Editor’s note: Anthony J. Lombardi practices patent litigation and patent prosecution at Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP. He also provides counseling to clients on prelitigation strategy, portfolio development, patent monetization, and licensing activities.

A clear legal standard for determining patent-eligible subject matter remains elusive. On Friday, the Federal Circuit, in CLS Bank International v. Alice Corporation, ruled that an invention involving software for a computerized trading platform does not constitute patent‑eligible subject matter. The decision — which spanned 135 pages — by a 10-member en banc panel of the Court included seven separate opinions, but not the clarity many had hoped for.

Alice’s computerized trading platform patents were at issue in the case. Those patents describe a process for two parties to exchange obligations, such as stock trades, which are then settled by a trusted third party.

The focus of the legal proceedings was Alice’s patent claims. Positioned at the end of a patent, claims are numbered sentences that define the scope of protection afforded by the patent. Among other requirements, the subject matter of a claim must comply with section 101 of the patent laws.

Section 101 defines patent-eligible subject matter and reads: “Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.”

Alice asserted a variety of its patent claims in the case, including claims written in method, system and computer-readable-media claim formats. However, Alice’s asserted claims generally share the same underlying premise — that of software for exchanging obligations between parties through a computerized trading platform and using a third party to handle settlement of the exchanges.

What Guidance Did the Court Provide for Software Patents?

A majority (seven of the 10 members) of the Court concluded that Alice’s method and media claims are not directed to patent-eligible subject matter. The Court split 5-5, however, on Alice’s system claims. A split means the lower district court’s ruling, which found Alice’s system claims patent-ineligible, stands. A majority (eight of the 10 members) also agreed that Alice’s method, media, and system claims should rise or fall together when determining patent eligibility.

The majority consensus ends there. A majority of the Court, however, failed to reach agreement on the reasoning behind these conclusions.

Judge Lourie, in an opinion joined by four judges (Judges Dyk, Prost, Reyna and Wallach), found all of Alice’s asserted claims drawn to patent-ineligible abstract ideas.

In his view, Alice’s method claims are directed to nothing more than the abstract idea of reducing settlement risk by effecting trades through a third-party intermediary. This, he said, is a “disembodied” concept without any real-world application. Computer-related aspects of the claims — including steps for creating records to store data, using a computer to adjust and maintain those records, and reconciling those records at the end of a trading day — in his opinion failed to add anything of substance that would save the claims.

Judge Lourie similarly grouped Alice’s media and system claims in the same boat with Alice’s method claims. He characterized the media claims — although defining physical storage media — as nothing more than the same underlying method of reducing settlement risk “in the guise of a device.”

He then questioned whether structures found in the system claims—including “a computer” and “a data storage unit” — could justify a different approach for those claims. In his opinion, they did not. He reasoned that the computer-related limitations failed to provide any “meaningful distinction” from the computer-related limitations found in the method claims.

In a separate opinion, Chief Judge Rader said he would have found the system claims patent eligible. Three judges (Judges Linn, Moore, and O’Malley) joined in that part of his opinion. In Chief Judge Rader’s view, the issue was “whether a claim includes meaningful limitations restricting it to an application, rather than merely an abstract idea.”

Applying that rationale, he reasoned that the structural limitations in Alice’s system claims (e.g. limitations drawn to “a computer” and “a data storage unit”) brought those claims into the realm of patent-eligible subject matter. However, in the remainder of his opinion (which only Judge O’Malley joined), Chief Judge Rader concluded that Alice’s method and media claims are patent-ineligible abstract ideas.

Judges Linn and O’Malley, in a separate opinion, said they would have also found Alice’s method and media claims patent-eligible for the same reasons expressed in Chief Judge Rader’s opinion regarding Alice’s system claims. Additionally, they noted that several technology companies, in amicus (friend-of-the–court) briefs, expressed concern about what they viewed as widespread proliferation and aggressive enforcement of low-quality software patents. In responding to that concern, Judges Linn and O’Malley said Congress, and not the courts, is the proper avenue for developing special rules for software patents. For example, they speculated that Congress could limit the term of software patents or devise rules for limiting their scope.

