(Reuters) – Videogames maker Electronic Artsknows that in the Vatican there are more than just a few soccer fans thanks to customer feedback for its flagship sports title FIFA Soccer mined from connected gamers all over the world.

Game developers such as EA, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft and Sony are sitting on a treasure trove of client data that enables them to reach the right target group at the right time, yet every year in August they still flock to the Gamescom in Cologne to meet gamers in person.

Spanning an area the size of some 20 soccer pitches, Europe’s largest videogames trade fair opened its doors on Thursday. It has been growing steadily every year and the 2013 convention with 340,000 visitors not just surpassed its predecessors but far exceeded the expected 275,000.

“The brilliant part about this show is, it is the equivalent of real live Twitter,” said David Rutter, executive producer of EA’s FIFA soccer videogame.

“We have a coding room here in the venue. Fans who like our gamescome in and play. We ask what they like, what they don’t and we instantly can make the changes.”

Adding to Gamescom’s appeal this year was that visitors, willing to queue for half an hour or more, could try out two brand new consoles that will only be available from November – Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4.

The Cologne show is the first opportunity for gamers to actually play the games after they were unveiled two months ago at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles.

“We are experiencing a banner year for console gaming, the kind that we’ve not had for a while,” said Steve Bailey, games analyst at research firm IHS.

“This is when the value of E3 and Gamescom is at its peak, as a loudhailer platform not just for the dissemination of information, but of projecting a sense of eventfulness.”

The convention doesn’t just serve as a promotional stage to showcase new games to consumers but also attracts managers from major manufacturers looking to do business. Product placement in videogames is a billion dollar market – one that carmakers for example can’t afford to miss out on.

“We have a full schedule of appointments in Cologne, meeting both partners with whom we already are in close collaboration as well as new game developers interested in a creative exchange of ideas,” said Claudia Mueller, head of Entertainment Marketing at BMW, whose Z4 coupe features prominently in the online racing game “Auto Club Revolution”.

Located at the center of Europe along the continent’s main trade routes, Germany has a long history of trade shows including the Book Fair and IAA autoshow in Frankfurt as well as the IFA in Berlin, Europe’s biggest consumer electronics show.

Germany hosted 649 conventions in 2012, ranking it second to the United States, according to data from ICCA, a global association for the trade fair industry.

Business tourism in Germany generated 57.2 billion euros ($76.7 billion) in 2012, figures from the national tourist board DTZ show. In that year 2.6 million trips from European countries were made to shows and exhibitions in Germany, a 9.2 percent increase from the previous year.

MEET AND TWEAK

Gartner technology analyst Brian Blau said Gamescom had been able to ward off a growing threat from tech companies like Apple, Google and SAP, who stage their own trade shows to ensure their message is not diluted by media coverage of their biggest competitors.

“These brands get 100 percent of your attention during these days. At a convention you have to share the stage with lots and lots of other brands,” Blau said.

“But what impressed me about Gamescom was the sheer size of the whole thing – it’s just a gigantic place – and the magnitude by which the games companies put on their shows,” he explained.

Publishers also use the spectacle surrounding Gamescom to beef up their social media presence with fresh content for their fan base. EA Sports has over 20 million followers of its FIFA Facebook page.

“With these events we generate a lot of traffic on our social networks,” EA’s Rutter said.

“We have a tremendous fan base. The people are hungry for content,” Activision Blizzard Publishing Chief Executive Eric Hirshberg said.

But nothing beats the personal contact with the customer.

“In the midst of the development process, when we have our noses pressed against the screens looking at the pixels, it is good to take a step back,” Hirshberg added.

“It is great walk around in the booth, watch real-live gamers play your stuff what is still in development and you can still make tweaks.”

To keep gamers interested the Cologne fair is looking at opportunities to include other media such as the movie industry and television, said the Gerald Boese, chief executive of Koelnmesse, the Cologne trade fair operator.

“There are so many cross-overs between the gaming sector, movies and television, that it would justify those sectors being present here.”

(Editing by David Evans)

(Reuters) – Investors reacted favorably on Monday to Amgen Inc’s $10.4 billion purchase of Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc, which gives the world’s largest biotech company full rights to a blood cancer drug with multibillion-dollar sales potential.

Amgen shares rose 9 percent in midday trade on news of the acquisition, the biggest biotech deal since Gilead Sciences Inc’s $11 billion purchase of Pharmasset in 2012.

The main prize in the acquisition is Onyx’s blood cancer drug Kyprolis.

Piper Jaffray analyst Ian Somaiya upgraded Amgen shares to “overweight” from “neutral” and raised his price target on the stock to $140 from $120, saying Kyprolis could generate sales of more than $3 billion by 2025.

Brean Capital analyst Gene Mack said Kyprolis and Oprozomib, another blood cancer drug in development at Onyx, could produce combined sales of more than $4 billion.

Kyprolis is used to treat multiple myeloma, the second most commonly diagnosed blood cancer. The disease attacks antibody-producing plasma cells, which are derived from a type of white blood cell. More than 20,000 Americans are expected to be diagnosed with multiple myeloma this year, according to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Kyprolis competes with the Celgene Corp drug Revlimid. Celgene also has a new myeloma treatment, Pomalyst.

“Given our view of the overall myeloma market and the growth we see over the next 3-5 years, we are not surprised by the interest in Onyx since it is our view that both Onyx and Celgene will be the primary beneficiaries of that growth,” Mack said in a note to clients.

Kyprolis has been on the U.S. market for about a year and its sales have been climbing steadily, reaching $61 million in the second quarter. Onyx previously said plans were in place for a Kyprolis launch in Europe in the second half of 2014.

Onyx also sells Nexavar, a treatment for liver and kidney cancer.

Amgen has been looking for new ways to boost its product pipeline as sales of its flagship anemia drugs Aranesp and Epogen have been in decline for years because of usage restrictions and safety concerns.

On a conference call with analysts on Monday, Amgen executives said they plan to file the tender offer for Onyx this week, with the deal expected to close as early as the week of September 30.

Amgen Chief Executive Officer Bob Bradway, who took the helm of the Thousand Oaks, California-based company just over a year ago, has been able to keep investors happy with dividend increases and share repurchases. On the conference call, he said Amgen remained committed to raising its dividend over time after it completes the Onyx acquisition. He also said investors should not expect any significant share repurchases in 2014 or 2015.

In the acquisition, announced on Sunday, Amgen will pay $125 a share for Onyx, a 4.2 percent increase from the $120 a share it offered in June.

Shares of Amgen rose 9 percent to $115.05 in midday trading, while Onyx shares climbed 5.7 percent to $123.65.

(Reporting by Susan Kelly in Chicago; Editing by John Wallace)

(Reuters) – Satellite communications providerGlobecomm Systems Inc agreed to be taken private by investment firm Wasserstein & Co for about $340 million.

Wasserstein’s offer of $14.15 per share in cash represents a 1.73 percent discount to Globecomm’s closing price on Friday.

Globecomm shares fell 3 percent to $13.95 on the Nasdaq on Monday morning, trading well below the offer price. The stock had risen 24 percent to Friday since the company said in January that it was exploring strategic alternatives.

The transaction is expected to be financed through cash provided by Wasserstein affiliates and other co-investors, and debt financing, Globecomm said in a statement.

Wasserstein & Co, founded by the late Bruce Wasserstein in 2001, has made deals worth $3 billion. It manages the New York magazine, which is solely owned by the Wasserstein family.

The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.

Needham & Co was the financial adviser to Globecomm for the deal, while Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP was the legal counsel.

Jones Day is the legal adviser to Wasserstein, and U.S. Space LLC advised the investment firm.

(Reporting by Neha Alawadhi in Bangalore; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

(Reuters) – Telefonica has raised its bid for KPN’s German arm by 6 percent to 8.55 billion euros ($11.5 billion), winning over top KPN investorAmerica Movil and setting the stage for consolidation in Europe’s largest mobile market.

Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim’s America Movil, which owns almost 30 percent of KPN, said it backed Telefonica’s new offer for KPN’s E-Plus unit. Shares of America Movil rose 1 percent in morning trade.

