00:20:00 +0000

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp. are among roughly two dozen retailers working together to develop a mobile-payments system to compete with similar products from Google Inc. and big cellphone companies, according to people with direct knowledge of the project.

The push represents an effort by frustrated merchants to get the upper hand in the fast-developing market that turns cellphones into payment devices. The race pits the retailers against banks, credit-card networks, telecommunications firms and technology companies.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Wal-Mart Ups Stake in China E-Commerce

Laurie Burkitt — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:17:56 +0000

BEIJING — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it plans to buy a majority stake in Chinese e-commerce company Yihaodian, a move to boost its online efforts as consumers there flock to the Internet to shop.

The Bentonville, Ark., company will buy 51% of closely held Yihaodian, increasing its investment from 18%, Wal-Mart spokesman Anthony Rose said Monday. The transaction is subject to the Chinese government’s approval.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

A Look at Walmart's Plans for Making Commerce High-Tech (Video)

Tricia Duryee — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:00:20 +0000

Walmart is typically associated with its everyday low prices, not with technology.

But the mega-retailer is trying to change that by building a tech center in San Bruno, Calif., just south of San Francisco, which houses Walmart.com and a growing team of researchers.

The mission of @WalmartLabs is to study how mobile and social platforms are changing commerce, and how the line is increasingly blurring between online and offline shopping.

The lab, which now has a headcount of around 200, was founded about a year ago, when the Bentonville, Ark.-based company purchased Bay Area start-up Kosmix.

In an interview last week, SVP of global e-commerce Anand Rajaraman, who founded Kosmix along with Venky Harinarayan, said the group has had near-autonomy in trying out several experiments, some of which you might have thought would be taboo for such a large physical retailer.

For instance, the team rolled out Shopycat over the holidays on Facebook, which recommended gifts based on a friend’s interests.

The notable part was that the gifts did not necessarily come only from Walmart, but other retailers, as well. “It was the first time we sent traffic to a non-Walmart site,” Rajaraman said. “But if we want to be a place to find gifts, we thought the right thing to do was to include other retailers.”

More recently, the lab launched a contest called “Get on the Shelf,” which allowed small businesses to submit a video featuring a product they had invented. Starting on March 7, visitors to GetOntheShelf.com will be able to vote on those products they think deserve shelf space. Among the submissions is a product called “the Catcher,” which, as it implies, can be used to catch your dog’s poop before it hits the ground.

In the interview video below, Rajaraman also addresses another unfavorable topic among large brick-and-mortars — the shift from buying offline to online. It is a trend that Walmart’s big Internet competitor, Amazon, is benefiting from.

Today, retailers are fighting hard not to become showrooms, places where consumers go to decide what to buy before then making the purchase online. But Rajaraman suggested that maybe the concept can be embraced, and physical locations will indeed become showrooms, where shoppers pick up items that were ordered online, or try out products that are ultimately shipped to their homes.

And perhaps Rajaraman will help invent the technology that will make it all happen.

[ See post to watch video ]

Zozi Gets Cozy With Celebrities to Separate Itself From the Groupon Clones

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:00:42 +0000

After slogging it out for two years in the daily deals business, and facing competition from Groupon and hundreds of clones, Zozi believes it has started to find its niche.

Rather than focusing on extreme discounts, the San Francisco company has decided to offer extreme adventures.

Today, it is launching Zozi Guru, which sells high-end adventures taught and organized by professional athletes.

For example, you can go skiing with Olympic gold-medal skier Jonny Moseley, or go running with barefoot runner Eric Orton, or learn to kayak with Tao Berman, a three-time world-record holder for extreme whitewater kayaking.

Unlike typical daily deals, these offers are full price, and the merchants and celebrities involved will surely make money, which is in steep contrast to lots of sites that blast emails out to a list of subscribers on a daily basis.

“We don’t want to be a deals site. You won’t hear us use the word ‘deal.’ It’s all about experiences. We try to offer the best prices, but it’s about the adventure and exploration component,” said TJ Sassani, Zozi’s CEO and founder.

That hasn’t always been the case for Zozi.

It started off as a daily deals site, selling international trips in 2008. But Sassani said the opportunity wasn’t as big as the company had hoped, and Zozi shifted to local adventures. Intially, it used the Groupon model to grow membership, but now that it has some scale, it is shifting to full price.

Typical offers on the site range from bungee-jumping sessions to kiteboarding lessons, but Sassani said the business won’t ever reach Groupon’s scale. He said he definitely doesn’t aspire to have an initial public offering; however, he does believe that it could be a $1 billion to $2 billion opportunity.

So far, Zozi has signed up close to one million subscribers and is in 20 cities, up from only one market in 2010. It has just started moving into Canada, and other locations are coming soon.

“Groupon is much more like Wal-Mart, where they offer low-cost, low-quality items to discount seekers,” Sassani said. “But our average purchase price ($60) is more than double Groupon’s, and we target someone who would shop at REI. It’s a sophisticated customer, who is less price-sensitive.”

To help with the rollout of Zozi Guru, the company raised a small undisclosed inside round with investors last week. Previously, it had raised $10 million from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, Launch Capital, ZIG Capital and others.

This week, Zozi is launching the new service with six celebrity athletes, but Sassani said the company has signed deals with 20 to 30 people, who will do a combination of 100 programs over the next year.

Sticking with its goal of offering premium experiences, the programs start at $1,000, and can go as high as $10,000, depending on the celebrity’s status and the event, which could include luxurious accommodations — one example might be a five-night visit to Hawaii, where you would learn how to surf from a professional, and stay at the Four Seasons.

