Visitors to fast food outlets in Japan will soon be able to pay for their burgers with their mobile phones.
Japanese mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo is teaming up with McDonalds to offer electronic payments and special promotions for mobile users.
Using mobile phones to pay for goods is a massive growth area as operators look for new ways to make money.
Japanese mobile owners are leading the way, paying for food and train tickets via their handsets.
For Julie Ask, an analyst with research firm Jupiter, the partnership illustrates the need to have upfront agreements and co-operation for the chain needed for electronic payments to be a success.
"Otherwise it suffers from the chicken and egg problem. POS [Point of Sale] equipment is needed to interoperate with technology in the cell phones. Carriers and handset manufacturers need incentives to add cost into the cell phones. There has to be a network for it to be interesting to anyone," she said.
The deal could also provide invaluable information about customer behaviour, she said.
View: BBC News
Japanese mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo is teaming up with McDonalds to offer electronic payments and special promotions for mobile users.
Using mobile phones to pay for goods is a massive growth area as operators look for new ways to make money.
Japanese mobile owners are leading the way, paying for food and train tickets via their handsets.
For Julie Ask, an analyst with research firm Jupiter, the partnership illustrates the need to have upfront agreements and co-operation for the chain needed for electronic payments to be a success.
"Otherwise it suffers from the chicken and egg problem. POS [Point of Sale] equipment is needed to interoperate with technology in the cell phones. Carriers and handset manufacturers need incentives to add cost into the cell phones. There has to be a network for it to be interesting to anyone," she said.
The deal could also provide invaluable information about customer behaviour, she said.
View: BBC News
(Oops - Did it as a reply instead of a new post)
Fixed.
This seems to be an attempt to make McDonalds more popular to the mobile-loving Japanese.
© McDonalds Public Relations.
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ROFLMAO!
And probably true!
Personally, I haven't eaten in a McDonald's for decades. Nevertheless, I don't mind pointing out that its food has always been unhealty, fat-laden garbage; and that as the most heavily advertised operation in the industry, it bears the lion's share of the responsibility for today's massive fast-food related health problems.
That McDonald's has any healthy food choices at all today is almost certainly attributable to people like Morgan Spurlock “ragging” on them for serving garbage. In my opinion, people should never “give it a rest” until McDonald's has nothing but healthy food to offer. Because unlike Microsoft and Sony, McDonald's is killing people.
What's really funny is that over thirty years ago, a friend of mine informed me that McDonald's was an international conspiracy aimed at lowering the average intelligence of the human race to make it more susceptible to advertising.
I was never sure if he was joking or not, but “conspiracy” or not, the outcome was as he predicted: too many people are now dumbed down and fattened up.
I hope you aren't serious. McDonald's is killing people? I didn't know they were forcing people through the drive-thru at gunpoint. It's a choice, everyone knows that it's not healthy. So when we force McDonald's to only serve healthy food, who is next? Wendys? Burger King? Hardee's. Hey let's get all the stores to pull all the soft drinks and candy off their shelves while we're at it. Outlaw Pepsi! I don't know what kind of nanny state society you are looking for but screw that. Are you one of those people that sue McDonald's for making them fat? Personal responsibility, look it up.
You know, I get so sick of you spin-doctoring cretins who try and twist and distort what people say into something totally different. Normally, I wouldn't give someone like you the time of day, but unfortunately there are too many people who can't see the logical flaws in your particular brand of intellectual dishonesty, so I'm forced to reply:
Everyone? Attributing any behavior to everyone is the trademark of the serial liar (to coin a phrase). Reminds me of Ann Coulter's methodology:
Isn't it great how she defines what 'Liberal' means, and then conveniently places everyone who disagrees with her into her delusional little box? Well, you are no different. 'Everyone knows,' you say. Is that why over two-thirds of all Americans are overweight? Why obesity among children has passed cigarette smoking as a more likely cause of death for them down the road? Because 'everyone' knows that eating garbage is unhealty?
If I concede that all adults who eat at McDonalds are aware of the health risks that they are taking (which I don't), that still leaves out the millions of young children – say those under ten years old – who can't possibly know what's going on and have absolutely no control over their eating arrangements. You think that Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar are giving these kids the low-down on what they're eating? When someone decides to take a small child out for some McGarbage, do you think that this child has any rational control over this decision?
The fact is that McDonald's has engaged in a perpetual, multi-generational brainwashing campaign to induce people to eat their garbage. And even that would be OK if others were allowed to effectively oppose them. Oh sure, you can write books and articles against McDonald's. You can even make movies. But just try and buy commercial air time on a major American television network to oppose them – the kind of air time that gets McDonald's the 24/7/365 access to the broadest possible (captive) audience – and see how far you get. Nobody has ever been able to do that; and if Corporate America continues to have its way, nobody ever will.
Next: You throw out some guff about me wanting to 'Outlaw Pepsi' and engender 'some kind of nanny state society.' And all this because I said that people should keep on 'ragging' McDonald's. You do know what 'ragging' means, right? It doesn't mean 'outlawing,' 'prohibiting,' 'enforcing,' or any other such compulsion. But of course you knew that, and it didn't stop you from 'spinning' my comments, eh?
Boy, talk about getting me all wrong! I'm about as Libertarian as you can get. I believe that competent adults should be able to do anything they want – provided it doesn't violate other people's rights in the doing. This means that I believe that you should be able to eat, drink, smoke, snort, or shoot anything you want – provided that in doing so you're not exposing others to (involuntary) danger. I believe you should be able to practice whatever religion (or none) that you want; that you should be able to have sex with as many consenting adults of any gender that will have you. I believe in voluntary suicide, assisted or otherwise. In other words, I believe that truly free individuals should be firmly in control of their own destinies.
Of course the key word here is 'adult'. What informed, consenting adults do is their own business. What can and should be done with and to vulnerable young children is a whole different ball of wax. Normally, I'd suggest pressuring Congress to pass legislation protecting children from commercial brainwashing. But since this brainwashing is carried out by some of the most important and influential campaign contributors to Congress, I have a vague notion that this won't work.
Finally, I believe in freedom of speech, which means that I don't believe in unilateral brainwashing. This in turn means that if somebody is trying to sell me and everyone else a bill of goods, I should have the right to oppose them by any legitimate means necessary. And that includes calling McDonald's or anyone else onto the carpet if my allegations about them are demonstrably accurate and true. Of course I also have the right to lie and to mislead people; but if I do so, I risk being exposed as a liar and a cheat: something I'd really like to avoid if I can!
Last edited by TRC on 01 Mar 2007 - 05:13
Now theres an idea,still they would have to do home delivery 1st
There is an interesting video on the frontpage of CNN in which a dietitian compares a Ruby Tuesday burger's calorie count to the equivalent of five big macs; four pizza hut personal pizzas to some kind of pizza appetizer, and TWO steak + baked potato plates AND two side salads to ONE order of some kinda cheesy pasta crap dish.
Interesting... something I'd always suspected, it was interesting to see it 'for reals'.
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