Earlier this month, America Movil launched a bid for the shares of KPN it did not already own, a challenge to the Spanish telecoms group’s original deal to buy the E-Plus unit.

America Movil said on Monday it would press ahead with its plan to buy the rest of the Dutch firm. But its bid faces challenges from antitrust regulators, unions and a foundation with power to block a takeover of KPN.

Analysts also said some KPN shareholders, including hedge funds who have bought shares recently, could pressure America Movil to raise its offer.

The agreement moves Telefonica closer to its goal of stepping up its challenge in Germany to market leaders Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone.

It also offers a better deal for America Movil, Telefonica’s arch-rival in Latin America which on paper has racked up huge losses on its European investments since buying minority stakes in KPN and Telekom Austria.

The new offer hands KPN 5 billion euros in cash and also increases its stake in the future combined German business to 20.5 percent from 17.6 percent under the terms of the previous offer.

Investors are cautious about America Movil’s European expansion efforts. Its shares remain down more than 20 percent since it announced it would offer 7.2 billion euros for KPN.

Stefan Astheimer, vice president of strategy at investment manager Howe & Rusling in Rochester, New York, said Monday’s news was mixed for the Mexican company.

“On the one hand, they are losing the opportunity to gain direct entry to the German market which was an important part of their strategy,” said Astheimer, whose firm has a small equity and debt position in America Movil.

“On the other hand, the deal will inject cash into KPN and allow America Movil to focus on the Dutch and Belgian markets, while giving them a larger stake in Telefonica Germany, which should appreciate in value,” he added.

“I think it was prudent of America Movil to allow Telefonica to acquire E-Plus rather than getting bogged down in a potentially expensive or ugly conflict which would not reflect well on their efforts to allay the concerns of the KPN Foundation and others,” Astheimer added.

BPI analyst Pedro Oliveira said the deal showed Carlos Slim and Telefonica boss Cesar Alierta could overcome their differences. “Their business sense is becoming stronger than the rivalry between Telefonica and America Movil,” he said.

Telefonica still needs support from antitrust regulators for a deal that will reduce the number of players from four to three in Germany, a market with 112 million subscribers.

Many European telecoms firms are looking to consolidate to cope with saturated markets, recession-hit consumers, tough regulation and expensive network upgrades.

However, regulators are wary that reduced competition could lead to higher prices for consumers and mobile profit margins in Germany are already much higher than in Britain and France.

“Politicians seem to be more favorable to protecting telecoms companies … but this is an operation that will have a lot of scrutiny from the regulators,” BPI’s Oliveira said.

DUTCH CHARM OFFENSIVE

An independent foundation with power to block a takeover of KPN has expressed concern about America Movil’s bid to pay 2.4 euros for each share it does not own.

“There will be a tussle for control of KPN – the question is will shareholders allow America Movil to take control of KPN via the tender offer at such a low price?” said Bernstein Research analyst Robin Bienenstock.

America Movil executives will meet the Dutch Minister for Economic Affairs, along with KPN union representatives on Wednesday to discuss its plans for the Dutch telecoms group, sources told Reuters.

“The Minister wants to be informed given the importance of KPN for the Dutch economy,” said one of the sources.

KPN’s largest union Abvakabo FNV also has concerns.

“What are you investing in the cooperation with KPN and what will that mean for jobs in the Netherlands? That’s what I want to get an answer to,” said a union spokesman.

America Movil bought into KPN in June 2012 at roughly 8 euros per share. It paid a much lower price in February to raise its stake.

KPN’s shares closed up 3 percent at 2.33 euros, while Telefonica’s rose slightly to 10.78 euros, with shares in its German unit up 2.88 percent at 5.22 euros.

TACTICS

Telefonica has shed 10 billion euros of debt since June 2012 and plans more asset disposals, so it can afford the deal.

“The increased amount is not big enough to put pressure on the rating,” said Carlos Winzer, analyst at Moody’s, which rates Telefonica at Baa2, two notches above junk territory.

Under the revised terms, Telefonica will sign an option to buy back 2.9 percent of its German subsidiary after a year at a price of 510 million euros. The Spanish group sees the German deal generating up to 5.5 billion euros in cost savings.

Last month, experts told Reuters that Telefonica was likely to try to win over antitrust regulators by offering to give up some spectrum and by giving greater access to its networks to new “virtual” operators.

To make its bid more attractive in the Netherlands, America Movil said on Monday it would maintain KPN’s headquarters in that country and keep its stock market listing in Amsterdam, as well as its commercial brands.

Walter Samuels, a spokesman for the KPN Foundation, declined to comment on Monday’s announcements, other than saying: “We’re still following developments.”

($1 = 0.7461 euros)

(Additional reporting by Julien Toyer in Madrid, Elinor Comlay in Mexico City and Leila Abboud in Paris; Writing by Leila Abboud; Editing by Louise Heavens, Mark Potter, Simon Gardner, Andrew Hay and David Gregorio)

The Moto X lowers the emphasis on manual control in favor of always-on sensors built to respond to speech, gestures, and context.

ogle-owned Motorola unveiled the Moto X, its new flagship smartphone, in New York City today. The Moto X deëmphasizes manual control, hardware buttons, and the touch screen in favor of always-on sensors built to respond to speech, gestures, and context. And customers will be able to customize many features of the device when they order it.

The phone’s “touchless control” interface is its biggest innovation. Without switching on the device, simply saying “Okay Google Now” followed by a command can make a phone place a call, get directions, perform a Google search, or more. The phone’s accelerometer can also tell whether you’re in a moving car and tailor its commands and notifications accordingly.

Since it could be a huge drain on battery life to have sensitive sensors running around the clock, Motorola added two additional tiny processors to the Snapdragon S4 Pro system-on-a-chip. One is for natural language processing, and the other is for “contextual computing” (in other words, managing all the phone’s other sensors). Both processors are built for extremely low-power use. Motorola designed the processors themselves; they are not built on the ARM architecture, and the company will not disclose who’s fabricating them. But it’s these chips that make all of the new button-free interfaces possible, while still allowing up to 24 hours of mixed usage and 13 hours of talk time.

The new chips also make other “contextual computing” possible without requiring the user to touch a button or screen. Turn the phone face up, and it displays the time and notifications. No buttons pressed, no power-draining backlight turned on: the LED display only lights up the pixels needed to show the time. Motorola calls this an “active display.” If you hold the phone up and twist your wrist, this activates the phone’s camera, reducing the time between pocket and portrait to two seconds. The Moto X comes with a 10-megapixel camera and 50 gigabytes of Google Drive storage, free for two years.

Observers have been waiting for the phone for two years, since Google announced it was buying Motorola Mobility. Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside calls the Moto X “the first phone designed from scratch” post-acquisition. On quarterly earnings calls, Google CEO Larry Page has promised revolutionary new devices that would solve the problems of durability and battery life that still plague smartphones once Motorola’s existing product pipeline cleared. Since then, Motorola’s “X Phone” has been rumored, teased, leaked, and marketed for months.

As expected, the Moto X has a 4.7-inch Gorilla Glass screen that runs nearly edge-to-edge across the phone’s face, and a plump, rounded back that accommodates its custom-shaped battery and fits in the hand more like a mouse than the flat slate popular in today’s smartphones.

Motorola is touting the phone’s customizable colors and features, and the fact that it will be available on every major carrier in the U.S. and many more worldwide by late August or early September. The phone is also being assembled in Fort Worth, Texas, which makes it possible for U.S. customers to get a customized device in four days.

At Thursday’s event, Motorola’s senior vice president Rick Osterloh presented this phone as the culmination of Motorola’s 40 years of work on mobile communications. Citing smartphone makers’ “lack of innovation” and “lack of imagination,” Osterloh said that the team assigned to develop the Moto X discovered that “smart phones weren’t very smart”—a direct echo of what Steve Jobs said before presenting the first iPhone.

In fact, relatively few features of the Moto X haven’t already been incorporated in Motorola’s Droid line of smartphones for Verizon, which deflates their impact. And because of the X’s long gestation, many of the wilder rumors about the phone turned out to be hot air. But it is still a milestone device and, if it’s successful, it could change the smartphone industry’s status quo.

Customization could be a big selling point of the Moto X in the United States. “Cars let you customize the interior or exterior,” said Osterloh, “but with phones, which are probably our most personal technology or object, you get to choose between black, white, and maybe silver.” The Moto X comes in 18 back and seven accent colors, as well as a white or black front.

Initially, however, this level of customization is only for customers in the U.S. on AT&T’s network. Most of the world gets to choose between textured white or textured black. Motorola says other carriers will be added to the Moto Maker customization program later in the year.

It’ll be possible to tailor a device at the AT&T store or online at motomaker.com. Most of the backs are either a smooth or textured polycarbonate, but Motorola is also experimenting with wooden backs. Although this won’t be available at launch, Motorola showed off finishes in bamboo, teak, ebony, and rosewood at the New York event.

Because the devices are assembled in the U.S., Motorola can configure and ship them in any customization within four days. If you’re unhappy with your custom phone, within 14 days you can ask for a return, and Motorola will ship you a new device with a prepaid FedEx box to return the old one.

“Every selection on the Moto Maker website checks the part’s availability in real-time,” said John Renaldi, the director of Moto Maker. “Every one of our manufacturing lines can immediately switch to become a customized line,” depending on the distribution of orders.

Motorola’s goal, said Renaldi, was to export this on-the-fly customization ability to its factories all over the world. For now, Fort Worth’s proximity to Motorola’s design centers in Chicago and California make it Moto’s perfect pilot factory.

Forrester analyst Charles Golvin said that Motorola’s emphasis on customization speaks to the saturation of the current smartphone market, and was surprised that Motorola priced the Moto X at $199 on a two-year contract, given its goal of making “a phone for everybody” and the difficulty of competing with the iPhone and other top smartphones at that price.

The most lasting impact of the Moto X will be beneath the surface. Local, just-in-time assembly may shift how and where many electronics are manufactured and make customization more common. Phone makers are also looking to larger possibilities for speech, proximity, and motion sensing, and beefing up their processor designs accordingly. Whether the Moto X is Motorola’s iPhone moment or not, it shows where mobile computing is headed.

By  Jennifer Booton

Imagine Watson with reason and better communication skills.

The Watson supercomputer may be able to beat reigning Jeopardy champions, but scientists at IBM (IBM) are developing new, super-smart computer chips designed from the human brain — and that might ultimately prove much more impressive.

These new silicon “neurosynaptic chips,” which will be fed using about the same amount of energy it takes to power a light bulb, will fuel a software ecosystem that researchers hope will one day enable a new generation of apps that mimic the human brain’s abilities of sensory perception, action and cognition.

It’s akin to giving sensors like microphones and speakers brains of their own, allowing them to consume data to be processed through trillions of synapses and neurons in a way that allows them to draw intelligent conclusions.

IBM’s ultimate goal is to build a chip ecosystem with ten billion neurons and a hundred trillion synapses, while consuming just a kilowatt of power and occupying less than a two-liter soda bottle.

“We are fundamentally expanding the boundary of what computers can do,” said Dharmendra Modha, principal investigator of IBM’s SyNAPSE cognitive computing project. “This could have far reaching impacts on technology, business, government and society.”

The researchers envision a wave of new, innovative “smart” products derived from these chips that would alter the way humans live in virtually all walks of life, including commerce, logistics, location, society, even the environment.

“Modern computing systems were designed decades ago for sequential processing according to a pre-defined program,” IBM said in a release. “In contrast, the brain—which operates comparatively slowly and at low precision—excels at tasks such as recognizing, interpreting, and acting upon patterns.”

These chips would give way to a whole new “cognitive-type of processing,” said Bill Risk, who works on the IBM Research SyNAPSE Project, marking one of the most dramatic changes to computing since the traditional von Neumann architecture comprised of zeros and ones was adopted in the mid-1940s.

“These operations result in actions rather than just stored information, and that’s a whole different world,” said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, who has written about the research. “It really allows for a human-like assessment of problems.”

