Retail POS Terminals Market to Hit $45bn by 2024: Global Market Insights Inc.

The report "Retail POS Terminals Market Size By Product (Mobile, Fixed), By Services (Professional services, Support & Maintenance, Training), By Component (Software, Hardware), By Application (Department Store, Supermarket/Hypermarket, Warehouse, Convenience, Discount Store, Specialty Store, Drugstore, Category Store), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico), Application Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2016 - 2024", by Global Market Insights, Inc. says Retail POS Terminals Market size is set to surpass USD 45 billion by 2024

Rising popularity of non-cash transactions due to the digitization of payments, technological innovation, and proliferation of immediate payments will fuel global retail POS terminals market growth. Cash handling and cost elimination further contributes towards the global demand. Increasing investment from the technology providers to offer advantages such as digital mishap control, reduced payment processing time, and low fee charges will drive Retail point of sale terminals market size. 

Mobile retail POS terminals market is anticipated to witness substantial growth at over 18% CAGR from 2016 to 2024. Advancements in wireless technology and emergence of mobile wallets are responsible for industry growth forecasts. Moreover, the advantages such as low upfront cost, easy usage, positive return on investment, and portability, have collectively spurred mobile POS terminals market consumption.

Manufacturers in the retail POS terminals market facilitate customized services including offers & loyalty initiatives, coupons (not to be confused with online ones such as Makemytrip coupons), and suggestions, resulting in enhanced customer satisfaction. Emergence of advanced payment technologies such as NFC and Europay, Master Card and Visa (EMV) coupled with the increasing adoption of payment options such as debit and credit cards have played their role in demand development. Technology advancements have improved cost effectiveness and features such as Quick Payment Service (QPS), automated download, and back-lighted keyboards leading to the high adoption rate.

Supermarkets/hypermarkets will witness increase adoption in the coming years owing to the maximum RoI and increasing focus on enhanced customer experience. Ability to reduce manual error and regular inventory track is enhancing the usage resulting in retail POS terminals market growth.  Data security and costly software upgrades are challenges for companies operating in the industry. If we talk about effect on ecommerce market, travel domain is still unaffected with this growth and you various discounts for Goibibo offers and other such portals continue to be main reason for people flocking to book from online portals, seems I deviated from the main issue here so let's get back to the POS adoption.

Support & maintenance services accounted for over 20% of the 2015 retail POS terminals market share, due to the increase in demand for optimization of the IT software and hardware infrastructure of an organization in regions such as North America and Europe. Training services will be driven by the increasing demand across developing countries for proper guidance and familiarity with the technology.

Growing adoption of cloud computing technology and mobile devices will continue strengthening the demand for software. Increasing requirement of data security across the retail industry will further boost the demand for advanced software solutions.

India retail POS terminals market share is expected to witness considerable demand gains due to government efforts and stringent rules & regulations to promote digital payments in the country. In addition, demonetization issues and demand for mobile payments are expected to surge the adoption across the region.

Players operating in the industry include PAX, Ingenico, NEC, VeriFone, Cisco, MICROS, HP, Samsung, and Panasonic. Technological advancements and innovation are the key strategies to maximize share and to compete in the highly competitive retail POS terminals market.

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Master of Project Academy Celebrates 50K Users with 50% off Online Certification and Training Courses

Master of Project Academy, provider of flexible online certification courses for the busy IT and business professionals, recently surpassed 50,000 successful sign ups in their wide range of career development courses. In celebration of the work and success of the many professionals who have accelerated their careers through Master of Project Academy courses, the company is offering lifetime and monthly course subscriptions for 50% off by using coupon code 50K50OFF. Affordable certification courses are available worldwide for any professional seeking professional development and career advancement.  

Courses are offered to students and professionals worldwide who seek to expand their knowledge base or need help preparing for a variety of professional certification exams. Courses are self-paced and conducted entirely online, with access to 24 hour support. Designed and led by seasoned industry professionals with a deep well of academic and field knowledge, Master of Project Academy courses guide professionals easily and effectively through certification exams.

"We are the most affordable and ultimate online training platform for the IT and business professionals," said Resit Gulec, Founder and CEO of Master of Project Academy. "Wherever you are in the world, wherever you are in your career, if you have an internet connection, we can prepare you for your professional certification exams."

Professionals from worldwide corporations have enrolled in Master of Project Academy's courses, including but not limited to, Ericsson, Moody's, Volvo, KPMG, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Roche.

Flexible, Affordable, Invaluable

Advanced certifications are often critical for IT and business professionals who want to further their career. According to popular employment site Indeed.com, professionals with certification command income 14% higher than their uncertified counterparts. Many organizations seek to get their existing employees certified in their field as well, yet face daunting training costs.

Master of Project Academy offers the best solution, with flexible online courses at a fraction of the cost of other certification training courses. The online platform offers a variety of courses starting at only $9 per month, allowing busy professionals to learn at their own pace and in the comfort of their own home or office. What's more, Master of Project Academy offers a unique lifetime course package to allow professionals to keep their certificate and their industry knowledge up to date with current technology and practices.

Master of Project Academy offers courses for at least 40% less than its competitors, making continuing education and advanced certification accessible to all professionals. At these rates, companies can support the enrichment and advancement of employees and entire departments without impacting the bottom line. Master of Project Academy's online courses lower the operational cost of training and development and introduce the most flexible road to advanced knowledge and certification.

Courses can be taken from anywhere, anytime, with just an Internet connection. Master of Project Academy allows professionals to advance their training at a schedule that fits their busy life. No set dates, no set number of hours. No need to take time off to accommodate a course schedule in a physical classroom. And with 24 hour assistance, professionals have access to help whenever they need it.

Master of Project Academy also offers a 30-day full refund guarantee, allowing professionals to test the course content and instructor style to ensure maximum satisfaction and compatibility.

Professional Development in IT and Business

Since launching its first online training in 2014, Master of Project Academy has offered over 40 certification courses for IT and business professionals, with new courses published monthly. Courses can be purchased individually as a monthly or lifetime access subscription, with bundled packages available for professionals seeking to take multiple courses within their field.

Current course topics include but not limited to:

Project Management

IT Service Management

Quality Management

PMP – Project Management Professional

CAPM – Certified Associate in Project Management

ITIL Foundation

Microsoft Project

Agile Project Management

Scrum Framework Certification Prep

Cisco Certifications (CCNA)

Cyber Security (Ethical Hacking, CISSP)

If you are still wondering what are these courses all about, then you should think of attending full time courses from well known colleges such as IEC Greater Noida to opt for a full time professional course and then above mentioned courses would add weightage to your resume.

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FreeCharge and Indus OS partners to launch Recharge 2.0 ; a payment solution integrated in OS itself

World's first Regional Operation System Indus OS and India's  leading digital payments platform Freecharge unveiled Recharge 2.0 which is unique in itself as it is a digital payment product integrated within the smartphone dialer interface. Recharge 2.0 on the Indus Dialer will enable users to have a seamless and simplified recharge experience powered through FreeCharge.

Indus OS and Freecharge - Recharge 2.0 launch

The Recharge 2.0 will help prepaid users which makes 95% of the India's mobile subscriber base. A majority of prepaid users also use fixed monthly charge for limited amount of data usage, however mostly they don't have clue how their money is spent. Recharge 2.0 aims to bridge this gap and gives features such as comprehensive analysis of usage pattern alongside real-time updates to offer more control in the hands of users. 

The OS-integrated payment innovation on Indus Dialer is seamless and accessible in the most natural interface, the phone dialer - moveing beyond the app and web interfaces as claimed. The new Indus dialer allows users one-touch access on the phone dialer to recharge through FreeCharge. Recharge 2.0 also allows users to set thresholds for low balance alerts. With detailed insights you can get to know talking to whom you spent most of your balance and on what day you spent most. Users can Recharge in just one touch. 

Responding to a question on Security of user's balance as anyone with access to dialer can misuse already configured Freecharge wallet, Mr Govind Rajan, CEO, Freecharge told that they do have more than 500 anomaly checks on Freecharge side which tracks parameters such as user's location, past transactions, recharge amount etc and reject if the transaction parameters doesn't confirm with these checks. However, on OS side there is no such protection which can be deal breaker for many.

Recharge 2.0 will be exclusively accessible to the existing 6 million plus Indus OS user base and new users of Indus OS powered devices. Indus OS is currently the #2 mobile OS in India, with a 7.6% market share. By catering to Indus OS user base via the OS-integrated brands, FreeCharge expects to scale up its recharging transactions and volumes by nearly 20%. FreeCharge currently sees a major chunk of its transaction coming through the recharge's category.

