Visa Europe launches a contact-less payment system in Turkey. Customers of Akbank with a Blackberry enabled by a microSD card can now pay for goods. 
Using NFC technology in a microSD called the In2Pay, the In2Pay card can still act as a storage expansion as well, so users do not give up memory to make use of the service.
Visa will expand this micro-SD programme to include HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia and Motorola phones in the near future while it waits for NFC handsets to gain in the market.
The "iPhone 4" goes on sale on June 24th in UK, France, Germany in 16GB and 32GB versions.
iPhone 4 features more than 100 new features including a better still camera (5 megapixel), improved battery life (40% more time) and a screen with significantly higher resolution (326 pixels per inch, 4X more pixels than before).
But what everyone will be watching is the front-facing video camera for WiFi-only video conferencing. Will iPhone owners develop video chat habits with Mac owners or iPhone to iPhone?
Probably users will "record HD video and edit it on a device you carry with you everyday" but to popularize video chat would be the major breakthrough that Apple wants.
Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son shook up Mobile Asia Congress, declaring mobile networks alone can't support future data-intensive devices.
The CEO of Japan's largest Internet group uses this example to explain why future mobile networks may not be able to support the evolution of devices: if the same rate of device development continues, in 2024 an iPhone would be 1000X more powerful and will store 32 terabytes of data…
"The PC internet day is gone, the majority of Internet access will come from mobile," Son insists. "We will go aggressively to LTE but LTE is still not fast enough. We need both WiFi and mobile."
Son also says: 55% of Japan has migrated past 3G to 3.5G, Japanese mobile content industry is worth $14 billion annually, 50% of mobile data is consumed in the home, the peak time for mobile data consumption is between 9 PM -10 PM; and smartphone users consume 10X more data than non-smartphone users.
Lenovo buys back the mobile phone unit, the same unit it spun off only last year... now probably "THINKing" its decision to focus on its core business in PCs might have been hasty.
It will cost USD$200 million plus stock to buy back Lenovo Mobile from a group of investors who bought it for $100 million last year.
The company justifies this, citing growing similarities between PCs and mobile phones that "are creating a new device category that Lenovo sees as a key growth opportunity in China and worldwide."
The acquisition won't make the company a significant player in the international cellphone market, however, as Lenovo Mobile operates mainly in China. CEO Yang Yuanqing says the company will launch handset products under the Lenovo brand soon.
Dell, HP, Acer and Asus have launched handsets while Nokia and Qualcomm have started with netbooks.
The MicroUSB standard is now backed by the ITU. The new UPC standard was based on input from GSMA, which predicts a 50% reduction in standby energy consumption, elimination of 51,000 tonnes of redundant chargers, and reduction of 13.6m tonnes in greenhouse gas emissions each year.
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