It is quite a complex system, and it is still in early stages of development. But IBM researchers have rapidly completed the first three phases of what will likely by a multi-stage project, collaborating with a number of academic partners and collecting some $53 million in funding. They are hopeful the pace of advancement will continue.

Modha cautioned, however, this new type of computing wouldn’t serve as a replacement for today’s computers but a complementary sibling, with traditional analog architecture serving as the left brain with its speed and analytic ability, and the next era of computing acting as the right cortex, operating much more slowly but more cognitively.

“Together, they help to complete the computing technology we have,” Modha said.

Providing a real-life example of how their partnership might one-day work, Kay imagined a medical professional giving triage to a patient.

Digital computers would provide basic functions such as the patient’s vitals, while the cognitive computer would cross reference data collected at the scene in real-time with stored information on the digital computer to assess the situation and provide relevant treatment recommendations.

“It could be a drug overdose or an arterial blockage, a human might not know which is which [from the naked eye],” explains Kay. “But a [cognitive] computer could read the symptoms, reference literature, then vote using a confidence level that can kind of infer which one is more likely the case.”

Endless Possibilities Seen

The IBM researchers have put together building blocks of data to make cognitive applications easier to build and to create an ecosystem for developers. The data come in the form of “corelets” that each serve a particular function, such as the ability to perceive sound or colors.

So far they have developed 150 corelets with the intention to eventually allow third parties to go through rigorous testing to submit more. Eventually, corelets could be used to build “real-life cognitive systems,” researchers hope.

To help get the ball rolling, the researchers envisioned a slew of product ideas that would make perfect use of these genius chips in real-world functions.

Here are just a few:

-An autonomous robot dubbed “Tumbleweed” could be deployed for search and rescue missions in emergency situations. Researchers picture the sphere-shaped device, outfitted with “multi-modal sensing” via 32 mini cameras and speakers, surveying a disaster and identifying people in need. It might be able to communicate with them, letting them know help is on its way or directing them to safety.

-For personal use, low-power, light-weight glasses could be designed for the near blind. Using these chips, which would recognize and analyze objects through cameras, they’d be able to plot a route through a crowded room with obstacles, directing the visually-impaired through speakers.

-Putting these chips to use in a business function, the researchers foresee a product they’ve dubbed the “conversation flower” that could process audio and video feeds on conference calls to identify specific people by their voice and appearance while automatically transcribing the conversation.

-Giving a glimpse into its potential use in the medical world, a thermometer could be developed that could not only measure temperature, but could also be outfitted with a camera that would be able to detect smell and recognize certain bacterial presence based on their unique odor, giving an alert if medical attention is needed.

-In an environmental function, researchers could see this technology being outfitted on sensor buoys, monitoring shipping lanes for safety and environmental protection.

Given the fluid motion of the project, it’s unclear how long it will take for the first generation of cognitive computers to begin applying themselves in real-world applications, but Modha and his team are optimistic they will be crafted sooner than later.

“We need cognitive systems that understand the environment, can deal with ambiguity and can act in a real-time, real-life context,” Modha said. “We want to create a brain in a box.”

By Jennifer Booton

Samsung is expected to unveil its Galaxy Gear smartwatch powered by Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system on Sept. 4 just ahead of the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The watch, which would be one of the first wearable technologies unveiled, is expected to allow users to make calls, access emails and surf the web.

The Galaxy Gear won’t use flexible display technology, according to one of Bloomberg’s anonymous sources, but the company is working on developing a “bendable screen.”

The device will likely be unveiled at the same time as Samsung’s next-generation tablet-phone hybrid the Galaxy Note 3.

Samsung told FOX Business it doesn’t comment on “rumors or speculation.”

Device makers, including Apple (AAPL), are racing to have the first wristwatch-like device that many believe to be one of the first major steps into a new generation of wearable mobile devices.

Google Glass is also a type of wearable technology.

By Julianne Pepitone

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Add Facebook to the large list of companies hoping to crack the mobile payments nut.

Facebook said Thursday that it will launch an experimental program that allows users to store their credit card information on the site. The social network will then automatically fill in relevant billing information when users buy products on partners’ mobile apps.

