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High-profile mobile money launches by Apple and Samsung may have caught the headlines

But it is the developments in payments systems in supposedly less developed nations in Africa and Asia that point the way to the probable future for wider mobile banking.

the reality remains that the mobile phone as a means of payment remains relatively niche even in developed markets.

Slice Intelligence just revealed that people who bought products in mobile video games last year spent an average of $87 dollars on their “free-to-play” games. This redefines how we view hardcore gamers: people who purchase games for traditional consoles and PCs spend only $5 dollars more on average on their gaming entertainment.

The mobile game with the largest average in-app spend is Game of War, where players spend, on average, $550

Though characters like Woody and Buzz Lightyear are wonderfully realistic and lovable, the relationship that kids have with them is largely one-sided. Kids can hear these characters talk—not only through movies, but games, toys, and other movie merchandise—but they can’t engage them.

It was this idea that inspired Jacob to team up with his former Pixar colleague, Martin Reddy, and launch a new company, ToyTalk. The San Francisco-based outfit develops mobile games that let kids have conversations with animated characters—dialogues that can last for hours

Known as PullString, it’s equal parts speech recognition engine and script writing tool, and it’s quite a departure from other speech rec tools developed by the likes of Microsoft, Google, and Apple. It’s tailored specifically to kids, whose sentence structure, pitch, and vocal tone have posed challenges for traditional tools.

says the move by Instagram is part of an ongoing initiative to add more e-commerce features to the platform, as well as more ways to display and interact with products

"Mobile commerce is definitely a space we are looking at closely.

Instagram has become increasingly more interested in advertising and has deployed a variety of new products and ad formats for advertisers.

By Obsessing Over the Present, Big Media has Forgotten its Past and Endangered its Future (But it’s Not Too Late)

When it comes to digital-era investments, Disney has certainly been the most active of the major media companies (though IP represents more than 80% of total outlays). Over the past decade, the House of Mouse has bought the largest YouTube Multi-Channel Network (Maker Studios), a mobile gaming company (Playdom), several multi-media storytelling platforms (Marvel, LucasArts, Pixar), become Vice’s largest outside shareholder, doubled down on technology-driven theme park experiences (MagicBand, VR), established an annual fan expo (D23), formed an accelerator program with TechStars (Disney Accelerator) and launched an ever-expanding sandbox video game at the cost of more than $125M (Disney Infinity)

For the past 20 years, television networks have reaped more than $1T inflation adjusted revenues and $300B in net cash flow thanks to what was sown throughout the 1980s and early 1990s (most cable networks took years to hit cumulative net profits, with several market leaders accumulating hundreds of millions in losses doing so). But the harvest is coming to an end. Crop rotation is not a waste; it’s an essential investment in forward productivity.

“We plan to build this [platform] the way we’ve developed WhatsApp: focus on the most fundamental and private use case—messaging

WeChat Pay and Tenpay (Tencent’s business-oriented payment platform) accounted for 38.8% of the total amount spent via mobile payments in China during Q3 2018

games were the most popular category of miniprograms, used by 42% of WeChat miniprogram users in China