Judge Moore, in a separate opinion (in which Chief Judge Rader and Judges Linn and O’Malley joined), said she would have found the system claims drawn to patent-eligible subject matter. She also wrote that the uncertainty in court decisions over this issue is “causing a free fall in the patent system.” If all of Alice’s claims are not patent-eligible, she conjectured that “this case is the death of hundreds of thousands of patents, including all business-method, financial-system, and software patents as well as many computer implemented and telecommunications patents.”

In a separate opinion, Judge Newman shared the majority view that all of the claims stand or fall together. She would have found Alice’s system, method and media claims patent‑eligible based on the plain language of section 101.

Chief Judge Rader offered an additional opinion captioned “Additional Reflections.” There, he emphasized that the Court should focus on the language of section 101 and indicated it is unlikely that innovation is promoted by the subjective standards for evaluating patent eligibility expressed in the panel’s opinions.

What’s Next for Software Patents?

The Federal Circuit has ruled, but the dividing line between patent-eligible software and patent-ineligible abstract ideas has not come into focus. Some may say the landscape remains in a similar state as it was before the Federal Circuit’s decision: some software claims might rise to the level of patent-eligible subject matter and others may not.

The CLS Bank case is likely to undergo Supreme Court review. The Supreme Court may view the Federal Circuit’s fractured decision as an opportunity to consider software patenting again. Whether a clear dividing line will emerge remains to be seen.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Today marks the anniversary of the deaths of Cervantes, Shakespeare and Garcilaso de la Vega and the birthdays of Vladimir Nabokov, Maurice Druon, and Josep Pla. This date, as chosen by the UN, celebrates the book and all it has wrought and, perhaps more important, the place of the book as artifact and sextant in our lives.

Happy World Book Day. Please nibble a madeline in honor of those timeless tombstones of information that have, for centuries, been our guiding stars through the darkness of ignorance.

All is not well for the book. As I’ve written before, I think the printed word will soon enter the domain of enthusiasts and, in the case of educational materials, the catastrophically underfunded. I can see a day when bookstores are few and far between and act more like vinyl record shops than fonts of information. To be clear, that’s not the case yet but it will be shortly.

The age of book as newsmaker is also fading. With so much content to wade through daily, the average reader has the time to read a few novels a year or a non-fiction book a quarter. Talking about books at work has been replaced with talking about TMZ and the endless news cycle ensures dinner conversation is less about Michael Pollan and more about Michael Phelps.

As a writer I have to hope that long form survives this upheaval. Unfortunately, the dedicated book delivery system – namely the book – is fast fading and we have yet to find a perfect replacement. I have found that the only way I can read books these days is on a dedicated e-reader. Cracking them open on an iPad, for example, encourages a sort of half-attention as dozens of other news sources vie for attention through notifications or just through a nagging sensation of FOMO. The happiest I’ve been in a long while was a week’s vacation where all I had was an e-ink Kindle, a series of ever stronger tequila sunrises, and a beach chair. I roasted myself in the tropical sun while doing the sort of reading – long, dedicated, focused – I had not done since I was a teenager devouring Stephen King novels after school. This is the magic of reading: it is not air but it is as important as breathing. It is not food but you hunger for it when it is gone.

The UN wants World Book Day to celebrate the pleasure of reading. I would wager they would do better to encourage the pleasure of understanding. Reading we do all day, every day. We consume relentlessly, throwing away the things we read instantly and forgetting them even faster. The men and women the UN celebrates, the authors of old and the authors of late that once were boldface names back when newspapers printed boldface names, give us a view on the world that is unique and allows us to begin to understand the world around us. Books are messages through time. Those messages become more and more occluded and it is our job, as readers and as lovers of the word, to blow away the dust and teach our kids the value of a good book.

There’s a lot of talk about censorship these days – which books are banned, which books are burned – but I worry more about apathy. Without a reading culture, without men and women and children who love the idea of a good book, be it in real ink or e-ink, we do the censors job for them. I disagree that the book, as a physical object, is important. I would defend to the death the importance of the book to world.

Bill Hicks, that poet of our modern age, once said:

“I was in Nashville, Tennessee last year. After the show I went to a Waffle House. I’m not proud of it, I was hungry. And I’m alone, I’m eating and I’m reading a book, right? Waitress walks over to me: ‘Hey, whatcha readin’ for?’ Isn’t that the weirdest fuckin’ question you’ve ever heard? Not what am I reading, but what am I reading FOR? Well, godammit, ya stumped me! Why do I read? Well . . . hmmm . . . I dunno . . . I guess I read for a lot of reasons and the main one is so I don’t end up being a f***n’ waffle waitress.”