Facebook (FB) described the experiment as “a very small test” with one or two initial merchant partners. Tech blog AllThingsD was the first to report on the program.

For now, Facebook made clear that its aspirations are limited to providing one-click access for checkout. It won’t actually process payments like eBay’s (EBAY, Fortune 500) PayPal or Google Checkout.

Still, by wading into mobile payments, Facebook is tackling a hot but somewhat inscrutable space. Everyone seems to agree that customers don’t want to type out a bunch of billing information on teeny phone screens, but creating a frictionless alternative has remained elusive.

“It’s a very competitive space,” said Evercore Partners analyst Ken Sena. “I think there is the potential to get excited about it too early, but we’re still very much in the experimental phase.”

Those experimenters include PayPal, Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500), Google, Square and others — and even the biggest of those companies have had trouble gaining mainstream interest.

Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) launched its Wallet service in 2011, and it hasn’t grown much since. Amazon Payments, a system similar to Facebook’s experiment, is popular with small businesses and the crowdfunding site Kickstarter, but it doesn’t necessarily target mobile payments or consumers specifically. Square is the most successful of many startups in the field, dabbling in everything from payments processing to special cash registers — but Square has failed to take off broadly with consumers.

A huge amount of online retail is still routed through Amazon, and PayPal continues to dominate processing for non-Amazon purchases. The mobile payments revolution has yet to come.

Facebook is starting out slow, but it has a massive user base of more than a billion — and a ton of data about them. Although Facebook didn’t preview whether it has any future plans to expand its mobile payments offering, the opportunity could be big.

By Julianne Peptone

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Attention cable and satellite subscribers: A new option for your TV service could be coming soon.

Sony has reportedly struck a preliminary deal to carry Viacom (VIA) content on its upcoming pay-TV offering — and the twist is that the shows would air at the same time that traditional cable or satellite customers can view them.

If the tentative deal, reported by the Wall Street Journal, goes through, it would help Sony (SNE)stand out from other companies that are trying to launch an Internet-based TV subscription services, such as Intel (INTC, Fortune 500). Apple has also been long rumored to be releasing its own “iTV” television, but its negotiations with cable providers have reportedly stalled. Becoming a cable competitor, as Sony appears to be doing, could be a path forward for Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500).

But a content coup for Sony doesn’t necessarily mean consumers will win out.

Unless Sony is able to upend the cable industry completely (good luck with that), you still won’t be able to start picking and choosing channels a la carte rather than paying for a raft of unwatched networks. Your cable bills won’t go down.

Instead, Sony and other Internet-based pay-TV services will probably look a lot like … regular pay-TV.

Sony whose service would stream through its smart TVs and PlayStation gaming consoles, would simply become another alternative to Comcast, Dish Network and DirecTV. That’s because the TV business is deeply entrenched. Networks and cable providers are dependent on each other to survive, and they have no financial incentive to stop making a ton of money.

While networks like Viacom have proven willing to play ball with new entrants on the pay-TV scene, they have no motivation to offer Sony anything other than what they give regular cable providers.

Viacom offering Sony or Intel an un-bundled set of channels, for example, would alienate their bigger partners in the cable industry. Plus, it would be costly: a recent report from Needham Insights showed switching to an a la carte model would cut cable and network revenue in half, to about $70 billion.

And so Sony is highly unlikely to cut special or cheap deals that will make a serious difference for TV customers. While more choice is always a good thing for consumers, it’s likely this choice will look very similar to what’s already out there. 

By Jennifer Booton

Space X and Tesla (TSLA) founder Elon Musk seems pretty optimistic a train will one day be able to travel at mach speeds for short distances, but what about those longer trips that take many hours?

For New Yorkers who want to take the quick 3,000-mile trip to Los Angeles or the 7,000-mile journey to Tokyo, a solution faster than the speed of sound might soon be on the horizon.

Quiet supersonic jets, perhaps ones Musk builds himself one day, have attracted fresh attention and investment over the last few years from some major players, including NASA, Gulfstream, Boeing (BA) and Lockheed Martin (LMT).

“A quiet supersonic plane immediately solves every long distance city pair without the need for a vast new worldwide infrastructure,” says Musk, who’s responsible for Tesla electric cars and Dragon X, the first commercial spacecraft to visit the International Space Station.