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Pebble signs deal with leading technology distribution chain Ingram Micro

Pebble (not to be confused with Pebble , smartwatch maker), a known name in power banks and other branded mobile accessories has announced a partnership with Ingram Micro, world's largest technology distributor and a leading technology sales, marketing and logistics company. The partnership will give a further boost to Pebble’s existing market presence over 18 states in India. Through the partnership with Ingram Micro as its National Distributor, Pebble has started Pan-India operations on a large scale across various states and is soon to delve into LFRs and Modern Retail.

Pebble Accessories for Mobile

Pebble, one of the fastest growing brands in India, was launched in the year 2013. A leader in organizing and branding the highly cluttered unbranded Mobile Accessory Industry that had no clear quality standards until now, Pebble stays a step ahead by offering a blend of user friendly elegant design and top-notch quality products. Headquartered in Delhi, Pebble is part of a group of companies that has been leading provider of various power back-up devices and other electronic products for the past 16 years. A one-stop shop for any and every electronic and portable mobile accessory, Pebble is the ‘Go-to’ brand offering an array of exciting range of products such as chargers, cables, charging cases, BT speakers, headphones, headsets, earphones, OTG pen drives, fitness bands and VR headsets along with superior quality power banks.

Commenting on the partnership, Komal Agarwal, Director-Marketing, Pebble, said, “We are extremely happy to have partnered with Ingram Micro as our national distributor, the world leader in technology distribution. With this association, we hope to strengthen the relationship with our consumers by making our products widely available throughout the country. As a brand, Pebble’s philosophy has been “Convenience with Quality” which is well reflected in all its products such as Power Banks, USB Cables, Bluetooth Speakers and others. For instance: Pebble power banks are among the most efficient in terms of output and quality, and sleekest in terms of design which make them extremely portable and convenient to use.”

It is the only brand in India to be well placed and established across all possible channels including General Trade (Retail stores), Modern Trade (Retail Chains), Online Portals, In-Flight and Airport Shopping & Corporate Gifting. Pebble products are also available on leading ecommerce portals including Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal.

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ASUS Zenfone 3 Max (ZC553KL) Review: Good Build , Design and Battery Life but high on Price

For long the battery life of Android Smartphones have been the Achilles heel. Though the shift to larger screens, media consumption, internet connectivity made phones really smart but the lack of enough juice left users in dilemma whether to save the power to last for the day or make use of the 'smart' features of the phone. When the race of Quad core/ octa core processors, number of Mega pixels in smartphone was still in market, there were few who took upon to solve the most prominent problem of smartphone usage. Gionee Marathon, ASUS Zenfone Max , Redmi Note 3 are product of such efforts.  We are doing a review of more refined version of one such device from ASUS which is ASUS Zenfone 3 Max. Zenfone 3 Max was launched along with Zenfone 3 series phones and is priced for Rs 17,999/- for 5.5 inch version (the one we are reviewing here). Let's take a look into the phone and see if its worth the price and hype.

Build and Design:

The ASUS Zenfone 3 Max, definitely brings a good change in terms of design language and build quality, In fact we are glad that ASUS has listened to feedback from tech community to change on the design which was not so appealing and had lot of waste space in the devices. The Zenfone 3 over comes all those drawbacks we could point out in Zenfone 2, Zenfone Max and other Zenfone devices. The phone is easy to hold and grip, it looks sturdy thanks to its unibody aluminium chasis.

On the front we have a 5.5 inch full HD display with very thin bezels around, on the top of the display sits proximity sensor, the ear piece and 8 MP front camera, whereas at the bottom of the screen there are three capacitive buttons viz. back, home and multi tasking in same sequence from left to right. The capcitive touch buttons are non-backlit though and it can be difficult to use the phone in dark in initial days of use, until your fingers are trained for the exact position of the buttons. The front is protected by 2.5D contoured glass which makes it look more elegant and premium.

ASUS Zenfone 3 Max comes with a 5.5 inch Full HD display which produces sharp pictures and brightness is good, Auto brightness works well for most of the cases however in direct sunlight we had to manually increase the brightness to make screen readable. Around 73% screen to body ratio makes it easy to use with single hand. We watched few videos on Amazon Prime and Youtube to test the display and we were satisfied with handling of the content by the phone.

The left edge of the phone has a sim tray towards the top which can hold one Micro SIM and another Nano SIM or a micro SD card. On the right side there is a power button just above the middle point and volume rocker is placed one finger distance above the power button. All the buttons are placed ergonomically, the feedback of buttons is good as well. On the top edge of the phone there is a 3.5 mm Audio jack and a secondary mic for noise cancellation. While the bottom edge sports a mic, micro USB slot for charging and data transfer and speaker grill.

Turning the phone backwards you will see a 16 MP rear camera adored by dual tone LED flash and Laser Assist Auto Focus on both sides. Just below the Camera unit, adhering to central line there is rounded square finger print sensor which is easy to reach by the index finger. The finger print sensor is active one which wakes the phone as well so you don't have to press power button to unlock your phone. The sensor works well most of the time and is accurate but its definitely not the fastest one around.

On the bottom there is sticker with IMEI details for the phone below which you can see the ASUS branding.

Features and Specifications:

Zenfone 3 Max(ZC553KL) comes with Octacore Snapdragon 430 chipset which we feel is not the best choice looking at the price and accompanying hardware. The chipset is fine in handling normal day to day tasks but when it comes to some power intensive games the phone shows clear lags.  The phone comes with a 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB storage, single band Wi-Fi b/g/n, FM radio, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, 4G support as well as VoLTE.

On software side the phone comes with Android Marshmallow with ASUS ZenUI 3.0 skin running on top of it. Still the new skin doesn't interfere much with the stock Android and you get lots of option to customize things as per your choice. However, there are still a lot of , really lot of pre-installed apps which unfortunately looks more of bloatware to us. You get few useful apps pre-installed as well such as Instagram, puffin browser, Facebook, NFS: No Limits, SimCity etc. There is a Game Genie widget as well for enhancing the gaming experience which can be activate for your chosen game and then you can close background apps to free some memory, record your game , livestream your game on YouTube or Twich.

At last the reason for the name Max, the battery of the phone has 4100 mAh of juice when fully charged. The battery lasts for more than a day easily for more than average usage for me which includes some 15-20 minutes gaming, few videos on YouTube, some browsing internet and reading Quora Feed. However if I extend the gaming session the battery drop was sharp. So we can comfortably say that with day to day usage one can even get 2 days of power but with some resource intensive tasks the battery starts draining quickly. There is a reverse charging feature too, but we don't feel its practical if you are on the move as you might want to save the fuel for yourself instead of donating it to others, nevertheless the feature is novel in its nature and can come handy in some situations.

Performance:

Despite Mediocre processor, we didn't  faced any major issues in day to day tasks, except sometimes while typing we felt that Keyboard was lagging a word or two. We didn't faced any overheating situation either even when the camera was used for a long time. The call quality is good, sound is crisp and clear on both sides of the call.

We have got 43680 score in Antutu Benchmarking test and Vellamo Metal Score of 1196 which is lower than even ASUS Zenfone 2. As mentioned earlier the video playback was good , at upto 1080p videos the phone handles videos quite well. The audio quality as well is pretty good with or without headsets.

Camera:

The  rear 16 MP camera with f/2.0 aperture produces detailed landscapes and works particularly well in daylight, however in low light the noise becomes dominant in shots taken by the phone. The lowlight mode and Night mode helps to some extent. ASUS Pixelmaster tech has been always good in terms of imaging and Zenfone 3 Max is no exception to that. Below is a slide show of shots taken by Zenfone 3 Max in various modes and conditions. Rest we leave it upto you to decide.

Verdict:

Here comes the tricky part and ASUS hasn't left any stone unturned to confuse us. For the Design, Build, Display, and Battery performance this device will be an easy pick. Even Camera is decent enough for the price range. So if you want to buy yourself a ASUS phone with all these qualities you can go for it, but if you are looking for some serious performance oriented smartphone then Zenfone 3 Max isn't the phone you should look at. Specially with the 17K plus price tag I would expect better performing phone based on the competitive phones present in market. Another deal breaker can be absence of Gorilla Glass protection for many. 

If you can ignore on the performance aspects then the phone packages a lot in itself, at the launch price it may be bit over priced but if the prices are dropped around 2000  less than it would make lot more sense to buy this device.

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