Wal-Mart Acquires Small Mobile Agency to Beef Up Tech Team

Tricia Duryee — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:08:31 +0000

Wal-Mart’s technology division, @WalmartLabs, has acquired Small Society, a mobile agency in Portland, Ore. In a blog post, Wal-Mart said the company will join another acquisition it made in the Northwest, and both will work closely with its Silicon Valley offices. Small Society has developed apps for large organizations, including the Democratic National Committee, Zipcar and Starbucks. Terms were not disclosed.

The Best Retail Ads of the Holiday Season Get the Ugly Sweater Treatment

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 14:00:02 +0000

Here are some of the best retail spots of the holiday season, the ones that motivated throngs of people to shop and spend record amounts online.

The list is based on my own taste, and in no particular order, so feel free to share the ones that made you snicker the most.

Admittedly, they are much more bearable to watch now that the holidays are over and they no longer serve as a reminder for all of the things you have left to do.

So, sit back and enjoy!

Wal-Mart makes fun of the ugly Christmas sweater:

Target gets you into shape for fighting the crowds in its Black Friday commercial:

Apple, which was one of the biggest retail winners this holiday, demonstrated how Santa would use Siri:

EBay showed how its mobile application could avoid awkward gifting:

Best Buy fueled people’s competitive spirit in a game of Mom versus Santa:

And, finally, Amazon says it’s better to receive than give:

Apple Had More Web Traffic Than Wal-Mart in November

John Paczkowski — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:41:34 +0000

Hard as it might be to believe, Apple attracted more online visitors in the United States during November than Wal-Mart.

According to a comScore press release first noted by Ad Age, Apple’s Web properties saw more than 79 million U.S. unique visitors last month. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart saw nearly 59 million.

How did Apple manage to surpass the world’s largest retailer in unique Stateside visitors? And how did it do it during one of the biggest shopping months of the year? ITunes, according to Ad Age, was responsible for about 30 percent of that 79 million total.

Still Looking for Gift Ideas? Wal-Mart Recommends a Box for Men.

Tricia Duryee — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:27:18 +0000

Still don’t know what to get your loved one for the holidays?

Well, you better decide fast. For many sites, today is the final day that orders can be placed to get guaranteed delivery by Christmas.

If you are having a hard time coming up with ideas, there are plenty of Facebook applications that will offer recommendations based on a gift recipient’s interests.

Late last month, Wal-Mart launched an application called Shopycat, which does just that.

To be helpful, I got a list of Shopycat’s 20 most-recommended gifts. At the very top of the list was an unexpected item called a “personalized keepsake box” for men. The box, which costs $24.76, is designed to hold a man’s watch, jewelry, money clip and/or other items.

It’s not clear what a person’s interests would have been for this to surface at the top of so many lists (maybe the popularity of the holiday-themed Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg music video “Dick in a Box” had something to do with it?) After all, many of the other items on the list are clearly based on someone’s favorite TV shows, movies or videogames. For instance, other fun items that made the list were action figures for “The Big Lebowski,” an Angry Birds beanie and “Star Wars” bathrobes.

As for the man box, it is sold out, so clearly some people agreed with Wal-Mart that it made for a good gift.

Not all of the items are recommendations for items sold on the Wal-Mart site. It also refers shoppers to other sites, such as ThinkGeek.com, Barnes & Noble, CBSstore.com and RedEnvelope.

Wal-Mart did not say how many people have used the app since it went live last month, but given that Wal-Mart has 11 million Facebook fans, it could represent big numbers.

Here is the entire list of most-recommended gifts for 2011:

Better Hurry, the Shipping Deadline for Christmas Is Approaching Fast

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:04:42 +0000

Just in the nick of time.

That’s Target’s motto this holiday season, as it promises on-time Christmas deliveries for online orders placed by Tuesday.

But some retailers are being a little more jolly.

In today’s fast-paced digital world, procrastinators are being rewarded, and will be able to shop online as late as Thursday and still get presents safely underneath the tree in time for Christmas.

For example, Wal-Mart will rush packages to your door for orders placed as late as Wednesday; Amazon is offering regular free two-day shipping as late as Wednesday; Zappos is offering free shipping for orders made by 1 pm PT on Thursday; and Toys “R” Us will go as late as noon on Thursday for express shipping.

There are exceptions, of course, and Amazon is a big one.

For orders placed on Thursday, one-day shipping will cost shoppers $3.99 an item; for items ordered on Friday, only Amazon Prime members will be able to pay $9.99 an item for on-time delivery; those in 11 U.S. cities can wait until Saturday, at which point it will cost $3.99 per item to ship by local express.

Amazon Prime is the e-commerce company’s membership service; it charges $79 a year for free two-day shipping and other perks, like free streaming videos.

One of the biggest limitations for the holiday is the logistics of getting a package from a distribution center to someone’s home. For example, FedEx won’t be running on Christmas, but will be running partial operations on Christmas Eve, a Saturday.

At this late point in the year, physical retailers shine.

For example, Apple’s shipping cutoff date is on Wednesday, but it will allow customers to order online and pick up in the store until 11 pm on Friday. On Christmas Eve, many of its stores will be open until 6 pm. Toys “R” Us and Best Buy are also offering free in-store pickup, adding late hours to accommodate the busiest of people. Best Buy will be open until 3 pm local time on Dec. 24, and Toys “R” Us will will stay open for 112 hours straight, starting at 6 am Tuesday, Dec. 20 and closing at 10 pm on Saturday night.

Online retailers can’t compete with store hours but, conversely, stores have had a hard time competing with the deals online, especially earlier in the season.

This holiday period, Amazon prompted consumers to consider the moral dilemma of shopping in stores versus online, when it kicked off a Dec. 10 promotion that offered $5 off to consumers as an inducement to walk out of stores empty-handed. EBay fired back with its own promotion, which gave online shoppers a $10 coupon to return to stores.

To be sure, online retailers will have something to celebrate on Sunday.

