BRotD - Entry 0236 WalmartLabs Impacting Mobile Retail

Best Reading of the Day

This story over on PC Magazine is a really excellent read.

If you don't know much about Walmart you should know that everyone on the planet comes to Bentonville, AR if they want to do business with Walmart, and many people do.  One notable exception is the technology arm of the retail giant.  That is WalmartLabs outside of San Francisco.  What have they been up to?  Just leading the world in the bricks & mobile work (a quote taken from a Target representative to be a bit ironic).

Read on:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2493418,00.asp

Here is a snippet from the piece:

At this year's inaugural TAP Conference, representatives from start-ups, big tech companies, and venture capital (VC) firms came together to discuss the state of the mobile app economy, and the evolving nature of online shopping and mobile commerce. The point of sale (POS) landscape is changing as context and in-app purchases drive a new wave of mobile conversions.

Large enterprises and retailers are as acutely affected by this shift as start-ups (which are, arguably, more so); this made the afternoon panel entitled "Connecting Fortune 500s to the Mobile Economy" one of the conference's most fascinating. In some cases, Fortune 500s are propelling more mobile commerce innovation than start-ups. Onstage, panelists from Citigroup Inc., Walgreen Co., @WalmartLabs, and 7-Eleven, Inc. talked about the ways in which their companies are innovating—from launching new apps and partnerships to rolling out smart features around beacons, push notifications, and user experience (UX).

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant