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Microsoft's contract with Nokia rumored at $1B

It's been less than a month since Microsoft and Nokia announced a strategic partnership to work together in a number of areas, though mainly on mobile phones. One detail that was not disclosed at the time was what kind of dollar investment Microsoft had promised Nokia for developing and marketing Nokia-made handsets that will ship with Microsoft's Windows Phone OS.

That detail has been made a bit clearer with a report by Bloomberg earlier today saying that Microsoft plans to pay Nokia more than $1 billion, while Nokia, in turn, pays Microsoft a licensing fee for each copy … Read more

Bing now aggregates, recommends local deals

Microsoft is trying to make it easier to find nearby deals, and today has launched a deals service that aggregates them from around the Web.

Bing Deals, which will show up for both desktop and m.bing.com users, aggregates deals from a number of deal providers, including LivingSocial, Groupon, and Restaurant.com. On the mobile side, when combined with a phone's real-time location, this lets users see which of the deals from those services are nearby.

The technology itself is a partnership with deals aggregation site The Dealmap. All told, Microsoft says Bing Deals adds up to more … Read more

The rise of the 99-cent Kindle e-book

Not long ago I did a story about how e-book piracy was accelerating and that publishers should be concerned. But while piracy is certainly an issue, there's something else lurking out there that may be a bigger problem: e-book price erosion. Or put another way, the blogification of the book industry.

Now, I know what you're saying: that's great news. These publishers have been gouging us with ridiculous pricing for digital files that cost next to nothing to produce (in terms of material costs) and finally we're starting to see lots of deals out there. But … Read more

Apple discounts original iPad to as low as $350

The iPad 2 is official, and it's impressive, but it's not as much of an upgrade to the original as some had thought. No Thunderbolt, no SD slot, and no mini-DisplayPort. That might make those of us who have the original take pause before lining up for the new one.

But for those in the market for their first iPad, the lack of a completely overwhelming difference between the older and the newer device might be a good thing. During today's event, Apple's online store, as it typically does, went down. When it came back up, … Read more

Loopt apps getting Groupon-like daily deals

Impulse buyers, beware. Loopt is jumping on the deal-a-day bandwagon, pushing alerts for deeply discounted goods and services in its location-aware social-networking app for iPhone (iOS) and Android.

Loopt's new "Reward Alerts" program, announced today in time for next week's South By Southwest technology and music conference, will push notifications for instantly redeemable deals.

However, to keep its daily deal from being a dime a dozen, Loopt will push a few high-value deals at various times throughout the day. Deals are based on your location, possibly down to the city block if the provider wants, and … Read more

More rumors of larger iPhone 5 screen

Here we go again with the rumors that the iPhone 5--or whatever Apple chooses to call its fifth-generation iPhone--will have a larger screen. This one comes out of China, where iDealsChina has posted what it claims is a photo of the front bezel or digitizer panel for the iPhone 5.

Here's the long caption that was posted along with the image, which was first noticed by 9to5Mac:

China's 1st iPhone 5 photo has surfaced! From this photo it seems that the screen size will be larger than iPhone 4. There has been a lot of speculation about a … Read more

Report: Groupon looks to launch operations in China

The daily-deals broker Groupon is reportedly getting ready to launch operations in China, which would help expand its reach in Asia.

In Beijing recently, a company that operates the site Gaopeng.com was conducting interviews in an office with a Groupon sign on display, according to a Wall Street Journal story today. Gaopeng.com is "listed as registered by someone at Internet giant Tencent Holdings of Shenzen, China. " Tencent is one of the stakeholders in Digital Sky Technologies, an investor in Groupon.

The Journal report also said openings for Groupon staff positions have been posted recently on Chinese … Read more

Warning: Coupons make you spend more

I've said before, and not too long ago, that only people with poor impulse control buy things at retail prices. But I've recently come to understand that deal-seekers, people who habitually try to save money by using social-shopping sites like Groupon or coupon directories like RetailMeNot, may actually be even more valuable to the retail industry than people who buy stuff at list price. Because they spend more.

Cotter Cunningham, CEO of WhaleShark Media, which runs RetailMeNot, explained to me recently why his straightforward coupon site is working well, and how the Internet is changing how pricing and consumer marketing is done.

Affiliate marketing--paid links to commercial destinations--is the third-most efficient way for consumer goods and services companies to get online business, after e-mailing existing customers and doing good SEO. Coupons make for very effective and trackable affiliate links, because users have to click on them to get the deal, not just visit the site selling the product they want.

And coupon sites succeed because the business of aggregating coupons is very strong: each link is a CPA, or cost-per-action link, which pays out at a much higher rate than CPC, or cost-per-click advertising links.

The goal is to become the big site with the most coupons, as getting into that position makes for a virtuous SEO cycle: the more coupons you have, the more people link to and visit the site, and the higher you rise in the search engines. RetailMeNot pursues this strategy by including even nonaffiliate coupon deals in its listings. Unlike some of the original coupon sites, where each coupon has an affiliate or CPA link attached to it, RetailMeNot encourages its users to submit coupon codes they find around the Internet. These coupons don't generate direct revenue for the site (although pages they're on do serve ads), but they do serve the incredibly important function of improving RetailMeNot's depth and thus its SEO juice and its traffic, making its paid links bigger revenue drivers. … Read more

A smart deal: Virgin America+Groupon+Chicago

This is a well-thought-out move: Low-cost air carrier Virgin America, which has attempted to court passengers with a tech-savvy offering since its 2007 launch, announced today its initial service from San Francisco and Los Angeles to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. To drum up online chatter, it partnered with Chicago's company of the moment--Groupon.

Groupon users can purchase $77 worth of Virgin America credit for $7 on the massive group-buying site, with the caveat that it can only be used on the airline's new Chicago routes. Given the amount of positive buzz for a brand that can … Read more