ComScore, which is tracking online spending habits this holiday season, said $30.9 billion had been spent online during a 46-day shopping window that ended Dec. 16, marking a 15 percent increase over last year.

Spending last Friday — dubbed Free Shipping Friday — hit $1.07 billion; it was the fourth day to surpass the billion-dollar mark this year. Still, Cyber Monday — the Monday following Thanksgiving — appears to rank as the heaviest online spending day of the year for the second consecutive season.

Best Buy's Profit Tumbles

Mia Lamar and Matt Jarzemsky — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 20:47:07 +0000

Best Buy Co.’s quarterly earnings fell 29 percent as the electronics retailer kicked off the holiday season with significant discounting and sales weakness in most products besides mobile devices.

The electronics chain is getting squeezed by rivals such as Amazon.com Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. as well as price-conscious consumers favoring more modest items.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

An Honest-to-Goodness App Store You Can Walk Into

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:00:49 +0000

Nope, it’s not run by Apple, Google or even Amazon.

A new start-up, Openspace, is launching a physical store where consumers can visit and discover the latest mobile applications.

“If your iPhone has a problem, you take it to Apple. If your Android tablet has a problem, you take it to Verizon, AT&T or Best Buy,” said Openspace founder Robert Reich. “But if you have a question about which camera app would be great for taking pictures this weekend on the slopes, where can you turn?”

To help solve that problem, Openspace opened its first physical storefront last week in Boulder, Colo. Open six days a week, the store is staffed by “App Gurus” who make recommendations and try to eliminate “app-rehension.” (Their joke, not mine.)

Previously, Reich founded Boulder-based OneRiot, which uses social data to make mobile advertising more targeted. The company was acquired by Wal-Mart in September.

Openspace is just getting off the ground, so all the details haven’t been nailed down — like how the operation will make money. But in the next year it hopes to partner with developers to take a percentage of sales that result from applications promoted in the store.

Consumers can also do things the old-fashioned way and visit the company’s Web site to get recommendations. On the site, the company categorizes applications by interests — many of which won’t be found on iTunes — including such nontraditional subjects as Occupy Wall Street, zombies or “games a 10-year-old girl will enjoy.”

Developers often complain about how difficult it is for their applications to be discovered, and frequently pay for advertising or third-party promotion. So it’s possible that a physical app store could be one more way to get the word out.

Whether Openspace will be able to make enough money off referrals to offset the high costs of real estate and full-time staff will be the bigger question.

Time to Say Goodbye to the Cable Guy: Why You'll Buy TV on the Web in 2012

Peter Kafka — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:36:46 +0000

If you’re the kind of person who hates paying your cable company so you can watch TV, Rich Greenfield has good news for you: Next year, you should be able to pay someone else so you can watch TV.

Greenfield, a very sharp media analyst at BTIG, says that 2012 will be the first time we’ll see a true “virtual” cable-company offering in the U.S., where consumers can subscribe to TV delivered over the Web. This is different than the on-demand services that currently exist, like Netflix and Hulu, which offer up programming that’s already been on TV. This will give you access to “real” TV, in real time.

His summary: “While [quality] will not match what you are accustomed to from your traditional [cable provider] (due to Internet congestion), virtual MSO pricing to the consumer will be substantially lower, subscribers will receive a significantly better user-interface/navigation across a wide-array of IP-enabled devices in the home and service will be accessible anywhere in the US, rather than being stuck in a certain region.”

Who/what/where/when? Greenfield’s prediction post (registration required) doesn’t commit to any of that. But it does sketch out the basic “how” framework:

The “virtual” cable company will have to cut distribution deals with all or most of the big TV channels/programmers, just like the satellite TV guys did in the ’90s. It’s possible that some of the programmers won’t want to play along, for fear of upsetting their existing deals with the cable guys. But just like in the ’90s, as long as the “virtual” company is paying market rates (and likely higher) for the programming, the cable guys can’t really do much about it. (And if they do, they’ll have a lot of explaining to do in Washington: Note that when the Feds blessed the Comcast/NBC deal this year, they required the company to make its programming available to this kind of competitor.)
All those deals mean that this won’t be “a la carte” cable, where you can get ESPN but not the Disney channel, or vice versa — these will be all-or-none deals.
And all of the above means that you won’t be getting these channels for next to nothing. Greenfield figures the pricing will be “substantially lower” than what the cable guys currently charge. But since he assumes that the “virtual” cable guys will have to pay at least $40 a month per subscriber for the programming, it’s going to cost at least that much for consumers — he envisions the new guys selling this stuff at “razor-thin” margins, but not at a loss.
Getting your TV programming from a “virtual” cable company doesn’t mean you’ll be able to tell Comcast or Time Warner Cable, etc., to pound sand — you’ll still be paying them, or someone, for broadband. Greenfield thinks this could actually be a good thing for the cable guys in the long run, because the margins on broadband are much better than in the TV business. And they’ll probably be able to force many customers to upgrade their broadband subscriptions to a higher tier, so they can stream all of that video.

OK. So who might do this?

Greenfield runs through a laundry list of every potential player, including Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, even Wal-Mart. I assume that the most logical step would be for someone who’s already in the video business, but with a limited footprint — like Verizon or Dish Network — to try this out.

But over the phone this morning, Greenfield said he thinks the first player will be someone who’s not in there already, but wants to build another platform that gives them direct access to millions of consumers. Start speculating now!

2012: Siri Is a Stunner, Amazon Is Amazin' and Security Gets Spendy

Arik Hesseldahl — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 04:59:40 +0000

On Thursday night, I attended a dinner at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, hosted by Mark Anderson, the CEO of Strategic News Service, a newsletter that many senior tech execs subscribe to. At this annual event, which I missed last year, Anderson makes predictions concerning what he thinks will be the dominant forces shaping the technology world in the coming year. And his predictions are always interesting.

