An interesting app from Singapore now promises to help blind persons check their bills, count change or walk down an alley by placing a video call to a guide who can talk them through the process. …

Conventional IT wisdom would have us believe that Apple is not welcome in the enterprise, but the company is making great strides in the mobile segment.

Good Technology, a provider of enterprise mobile technology, revealed earlier this week that iOS devices captured 77 per cent of device activations among its 4,000 customers in the fourth quarter last year. Android lagged behind with only 22.7 per cent.

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If there’s still any doubt that the two big phone makers – Apple and Samsung – are the ones making most of the money, the latest figures now show that they together gobbled up 52 per cent of global smartphone sales in the last three months of 2012, up from 46.4 per cent three months before.

Research firm Gartner also said earlier today that more than 207 .7 million smartphones were sold in Q4 2012, up 38.3 per cent from 12 months ago. This, unfortunately, did not lift the overall mobile phone market.

Including sales of so-called “feature phones”, there were fewer phones sold in the entire 2012, compared to a year ago. The 1.75 billion phones sold represented a 1.7 per cent fall from 2011, the first decline in three years. …

Apple’s latest update to the iOS, the software that powers all iDevices including the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, comes with one or two nice touches, as well as some minor tweaks as well.

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Apple has seemingly become a victim of its own success, going by the pessimism going around this week after its record quarterly earnings.

Yes, despite selling more iPhones and iPads in the last three months of 2012 than before, it has disappointed investors enough for them to dump the stock afterwards. Prices fell to US$439.88 at the time of writing, after a high of more than US$700 last September. …

Things have moved very fast since all three cellphone operators in Singapore decided or ramp up their coverage with faster 4G or LTE (Long Term Evolution) services two months ago.

The good news is that there are now several options for 4G phones. Today, many of the latest top-end models can link up to the new network, should you choose to sign up to a 4G service.

Here are five phones, out in the shops or coming in the next few weeks, that you should check out. …

Oracle is now making it easier to build mobile versions of Java-based enterprise applications.

Earlier this week, the enterprise software giant announced Oracle ADF (application development framework) Mobile, a new extension to its Oracle JDeveloper software development platform that lets companies extend Java-based applications to mobile devices.

As mobile operating systems such as Apple iOS and Google Android are evolving rapidly, developing mobile apps for each platform usually means maintaining different kinds of code. Oracle ADF Mobile helps to ease this process by providing a set of developer tools and services that most programmers are familiar with. …

Most IT head honchos would cringe at the prospect of allowing employees to use their own personal devices for work. After all, that means giving up the tight control that employers have always had over devices that connect to corporate networks, while facing the risk of corporate data falling into the wrong hands through lost or stolen devices.

Yet, more employees are yearning to use their own personal devices for work. A survey by VMware revealed that over 50 per cent of employees in Singapore already use their own devices for work-related purposes, whether their companies have a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy or not. …

There’s now a way to pay for a meal with your phone, not just because it’s cool to do so, but because that gives you discounts over that nice plate of Thai fried noodles or mug of beer you just had.

With the Mogi app on your smartphone, you can buy, say, $100 worth of credit from a restaurant like IndoChine and flash it at the waiter when you are presented with the bill. The amount is then deducted from the stored value, and a discount and loyalty points are thrown in for going digital. …

Swiss IT company coresystems ag has launched a free mobile app that promises to help small companies build their online presence and identify sales leads on social media platforms.

Dubbed Mila, the app, available for both Android and iOS devices, lets small business owners build an online store quickly, manage contacts and sales leads, as well as generate invoices and receipts.

Besides easing the process of creating an online presence for small companies, Mila also searches for potential customers on Twitter using its own semantic analysis engine. …