While Musk’s Hyperloop vacuum-train idea revealed earlier this week might solve travel problems between high-traffic cities located less than 900 miles apart, the entrepreneur says supersonic air travel will be “much faster and cheaper” for longer distances, knocking several hours from thousand-mile trips and making long-haul business travel more feasible than ever before.

No commercial supersonic flight has operated since the Concorde’s final run in 2003 after 27 years of transporting people across the ocean from London’s Heathrow and Paris’s Charles De Gaulle to New York’s JFK in half the time it takes today.

But NASA is focused more than ever on reducing the sonic boom – one of the main impediments of supersonic over-land air travel because of the nuisance it poses to people on the ground – while others are working on making supersonic jets more efficient and less dependent on fuel.

“I think one day we will see more supersonic aircraft,” says Dimitri Papamoschou, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California, Irvine.

Money Problems

Of course, overcoming the looming hurdles of next-generation supersonic transport requires billions of dollars, and a lack of funds has killed a number of these projects over the last 40 years.

A “cheap supersonic transport” between L.A. and N.Y. may not be available until “very far in the future,” or within 25-50 years, estimates Papamoschou, who has studied the sound produced by propulsion engines.

If money weren’t a problem, prototypes would begin popping up within the decade for larger supersonic transports, says Dr. Gecheng Zha, the director of the Aerodynamics and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Lab at the University of Miami.

Actual operation of a supersonic passenger jet big enough to seat as many as Boeing’s carbon composite 787 Dreamliner would take at least another decade beyond that, says Zha, whose “Supersonic Bidirectional Flying Wing” idea was awarded a $100,000 grant in 2012 from NASA.

“We can build one now but who is going to buy it?” asks Papamoschou. “The economics right now just don’t work out.”

The World’s Fastest Business Trip

But there are companies, including Gulfstream, Aerion and Supersonic Aerospace International, as well as NASA engineers and scientists that are working on concepts for much smaller supersonic business jets; and that could be available much sooner.

Aerion,  which has been partnering with NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center for the last decade, defines its next-generation business jet with Mach 1.6 capabilities as an “evolutionary solution with revolutionary results.”

The “virtual visualization” of Aerion’s supersonic business jet – which it says would feature demonstrated wing technology and proven Pratt & Whitney propulsion systems — is based on “concrete data collected over years of testing and revision of the model.” The manufacturer hopes its development will influence “all general aviation flight to come – supersonic and subsonic.”

The 8-12-passenger Aerion SBJ is expected to be brought to the market through a joint venture with an “established aircraft manufacturer” by the end of the decade, Aerion says.

While it didn’t say which jet maker would be chosen — both Boeing and Airbus have done work on supersonic jets in the past — Boeing over the last two years has built design studies of a concept it has dubbed Icon II that it says can carry 120 passengers at up to Mach 1.8 speeds (more than 1,000 miles per hour) for 5,000 nautical miles.

Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding this article, but in an earlier study, the Chicago-based jet maker acknowledged that “advanced technologies can reduce fuel burn enough that a supersonic aircraft could be viable economically and environmentally, in multiple markets.”

Meanwhile, Supersonic Aerospace International’s 20-passenger QSST-X “virtually boomless” supersonic aircraft designed by Lockheed Martin is expected to have a range of more than 5,000 miles at Mach 1.6. The company touts both its speed and quietness, claiming it can catapult passengers from New York to Moscow in 4.5 hours, about half the time it takes today.

Of course, corporate and wealthy customers looking to travel at supersonic speeds will have to pay a pretty penny. Papamoschou sees supersonic transport selling at a premium to subsonic flights even if the costs to operate them come down as technologies improve.

“For them, time is money and they’re probably willing to pay a premium,” he said. “But for ordinary passengers, it will take quite a bit of time until we see something that’s considerably faster than today’s airplanes.”

Aerion says it has received letters of intent for roughly 50 aircraft from a mix of individuals and corporations around the world. The orders remained “largely intact through the recession,” which Aerion says reinforces “the market demand.”