Ahead of the dinner, Anderson stopped by my office to let me have a peek at his 10 predictions, and we talked them over a bit. All 10 are below, along with some comments from Anderson that emerged from our conversation.

Before diving into the predictions, Anderson tells me there is a grand theme that unifies them all: “Integrating everything.”

What does that mean? “It means a whole lot of stuff that needs to be integrated. We don’t need anything new at all. There’s so much work that needs to be done with the existing tool sets. Steve Jobs didn’t really invent anything at all. But he was great at integrating things into a product. There’s a lot more of that work to do. We have to do it in the phone world and the TV world and the health care world. We have lots of devices and lots of chips and lots of operating systems and lots of content. The bigger question is, how do human beings use it all efficiently?”

As an example, he cites the collaboration between Nuance, the speech software company, and IBM, bringing the Watson computer of “Jeopardy” fame into the area of health care. “For the first time, the idea of evidence-based medicine won’t just be in a magazine article,” Anderson says. “A doctor will be able to pick up his phone and describe four symptoms, and find out what the likely diagnosis is, what the indications are. It’s fantastic.”

So here are those 10 predictions, with additional comments from Anderson:

1. TV becomes the new center of gravity in the tech universe. All the other devices find their niches in the TV galaxy. Microsoft’s attempt to integrate Kinect into TV is a strong if qualified success. Smart phone-TV integration software becomes a new category. Pad-TV integration becomes common.

“Apple will hustle to launch the next version of Apple TV, and it will be a roaring success and be seen as Tim Cook’s first great product success. But what it really will be is Steve’s last product.”

2. 2012 will see tectonic shifts in phone markets. “Nokia will fail to come back, which is pretty clear to everyone except the people in Finland.” Samsung, Anderson says, will retain its spot as the new global leader in mobile phones by volume, and will keep this crown despite the debut of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.

Meanwhile, Anderson says, Google will lose control over the Android operating system, mainly because unlicensed versions of Android will multiply in type and in installed base, especially in Asian countries. “It’s already a balkanized environment. Now Google loses control of the technology entirely. China is already running an unlicensed version of Android, and I think there will be more of that.”

Finally, the smartphone will finally emerge as the dominant category of wireless phone. “Why would you have anything else? And why would sellers of content and services want you to?” he says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in a rich country or a poor country. This stuff is cheap.”

3. Clouds are for consumers, and for start-ups. Even as a large number of big companies move pilot projects onto external clouds, it will become clear that the real trend is for enterprise to stay away from clouds in all key areas, for reasons of both security and reliability.

“The cloud guys hate this because they want to sell to enterprises,” Anderson says. “But the security issues are becoming really intense. If you’re a CIO, it’s a terrible environment, and you’re a target, for sure, especially if you’re a company with a lot of intellectual property. I’m not implying that things like SAAS (software as a service) aren’t a big trend. But no one is going to put their valuable IP on the cloud.”

4. Security splits the tech world in two, finally getting attention from CEOs. Companies with real IP start to realize they have to “go big or go home” with their security response, and their spending on protecting their “crown jewels” rises dramatically.

5. Siri stuns the world. Siri, on Apple’s iPhone 4S, has sounded the arrival of Internet personal assistants, and the world will spend this year marveling at what Siri and its rivals can and cannot do — and what they can learn to do.

“I think we’ll see a bunch of these things,” Anderson says. “Siri will get much better. It will learn how you learn. We’ve never seen people have long-term relationships with machines before, but it will be a long-term relationship, and she will remember everything, but make good use of it. She will know you learn better by seeing than hearing, or that it takes three times to tell you something. All those things that you have to program today should be learnable. None of that has been done yet. That creates a real friendship. And I think we’re going to start seeing personal assistants not just for everyday life, but for professions like medicine or car repair. Instead of just having Siri be everything, there will be many Siris for different contexts.”

6. We enter the amazing world of Dave and HAL, as voice recognition comes of age. From hospital to car, mobile to home, Kinect to Siri, exercise to play, work to entertainment, remote control to direct action, from Microsoft to Apple, from Tellme to Nuance — the time has come for computers and humans to talk to each other. With lots of funny stories, big bloopers and amazing breakthroughs, humanity at the end of 2012 will be talking to machines in a normal voice, and it will not seem unusual, nor be the cause of unending frustration.

“The voice-recognition part is almost trivial,” Anderson says. “The important part is context-sensitive understanding. It used to be that all the researchers at Carnegie Mellon used to think that all you needed was more computing horsepower to do better at voice. It turned out that was wrong. It was right for a little while, but the real problem is context. And so, if you can build up that database where you can search it contextually for what to expect, that is where you get all the mileage.”

7. E-readers prosper, but pads continue to dominate what Anderson calls the “carry-along” market. Pads and tablets will come down in price and get closer to prices of e-readers. Meanwhile, Anderson says, Amazon’s Fire will move upmarket and evolve into a full-fledged tablet.

“If you look at the specs on the Fire, it’s a tablet, but it’s hobbled,” Anderson says. “So I think that this is part of the whole strategy: Come in and sell at a low price, and then later unveil a more complete tablet. Apple will stay ahead, though. A lot of people are asking me if Amazon will catch Apple, and the answer is no. The way it’s configured right now, there’s no way the Fire will catch up with the iPad.”

8. The consumption world explodes. Get ready for new devices, new content, new bundles, new connection techniques, new distribution channels, new aggregators, new tablets, new phones, new players, new self-published authors, new garage bands, new consumption models riding on social networks. There is nothing but high energy in the content consumer market. People are now ready to spend subscription money, and the publisher response will be huge. “It’s going to be a huge melee of stuff,” Anderson says. “We’ll invent more stuff to consume, and it will be very hard to figure out who the players are from week to week, and how they’re doing. They may not even know themselves.”

9. Governments and corporations focus on intellectual property as though it were their most prized asset. It is. This new global understanding leads to a reevaluation regarding giving critical IP away for nothing versus protecting it. The age of what Anderson calls “IP naïveté” is over, and the question of proper IP valuation is here.

What is IP naïveté? “When Jeff Immelt stood on the steps of the White House the day after he was named jobs czar, and handed the plans for GE’s most important jet-engine project to Hu Jintao in order to get the permission to be allowed to bid on maybe selling engines to China — that’s IP naïveté,” Anderson says. “Thinking that’s not going to come back and show up for sale in Houston from some Chinese company in about six months is IP naïveté.”

During 2012, he says, companies and countries will start valuing their intellectual property not for its replacement value, but for figures that are magnitudes larger. State-sponsored IP theft will shift from being considered a nuisance and more along the lines of an act of aggression.

10. Amazon gets it all. Between outdoing Wal-Mart online, to beating the booksellers and delivering groceries, and making new inroads in video streaming, Amazon will prove that one company can indeed have it all. Strong Kindle and Fire sales will only be icing on the cake.

Retailers vs. Amazon: A Brick-and-Moral Dilemma

Tricia Duryee — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:38:13 +0000

Brick-and-mortar retailers are asking consumers to “buy it where you try it” after Amazon disclosed it will be encouraging consumers to treat stores as showrooms through the use of a one-day promotion on Saturday.

Amazon’s promotion will give shoppers up to $5 off on most purchases made using its price-check application. The event serves as a way for Amazon to increase usage of its bar-code-scanning application, while also collecting intelligence on pricing in the stores.

Large and small retailers alike often consider Amazon one of their toughest competitors, but this time around they say the company’s initiative is a direct attack.

“It’s wrong to try something in the store and then buy it online,” said Lesley Tweedie, who owns a bike shop with her husband in Chicago and is hoping that the mantra “buy it where you try it” takes off.

Tweedie is also the founder of Little Independent, a six-month-old marketplace where local stores can feature products online.

“I don’t know what their [Amazon's] motivations are. I would like to believe it’s about business and it’s not about deliberately trying to hurt a retailer,” she said. “But this affects our little bike shop in Chicago, Target, Wal-Mart or Nordstrom. It affects them all.”

The promotion brings into question a shopper’s moral compass just in time for the holidays.

Does price or convenience win? Or, is it more important to shop locally to support jobs and nearby businesses?

From the consumer’s perspective, it’s hard to walk away from Amazon’s offer. The application compares prices, gives product reviews and, on Saturday, will also offer a discount to those who use it to make a purchase online.

Still, it seems consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the online-versus-local debate.

EBay recently conducted an online survey on the subject, and based on more than 1,000 responses, found that nearly 50 percent of shoppers plan to allocate up to half of their holiday budget to buying local this season. EBay says it tries to be an advocate for local stores. Its bar-code scanning app, Red Laser, not only shows people the cheapest price online, but also provides a list of stores where the item can be purchased locally.

Yesterday, the Retail Industry Leaders Association made a much less emotional argument.

Jason Brewer, the association’s VP of communications and advocacy, said Amazon is anticompetitive because it does not collect sales tax in most states, so it will nearly always have a price advantage over a physical store.

“Our retailers aren’t afraid to compete on price — that’s a part of retailing,” he said. “If the price check app replaces the Sunday newspaper circular, that’s fine. But what retailers can’t do is not collect sales tax.”

Tweedie says the one silver lining of Amazon’s promotion is that it is bringing the conversation out into the open.

She frequently catches people pulling out their phone in her store and often even hears them wonder out loud if they find it for less on Amazon. “It’s hard as a retailer without alienating the shopper. But they’ve never thought about it, and they aren’t trying to be rude. … What I think is so exciting is how many people are talking about this.”

Amazon will offer the discount on up to three qualifying products in eligible categories, including electronics, toys, music, sporting goods and DVDs, and is anticipating that Saturday will be one of the biggest days of the year for the application.

Free Shipping Drives Three Record-Breaking Online Shopping Days

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:49:00 +0000

This holiday season is easily breaking records for online shopping.

So far, three days have eclipsed the $1 billion mark, representing three of the four heaviest days in U.S. history.

In all, shopping has already reached $18.7 billion for the month of November and first two days of December, representing a 15 percent increase over 2010, according to comScore.

The measurement firm had at least one explanation for the surge. It’s not because people were less naughty. Rather, it’s because of all the discounts being offered, with the prevailing method being free shipping.

Typically, the use of free shipping peaks around the Monday after Thanksgiving, comScore said, but this year, the incentive was used at record levels over an extended period of time.

Throughout the 2011 holiday season, more than half of all transactions have included free shipping, the research firm reports. In particular, during the week of Thanksgiving, the promotion was used the heaviest with nearly 65 percent of all shoppers not having to pay freight.

During the following week, which includes Cyber Monday, the percentage of free shipping stayed high at 63 percent.

Free shipping was not used as heavily during the online shopping season last year, peaking at only 55 percent the week of Thanksgiving.

The five most visited sites the day after Thanksgiving were Amazon, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target and Apple.

While retailers such as Amazon are known for offering free shipping if you meet a certain spending threshold, clearly others are jumping on the bandwagon. For instance, Apple is offering free shipping on all purchases from its Web site until Dec. 22.

Photo Credit: thisisbossi.

Here's How Microsoft Is Adding Voice Control and Gestures to the Xbox (Video)

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:00:29 +0000

Microsoft is planning a massive software update on Tuesday for the Xbox, beginning the game console’s transformation into an entertainment hub for the whole family.

The free update will allow users to control the console using their voice and gestures, or even their Windows Phone (if they have one).

In addition, Microsoft will begin to add more than 40 content providers to the console to increase the catalog of live and streamed TV, movies and music.

Microsoft has announced nearly all of these details previously, including some of its content partners, so today’s announcement serves as a reminder now that the final product is ready to go.

Last week, I met up with Michael Suraci, Xbox’s director of marketing, to get a preview of the updates.

According to Suraci, Kinect, the motion sensor that launched last year, is a central part of the update. When it was introduced, it seemed that all it was good for was dance games, but clearly Microsoft had much bigger plans for the camera and the microphone.

Now users can speak naturally to the Xbox, which tears down a number of barriers to family members in the household that weren’t comfortable with the clunky controller. If Microsoft pulls it off, it could teach people that televisions are meant to be talked to, just as Apple has taught people that screens are meant to be touched.

An unknown subset of the nearly 60 million Xbox owners worldwide that have purchased Kinect will be able to use all the new features in the update.

But everyone will have access to many of the updates.

One major improvement is in navigation. For example, the old interface required the user to decide which category they wanted to go into. For example, games, video or music. Then, they had to choose the application, like Netflix, ESPN or Zune.

In the new user interface, the person can search across all of the categories and apps.

As Suraci demonstrates in the video, a user can say: “Xbox: Bing, ‘Fast and the Furious.’”

The results show all of the content that matches that criteria across games, music, video and other categories. The style of the user interface will be recognizable to anyone using a Windows Phone. The format will also be carried over to the upcoming Windows 8 update.

During Suraci’s demonstration, the software got confused a couple of times, but still, searching by voice will be much faster than typing in a string of words, letter-by-letter, using the controller to scroll through the alphabet.

Going forward, the Xbox could replace the need for a second set-top box in the household, but as Peter Kafka has mentioned before, it’s not a service for customers looking to cut the cord. In order to stream live TV, or watch movies, you’ll either have to pay for a subscription — like Verizon FiOS or Comcast’s Xfinity — or pay a la carte.

On Tuesday’s launch, the amount of content that will be available in the U.S. will be somewhat disappointing. But later in December and in early 2012, you will start to see integrations with Verizon FiOS, YouTube, HBO GO and Xfinity On Demand, TMZ, UFC, Wal-Mart’s Vudu service and others.

[ See post to watch video ]

Don't Trust Your Instincts? Wal-Mart Uses Algorithms to Find Gifts People Want.

Tricia Duryee — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 03:00:27 +0000

Wal-Mart has launched its first Facebook application that helps people buy better gifts for their friends.

The application, called Shopycat, makes product recommendations based on the items people have liked or talked about in their news feed.

It is not particularly flashy. The logo is a picture of a cat sticking its head out of a shopping bag. The tagline reads “the right gift every time.” But the app’s rudimentary design fits nicely with the experimental nature of social commerce. Retailers are just starting to figure out ways to leverage social networks. Wal-Mart is no exception.

Wal-Mart promises that while it looks simple, the technology running behind the scenes is more complex than you might imagine.

The product was built by @WalmartLabs, which was created after Wal-Mart acquired Kosmix, a Bay Area start-up that was tracking social networks to determine people’s interests.

Venky Harinarayan, founder of Kosmix and co-founder of @WalmartLabs, said developing the application was surprisingly difficult. First, they had to find the relevant information on a person’s Facebook page. Then, they had to find products that best matched those interests.

For example, if someone likes Lady Gaga, the most obvious product to recommend is her albums. But a fan would likely already own those. A better gift is something more special — a collector’s item or a limited edition. That’s a more complex problem.

Since gifting is a practice humans naturally struggle with, maybe algorithms can do a better job.

After using Shopycat, Harinarayan learned his wife was a fan of “Game of Thrones,” the TV series on HBO. She has posted several times on Facebook about the show, but he hadn’t noticed. “Facebook is so transient and things flow by. Here’s a way to aggregate it all and put it in one place,” he said.

The technology also sometimes fails. When Harinarayan viewed gift ideas for me, it recommended a number of Sony products. Months earlier, I liked Sony’s fan page in order to gather information for a story — not because of any deep admiration I had for the company’s products. An algorithm would have a hard time knowing that.

“I think it’s a good first pass,” Harinarayan admits. “But there’s areas we should get better at. Right now, it is our goal to give one good gift idea per person. If we do that, then we are successful.”

The application is available to Wal-Mart’s 10 million fans on Facebook if they give permission to install it.

Harinarayan said Shopycat is the mega-retailer’s first foray into using social and promises that more is coming soon, including social experiences in the store and on its Web site.

Hot for "Bad Teacher": Sony Spikes Sales With Early Offers on iTunes, Amazon

Peter Kafka — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:00:38 +0000

Hollywood is trying to figure out how to get people to buy more movies instead of renting them. Sony might have an answer: Sell the flicks on iTunes, Amazon and other digital outlets before viewers can buy or rent them anywhere else.

Sony tried doing this with “Bad Teacher” last month, and the results sound encouraging for the studio. It says its “windowing” experiment boosted digital unit sales by 60 percent, and overall digital revenue by 24 percent.

That is: Most people prefer to rent a movie than buy it outright. But when offered the chance to pay for a download or wait a couple weeks to rent the movie, some folks paid up.

Digital sales of “Bad Teacher” make up a small percentage of the movie’s overall digital revenue (Sony won’t release actual sales numbers), but there’s a lot more profit in each transaction for the studio. Rentals via iTunes run from $3.99 to $4.99 for the Cameron Diaz vehicle, but sales run from $14.99 to $19.99 a pop.