While there are some smart waffle waitresses, I’d wager a young woman or man, given books and time and a well-lit room, would enter the world with far more enlightenment than anything even Hicks could imagine. We need books. Please, if you have the time and the means, give a book to someone today. Happy World Book Day.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Y Combinator-backed startup CrowdMed hopes to use the wisdom of the crowds to speed up and lower the cost of diagnosing rare medical conditions. By crowdsourcing medical data and applying some patented predictive technology, the company believes it can help users identify illnesses that had otherwise baffled medical professionals.

CrowdMed is designed to help users who have been unable to get help within the current health system. Because doctors can’t always track the thousands of rare diseases that are out there, patients may find themselves going to dozens of physicians and specialists and still not know what is wrong with them. Rather than continue to spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on tests and hospital visits, CrowdMed provides an alternative path to uncovering rare illnesses.

Users anonymously submit information about undiagnosed conditions on CrowdMed, providing details such as their symptoms, health history, family background and any tests they’ve already taken. The platform then allows a team of “medical detectives” to collaborate on the case, using their own personal history and knowledge, as well as online research to diagnose the illness. By aggregating their answers and using a patented, prediction technology, CrowdMed provides its own suggestions. In its private beta phase, 20 difficult real-life cases were solved using the platform, with some of those patients having already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to no avail.

While the platform isn’t designed to serve as a replacement for highly trained medical professionals, CrowdMed is there to provide help in the case of rare illnesses that are easily missed or to provide a “second opinion” for patients who aren’t sure of a doctor’s diagnosis. Mostly it’s there to help narrow down the realm of possibilities and provide suggestions for their physicians to consider.

The company was founded by Jared Heyman, who had previously built the Internet survey company Infosurv. After his sister spent three years with a rare, undiagnosed illness, he realized that the same kind of predictive survey technology could be used to help those who are sick figure out what they are suffering from. Heyman was joined by lead developer Axel Setyanto, who had previously worked at Loku, and lead designer Jessica Greenwalt, who had previously founded graphic design firm Pixelkeet. The startup is being advised by former WebMd exec Clare Martorana, who had been general manager at the company.

CrowdMed was one of the 46 companies to participate in the Y Combinator Winter 2013 class, and is announcing its public beta launch at TEDMED 2013 in Washington, D.C., today. The company has raised $1.1 million in seed funding from investors that include NEA, Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, Y Combinator, and SV Angel.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Keyboard cases for iPad are many and multiplying, but at this point it’s a question of refining the best concepts, not creating dramatically different devices. The Belkin Ultimate Keyboard Case for iPad is a great example, taking a lot of cues from the massively popular Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad and folio style designs to create a solution that might be as near as perfect as tablet typers can get.

• Keyboard is 6.4mm thin
• 160 hours battery life
• Magnets for secure closure and three viewing angles
• MSRP: $99.99
• Product info page

The Ultimate Keyboard Case is not small, but it isn’t big either. It avoids feeling anywhere near as bulky as a total hardcase like the Brydge, but don’t expect something with the low profile of Apple’s Smart Cover, for instance. But it sill manages to be just about as low-profile as the Logitech Ultrathin, and it has a few extra tricks up its sleeve, including a protective cover for the back of your iPad, three possible viewing angles for your device, and a sound port built into the case that redirects the iPad’s speaker output for better listening.

The materials feel top-quality, it weighs only 411 grams (slightly more than the Ultrathin’s 355 grams) and its keyboard layout feels natural and won’t impede your touch typing abilities. The design of the keyboard component and faux leather hinge means that you can use it with the keyboard folded back in behind, without keys awkwardly facing outward where you can accidentally hit them with your fingers, as is often the case with folio designs.

As mentioned, the Belkin Ultimate Keyboard Case is great to type on, with one small quibble: the recessed design of the keys means that it can be awkward to hit the space bar, since your thumb will also brush up against the base of the case itself. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it does annoy when you’re coming from a standard notebook or desktop keyboard. But the dedicated keys, including a microphone key that brings up Siri on later generation iPads or voice dictation on earlier ones, as well as the convenience factor outweigh any downsides.

The Ultimate Keyboard’s other big feature is its use of magnets to allow for three different viewing angles. It’s a nice trick, and one that works well. The one limitation here is that if you’re trying to type in an unstable setting, say on a very bumpy car or train ride, the magnets can actually become dislodged. As long as you’re using the Belkin on a flat surface and you aren’t on Safari, however, the magnets do their job and offer a bit of flexibility vs. the Logitech Ultrathin.

I feel like we may be reaching peak keyboard case, especially for the standard-sized iPad. But Belkin’s Ultimate Keyboard Case, though somewhat late to the party, shows that there’s still some depth left to be plumbed in terms of wringing innovation out of the overcrowded space. At $99.99, it’s not cheap, but if you’re looking for a way to make your iPad a much more capable text-entry machine, while still offering full protection for your iPad itself, this is a good option.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

In the annals of criticism it is often the case that a writer is cursed in life and forgotten in death. For Roger Ebert, voluminous historian of the cinema and its most astute critic, neither of these was the case.

Ebert, along with his counterpoint, Gene Siskel, defined the modern movie review and brought the figurative Cahiers du Cinéma down from their lofty perch and into our living rooms. He was affable, honest, and as a longtime columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, so prolific – 306 reviews in the last year alone and over 200 a year prior to that – as to make many journalists look like withering failures.

His kindness and blunt judgements made his writing a treat and I can only imagine how it felt to be the recipient of his attention. A person’s work is their child and he was a strong scold and virtuous champion.

Ebert, who suffered from thyroid and salivary gland cancer, died today at age 70. He recently announced a sort of retirement after finding that his cancer had returned. He is survived by his wife, Chaz Hammel-Smith Ebert.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

We all know that co-founders with a longstanding personal bond have a better chance of building a successful company than co-founders who don’t share a strong friendship. But what about when that bond between two co-founders is a bit deeper, as a romantic relationship?

Eventbrite co-founders Julia and Kevin Hartz have shown that building a business with your significant other — in this case, a spouse — can lead to big success. The online event planning and ticketing platform, which is understood to be making its way to an IPO, just hit a major milestone this week, crossing $1.5 billion in gross sales and 100 million tickets sold.

I had the pleasure of interviewing the Hartzes in a fireside chat last month at the really fantastic Startup Grind 2013 conference headed up by tech entrepreneur Derek Andersen in Silicon Valley. In our 30-minute conversation, we talked about all things Eventbrite, from the early days as a budding startup to its current status as a sizable tech company, and you can watch it all in the video embedded above.

But, being that today is said to be the wedding of Wildfire Interactive co-founders Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard, another uber successful co-founding couple (congratulations!), I especially wanted to highlight Julia and Kevin’s comments about running a business with a loved one.

Kevin and Julia said placing a priority on keeping their interpersonal relationship strong was a smart decision that should be used by other co-founding teams, whether they’re in a romantic relationship or not. Starting at around 4:50, Kevin said:

“There’s been famous husband and wife teams where it’s worked out remarkably, and famous husband and wife teams, as in the case of Cisco, where it’s kind of a disaster — but, you know, Cisco became a great company. Like anything, it’s a co-founder relationship, and in our case we had to be extra sensitive about it because there was this extra personal relationship important aspect about it.

So, we approached it somewhat cautiously. We had many different chances where we would say, ‘OK, we’re not going to ruin the marriage,’ so you know, one of us steps out, and we have this kind of a Plan B if things went poorly. I also think it’s a great exercise in really ensuring we’re compatible founders, and we were very conscientious of it. When you’re working with founders, your fellow founders, that relationship is fundamental whether it’s romantic or not.”

And Julia added:

“We were so cautious about the decisions we made and what kind of modes of operations we would have. We had this law that we would divide and conquer, and wouldn’t work on the same thing at the same time. It just so happened we had complimentary skills so that was an easy thing to do.

When I overlay that over any co-founder relationship, it’s vital actually to be talking about those kinds of things.”

There was much more where that came from, and you can see it all in the video above.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is “partially” opposing a request by the estate of Aaron Swartz for the release of documents related to the investigation that led to Swartz’s arrest and prosecution in federal court.

In court papers filed today, MIT counsel states that its opposition stems from two factors: its concerns about people in the MIT community named in the documents and the security of its computer networks.

MIT has previously stated that it would release the documents with redactions of names and other information. MIT President L. Rafael Reif said in email to the MIT community earlier this month:

On Friday, the lawyers for Aaron Swartz’s estate filed a legal request with the Boston federal court where the Swartz case would have gone to trial. They demanded that the court release to the public information related to the case, including many MIT documents. Some of these documents contain information about vulnerabilities in MIT’s network. Some contain the names of individual MIT employees involved. In fact, the lawyers’ request argues that those names cannot be excluded (”redacted”) from the documents and urges that they be released in the public domain and delivered to Congress.

The paper filed today reiterates this position, basing it on threats already made to MIT staff and three separate hacking incidents at the university.

The information includes “email, the names, job titles, departments, telephone numbers, email addresses, business addresses, and other identifying information of many members of the MIT community.”

Swartz has become a symbol in the Internet community since his suicide. His supporters have led the debate about the role MIT played in Swartz’s prosecution and the vigilance of the U.S. Attorney General in the case.

MIT claims it is fully cooperating in the investigation that has come since Swartz’s suicide.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The team at SnipSnap has been quietly plugging away on an Android version of its popular mobile coupon app for what seems like ages now, but the wait for all you cost-conscious Android devotees is over. After some seven months in development, the Philly-based startup has finally pushed its eponymous app into the Google Play Store.

If you’ve missed our previous coverage, here’s SnipSnap in a nutshell — it’s an iOS and Android app that lets users digitally save and share their coupons. In addition to just storing those coupons, users can seek out friends and popular couponers to follow, as well as accept deals from a slew of retail partners.

The last time we spoke, SnipSnap founder Ted Mann told me that the official Android build of the app would be out the door in August 2012. That little deadline came and went with little fanfare, but as it turns out the past few months have been kind to the company. SnipSnap officially tiptoed past 500,000 registered users a ways back, and saw user engagement (measured by coupon snippings in this case) jump four-fold since the more socially oriented 2.0 release of the SnipSnap iOS app.

SnipSnap’s Android app is nearly identical to its iOS cousin when it comes to functionality (save for obvious bits like the lack of Passbook support), which is always sort of refreshing to see. When a small company with limited resources is working on two versions of an app, there’s a tendency for one build to pull ahead of the other in terms of features and polish, and that’s not the case here… mostly.

There’s a very neat Android-specific feature that hasn’t yet been implemented, but could greatly increase the efficacy of the app in certain situations. The issue with simply displaying barcodes on a smartphone’s screen is that it just doesn’t always work — depending on the retailer’s point-of-sale setup (it seems to happen most at grocery stores), the scanner may not be able to get a bead on the barcode image.

To help combat that (albeit in a limited way), SnipSnap has also revealed that they’re working with the team at Mobeam to bring greater accuracy to the process by way of beamable barcodes. Sadly, that particular feature is slated to remain a Galaxy S4 exclusive for the time being since it’s the only device that lets apps take over the front-facing infrared proximity sensor, but that may not be the case for long. Mobeam CEO Chris Sellers confirmed to TechCrunch last week that the company has been in talks with multiple handset manufacturers, so the promise of scanner-friendly digital coupons for the masses may not be too far off after all.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Google Drive is apparently having some issues this morning, according to a number of complaints spotted on Twitter, plus TechCrunch’s staff own experiences. However, the Google App Status Dashboard is not reporting an outage. The issues appear to be intermittent, and not all Google Drive users are affected at this time.

In my case, for instance, Google Drive struggled to load one particular folder, but loaded others with no more than the usual delay. Others are seeing no issues with their Drive associated with their Gmail account, but are having trouble with their Google Apps account sign-ins. And others still are reporting seeing messages that the service is down entirely, and are getting a “502 error” for several minutes.

For those who were signed in and seemingly unaffected, be aware that you might have issues saving your work. (See example error below).

We’ve reached out to Google for details on this outage or service interruption, as the case may be, and will update when we hear back.

google drive down? getting 502 error for several minutes…

— pauline (@crowsfeets) March 18, 2013

#Google #drive is down & TheGoog gives a great error message. Thx for the explanation: twitter.com/Murrayiz/statu… — Murray Izenwasser (@Murrayiz) March 18, 2013

google drive down? getting 502 error for several minutes… — pauline (@crowsfeets) March 18, 2013

Interesting move by the Google Drive engineers. Has been down, but now they’re routing the sign-in through youtube and it’s working…

— Nate Hagerty (@natehagerty) March 18, 2013

Google Drive is down and my morning comes to a screeching halt!#downforeveryoneorjustme

— Eric Dresser (@ericdresser) March 18, 2013

GOOGLE DRIVE IS DOWN. Ahhhhhhhh

— Jennifer Rowsell (@jenrowsell) March 18, 2013

[View the story "Google Drive Down (3/18/13)" on Storify]

UPDATE (10:45 AM ET): Google Drive is now showing as a “service disruption” on Google’s App Status Dashboard.

UPDATE: Google says the problem has been resolved.

The problem with Google Drive should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better. If you are still experiencing an issue, please contact us via the Google Help Center.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Editor’s note: Bill Ready is CEO of Braintree, an online and mobile payment provider to many of the top apps in the App Store, including Uber, Airbnb, Angry Birds, OpenTable, Fab and HotelTonight. Follow him on Twitter @williamready.

When asked about a Facebook app for iPad in November 2010, Mark Zuckerberg brushed off the question with a quip. “iPad’s not mobile. Next question…. It’s not mobile, it’s a computer, it’s a different thing.” Since then, Facebook has evolved its view of mobile, having dealt with the struggles of its user base moving to mobile before they had an answer to mobile monetization. However, the debate over whether tablets are mobile devices has continued.

The introduction of the Samsung Galaxy S4 may finally put an end to the debate. The Galaxy S has been one of the best-selling smartphone models ever and the next incarnation will have a 5-inch display – just under the size of the Samsung Note II. Now, the next best-selling phone on the market may, in fact, be a tablet that people are carrying around in their (oversized) pockets.

The similar user experience on smartphones and tablets has led to the convergence of the two devices. Smart phones are getting bigger (iPhone 5 increased from a 3.5-inch to a 4-inch screen) and tablets are getting smaller (iPad mini – now the best-selling iPad model – reduced the size of the iPad screen by nearly two inches). Perhaps the best exemplification of this phenomenon is the Samsung Galaxy Note II, which sports a 5.5-inch display and has been dubbed a “phablet” because it can be used as both a tablet and a phone.

Those that would argue that tablets are just a new form of PC point to data that tablet usage is rapidly cannibalizing PC usage. Tablets now account for a third of the overall PC market, and consumers who own tablets find they are using their PCs less. It is also the case that 90 percent of consumers use their tablets at home, instead of a PC. However, it is also the case that tablets are clearly being used as portable devices, with 40 percent of consumers using them outside the home.

In addition to being commonly used outside the home, the user experience on a tablet is fundamentally different than on a laptop or PC and is much more akin to a smartphone than a PC. For example, GPS and native applications allow for context-driven experiences across the web on both smartphones and tablets. Touchscreen displays and the absence of a physical keyboard require a style of interaction on both that is largely driven by context-aware experiences (i.e. applications that know about you or what you want so that you don’t have to enter lots of information for the application to work).

The implications of this are profound. Mobile devices are becoming the primary computing devices now that they pack the power to perform many of the things that people previously did on their PCs. Nowhere is this more evident than in e-commerce where mobile devices now account for more than 30 percent of all e-commerce shopping sessions. That percentage is more than doubling year over year, meaning that by the 2013 holiday shopping season, mobile devices will likely account for more than half of all e-commerce shopping. It is also the case that consumers aren’t buying mobile devices with the primary purpose of making phone calls anymore. In fact, phone calls are only the fifth most popular feature on smartphones – behind browsing the web, using social media, playing music, and playing games.

This radical shift in consumer behavior has created huge opportunities for those who have embraced it and massive threats for those who have failed to. Uber and HotelTonight are great examples of wholly new commerce experiences that are only possible because of mobile devices. At the same time, traditional e-commerce providers are seeing their conversion rates drop by 75 percent or more on mobile sessions if they have not properly optimized for mobile with context-driven experiences, such as one-touch checkout. Brick-and-mortar retail locations now deal with the showrooming phenomenon where more than 40 percent of consumers will use their mobile devices to price check items and perhaps complete orders online while in the store.

If the Samsung Galaxy S4 is as successful as its predecessor and manages to create the perfect combination of phone and tablet, the shift in consumer behavior toward mobile devices as the primary computing devices will certainly accelerate. Along with that will be a meaningful acceleration in the opportunities and threats that are posed by consumers shifting to mobile.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch