To: pyslent who wrote (173533 ) 9/2/2014 7:12:08 PM From: Ryan Bartholomew Read Replies (1) | Respond to Just so we know, would you say the Amazon Fire is a flop? Certainly growing sales compared to say, 3 months ago. :) Are they still growing sales, or did they burst and have started to decline? Potential to keep growing is as important as current growth. It's likely that current mobile payment platform leaders will keep growing, while a smartphone that is limited to a hardware model selling a bunch and then tailing off doesn't have the same staying power. If the Fire kept growing sales, released another model and surpassed previous ones, then no, I wouldn't say it's a flop. But I don't think that's happening. With regards to mobile payments, growth is great, but scale matters. As it does with smartphone OS. We agree. If active ISIS users number less than 1 million, it's hard to call it a success against a backdrop of 160 million US smartphone users. If there's another platform with 50 million of those 160 million, then yes, 1 million would be hard to call a success because a certain market share is going to be needed to keep merchants interested in continuing to support it. But if its 1 million is slowly growing and no one else has more, then it's a different story, for the passage of time will eventually make it worthwhile to more merchants. Of course, Apple could step in and dwarf it if they do it right, and I'm not discounting that. But to beat out what's already there, I think they'll have to provide advantages beyond their reputation and marketing alone (especially with their reputation for security recently damaged). For comparison, Apple is likely to sell over 10 million iPhone 6's opening weekend. It would be a disappointment if there weren't 3 million iWallet users by Sunday (and that's assuming new hardware is needed). Remember - it's not just how many people are capable of using it, but how many will bother to use it. If using it is essentially a 2% tax on purchases, not as many people would use it if there was, for example, a 1% cost benefit. Convenience is valuable for sure, but it's a matter of degree.