More good news for Sony: It says demand for digital rentals didn’t seem to drop once they became available two weeks after digital sales started. And physical sales — still the most important source of income for the studio — don’t seem to have suffered, either.

That last point is crucial for Sony’s relationships with the retailers it counts on to move old-fashioned discs while stepping into digital at the same time. Retailers like Wal-Mart and Best Buy are selling Sony’s movies via digital outlets, like Wal-Mart’s Vudu, but they won’t do it at the expense of their brick-and-mortar business (yet.)

“The good news that encourages us is that the physical retailers, those are the guys that are playing well and getting good results out of this,” says John Calkins, who heads up digital for Sony’s home video unit. Calkins figures that the promotion for the early digital sales ended up working as marketing for all of the movie’s sales, and thinks that will work with other films, too.

Calkins just tried the experiment again, with “30 Minutes Or Less,” and says that comedy saw similar results. Calkins says he’ll try it one more time in 2011, with a movie he won’t disclose.

Apple Nipping at Target's Heels for Fourth Most-Visited Site on Black Friday

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 21:31:17 +0000

Apple was the fifth most-trafficked retailer on Black Friday, the only individual product brand to reach the top ranks among the major big-box retailers.

The electronics manufacturer placed behind Target, Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Amazon, according to a comScore report that analyzed online shopping trends the day after Thanksgiving.

“Apple has not historically been in the top five — in fact, this is the first time I can remember,” said Andrew Lipsman, an analyst at comScore, who added that Apple was “nipping at Target’s heels,” registering only a few percentage points lower in overall traffic.

The strong ranking backs up a report today by 9to5Mac that said Apple’s Black Friday sales were “off the charts.” According to its sources, Apple blew away forecasts by 7 pm, and broke records for its biggest sales day ever.

ComScore’s figures include both Apple’s site as well as iTunes, so any resulting sales would encompass both hardware and digital products, such as apps and videos.

Separately, Experian Hitwise ranked Apple as the 12th most-visited retail site on Black Friday. It said the company’s total visits jumped 42 percent compared to 2010.

In both of these circumstances, what’s notable is Apple’s apparent mind share among consumers.

Best Buy, like some other retailers, is trying hard this season to be the go-to source for Apple products, running new TV ads promoting the chain as a place to buy Macs, iPads and iPhones. But Apple was able to rival gigantic big-box retailers, which carry thousands of products, including their own.

That’s impressive, especially since its discounts are generally not.

Lipsman agreed: “Even though Apple does not provide the selection of products that you might find at a big box retailer, it is obviously top of mind when it comes to the most in-demand products, like the iPhone and iPad. Two of the biggest growth sectors right now are tablets and digital content downloads, and obviously Apple is extremely well positioned on both fronts.”

Retailers Expecting Another $1 Billion-Plus Cyber-Shopping Spree Today

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 08:01:02 +0000

Last year, the Monday after Thanksgiving became the big deal retailers always wanted it to be.

For the first time ever, so-called Cyber Monday registered as the biggest online shopping day of the year despite years of procrastinators lifting other days higher as they waited until a few days before Christmas to do their online shopping.

The theory had always been that consumers who flocked to stores on Black Friday would return to their desks on Monday to continue buying deals online.

Last year, the plan panned out and more than $1 billion-worth in items were added to virtual shopping carts across the U.S. to make it the heaviest online shopping day of the year — and the first time ever that a single day eclipsed the billion-dollar mark.

Now, with November already off to a strong start with a 15 percent increase in sales compared to the same period last year, another strong Monday could be in the works, according to comScore, which tracks online holiday spending. The research firm tracks shopping from fixed Internet connections, meaning it doesn’t count items purchased on phones or tablets.

Black Friday — the day after Thanksgiving — alone saw online sales of $816 million, making it the heaviest online spending day to date in 2011 and representing a 26 percent increase over the same day in 2010, comScore reported.

ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said, “We now turn our attention to Cyber Monday, a day that Shop.org says will see eight in ten retailers running special online promotions. Last year, Cyber Monday was the heaviest day of online spending ever, with sales exceeding $1 billion, and we fully expect to see another record set this year.”

Cyber Monday may finally be living up to its name.

Amazon is a prime example of a retailer working hard to pry open wallets today.

Last year, the largest e-commerce company said Cyber Monday was Amazon’s peak day with more than 13.7 million items ordered worldwide, setting a record for 158 items sold per second.

Today, it will be important to achieve that pace again.

On Sunday, it bought full-color circulars in newspapers around the country promoting its lineup of discounts in its special Cyber Monday store.

On the front page, it touted its full lineup of Kindle e-readers, and a couple of pages were also dedicated to sales supposedly so steep you had to go online to see the prices for electronics, cellphones and videogames.

The Cyber Monday store, however, appeared a little unorganized with random “lightning deals,” which ranged from gift baskets to knife sets, board games, power tools and inexpensive jewelry — but nothing that seemed like the hit item of the season.

Other leading retailers, including Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target, will also be expected to offer special deals.

Surely, the theory goes, if enough marketing dollars are spent, and the discounts are substantial enough, it might get consumers to turn out again to break another record.

In a blog post, comScore analyst Andrew Lipsman explained that last year’s shopping bonanza on Cyber Monday — which was first named that six years ago — was finally successful thanks to consumer awareness.

Over the past few years, it’s been steadily climbing.

In 2009, it was the second-biggest shopping day; in 2008, it ranked third. Before that, it wasn’t even close to the top. In 2006, it ranked 12th and in 2007, it ranked ninth.

“Today the majority of consumers know what it is and the attractive types of deals they can anticipate. With increased awareness comes increased participation on the part of both retailers and consumers,” he wrote.

So, now we have to wait to see if the deals — and the shoppers — both turn out, or if Cyber Monday turns out to be just another big sales day.

(Image credit: iStockphoto.com/mbortolino)

Why Open Stores Early, When the Internet Is Open 24 Hours a Day?

Tricia Duryee — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 14:30:35 +0000

A handful of large retailers are opening their doors on Thanksgiving to get a jump on “Black Friday” sales.

But the strategy might backfire. Not only are employees upset that they’ll have to staff the stores instead of being able to stay with their families, the move could cannibalize the retailers’ own online and mobile efforts.

Historically, shoppers have lined up in the early hours on the day after Thanksgiving — which has come to be known as Black Friday — to race into stores and be the first to scoop up discounts ahead of the holidays.

This year, stores are jumping the gun by opening a day earlier. Wal-Mart will open at 10 pm, two hours ahead of last year’s opening; Toys “R” Us will open at 9 pm, an hour earlier than last season; and Target will open for four hours when the clock strikes midnight.

On behalf of employees, Change.org has kicked off a petition, “Tell Target to Save Thanksgiving,” which argues that night openings rob hourly and salary workers of time off with their families.

But there may also be an economic reason to maintain standard practices.

Most of these retailers have major online presences and multiple mobile applications, including on the iPad. If they are open 24 hours a day online, must they actually open the doors, too?

After all, Amazon.com is never considered closed.

To get a sense of the strategy, we talked to someone who works on mobile and online strategy at one of the major retailers that is opening early. He told AllThingsD that he was worried about the impact opening early will have on mobile traffic, since traditionally their peak traffic hits between 3 am and 5 am, before stores open on Black Friday.

If customers have the option of visiting the stores in person earlier, it’s unclear whether that pattern will continue — and whether people will do some extra shopping while killing time standing in line waiting for the doors to open.

Even though mobile is still a small contributor compared to online traffic or store traffic, the retailer in question has scaled its infrastructure to accommodate this early-morning surge.

In general, the 2011 holiday season is expected to drive record sales online and from mobile devices.

Chase Paymentech, which analyzes information from the Top 50 e-commerce retailers, reports that online sales are up 25 percent compared to last year. A separate study by IBM predicts that traffic to retail sites from mobile devices is expected to more than double this month from the last holiday season, reaching 15 percent of all visits to retail sites. Last year, on “Cyber Monday,” mobile visits totaled only 3.9 percent.

But Andrew Lipsman, VP of industry analysis at comScore, said he did not believe the impact of opening early would be very significant.

“Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday are not huge online spending days,” he said. “So, even if sales are relatively soft, it should not have a significant impact on the full season for online retailers. At the end of the day, it will likely be a rounding error — if anything.”

ComScore’s data excludes sales made on tablets or mobile phones, but it estimates that those devices account for a minor amount of e-commerce spending — roughly 3 percent.

Here are the key online shopping dates in 2010:

Target Photo Credit: djLicious.

Wal-Mart's New Apps Will Integrate Coupons and Voice Recognition

Tricia Duryee — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 05:00:33 +0000

Wal-Mart is launching its first iPad app and is refreshing its iPhone app just in time for the holidays.

Both applications will enable consumers to shop online or see what’s available locally. Orders can be shipped or picked up.

The apps are being released ahead of the end-of-the-year shopping frenzy, which many retailers are hoping will be one of the busiest mobile commerce events ever.

“As customers use more smartphones and tablets, the Wal-Mart customer is doing the same thing,” said Gibu Thomas, the company’s SVP of mobile and digital.

That’s true, and it’s scary for big retailers. Increasingly, consumers are scanning barcodes to get reviews and compare prices before deciding whether to make a purchase or go somewhere else.

Thomas said the apps are not a defensive move against this trend, but rather a way to give consumers what they want. ”We want to know how we can help our customers shop better with us, which will make them shop more with us,” he argued.

Wal-Mart’s first iPad app launched about a week ago.

It lets people browse inventory in their local store, while also seeing what else is available online. Instead of duplicating the online experience, they’ve created categories. For instance, in the home section, shoppers will browse a catalog-like experience, where they’ll see pots and pans, stereo speakers and outdoor fireplaces without any additional information.

To see prices or more details, a user will have to choose an item.

The major new feature of the iPhone application, which originally launched more than a year ago, will be a shopping list with integrated voice dictation using Nuance’s speech recognition, and discounts through a partnership with Coupons.com.

The app will be available as soon as it receives Apple’s approval.

This app gets pretty close to what many companies have been describing as mobile commerce — minus near field communication that would allow users to tap and pay. And, at Wal-Mart’s scale, this is truly something for the mass market.

Thomas said 90 percent of consumers who come to a Wal-Mart store on a weekly basis come with a shopping list.

The iPhone shopping list feature will allow people to enter items manually using predictive text. Type “cheddar,” and you’ll see a number of cheese brands and the price of each item.

Consumers will also be able to enter items using their voice. When Thomas demonstrated it to me, the app was fairly accurate. It recognized orange juice and sour cream as one item each, but Campbell’s soup came up as two.

Because the real price is listed, budget-conscious shoppers can decide how much to pay for groceries before even getting to the store. Coupons from Coupons.com will also be integrated into the shopping experience. You might type in “yogurt,” but decide on Yoplait for the discount.

For some stores, Wal-Mart has given consumers the ability to find out what aisle the items are in from the phone. That capability will roll out to more stores as it comes out of beta. Eventually, the information could be overlaid on a map to show the most efficient route for getting all of your items.

Thomas also said the company anticipates being able to store shoppers’ receipts electronically, so that items purchased will be uploaded to an individual’s device, making it easier to create shopping lists in the future.

“We think of your mobile phone as your loyalty card. We don’t have cards but we think of it in the sense that you can use your phone to surface real-time discounts,” he said.

The applications were built by @WalMartLabs in Silicon Valley, which serves as the technology hub for the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer.