Motorola Shows Off WiMax Chipset For Mobile Devices

The cell phone maker expects to use the technology in its own products, as well as equipment from other mobile manufacturers starting in 2008.

Motorola (NYSE: MOT) on Tuesday showed off its WiMax chipset, which the handset maker plans to include in mobile phones next year.

The chipset, shown at WiMax World in Chicago, is designed to support WiMax wireless wide-area networks, which are under construction in dozens of metropolitan areas across the nation. WiMax is seen as an alternative to Wi-Fi in delivering data and voice services to mobile devices, such as smart phones and handheld computers. WiMax's biggest advantage is a bigger, faster pipe for moving data, and its ability to carry over far greater distances.

Motorola said it plans to start delivering WiMax-enabled handsets to carriers around the world in 2008. One such carrier is Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S). The company's Xohm business unit is building with partner Clearwire a nationwide WiMax network. Sprint has said it expects to have WiMax available in about 30 U.S. metropolitan markets next year.

Motorola says its chipset modem is designed for WiMax 802.16e compliance. The hardware has been tested in Motorola's own infrastructure products, as well as equipment from other mobile manufacturers, according to Motorola.

"With this chipset, Motorola has been able to redefine what is possible for WiMax mobile devices, enabling a wider portfolio of devices, from voice-centric handsets to multimedia terminals," Gary Koerper, VP of platform planning and systems architecture at Motorola, said in a statement.

Motorola is providing WiMax infrastructure technology to 12 commercial systems, and has been involved in more than 40 trials worldwide since late 2006, the company said.

A major challenge to WiMax is likely to come from wireless carriers building out their cellular networks to deliver data faster. Those services, however, have been expensive. WiMax supporters believe the technology can beat rivals in price, as well as speed.

SOURCE.

A Cellphone Without Borders

It’s amazing the way the Internet keeps toppling traditional businesses. Telegrams have gone away. Music CD sales are tanking. Newspapers are hurting.

One especially lucrative business, however, has somehow escaped the Internet’s notice so far: international cellphone calls.

That’s about to change. Early next month, a small company called Cubic Telecom will release what it’s calling the first global mobile phone.

But first, some background. Cellphones from T-Mobile and AT&T rely on the same type of network (called GSM) that most of the rest of the world uses. In theory, then, you can take these phones to other countries and make calls as usual. (Most Verizon and Sprint phones work only in the United States.)

Unfortunately, international roaming runs from $1 to $5 a minute. A 20-minute call home from the Bahamas on a T-Mobile phone will set you back $60. The same call home from Russia on an AT&T cellphone will cost a cool $100.

Sure, you could always rent a phone or use a phone card when you travel — but then nobody knows how to reach you.

It costs a lot to dial overseas from here, too. Verizon charges $1.50 a minute for calls to most countries. AT&T’s rates can be truly Dr. Seussian — like $2.52 to Greece, $2.80 to Iraq and $3.65 to Australia. That’s per minute. Make one 20-minute call to New Zealand, and you owe $75 to AT&T.

Now, most carriers offer special international plans: you pay more a month, you get slightly lower roaming rates. But even they can’t touch the appeal of Cubic’s cellphone. It makes calls to or from any of 214 countries — for 50 to 90 percent off what the big carriers would charge.

On this phone, a 20-minute call from the Bahamas costs $5.80 (that’s 90 percent off T-Mobile’s rate). The Cubic price from Russia is 49 cents a minute (90 percent lower than AT&T).

And there’s no monthly fee and no commitment for any of this. It works like a prepaid phone, where you put some money in your account and use it up as you talk.

At this point, the appropriate world traveler’s response ought to be involuntary drooling, but there’s more to the story. Most of it is more good news, but also more complexity.

For example, consider this: at the MaxRoam.com site from Cubic, you can request local phone numbers in up to 50 cities at no charge. Now you can have a Paris number, a London number and a Mexico City number that your friends overseas can use to call your cellphone.

No longer must you hand out a series of international phone numbers for each trip you make, or expect your colleagues in the United States to pay $50 a pop to reach you.

Cubic points out that this feature alone is a life-changer for people who have moved, for example, to the United States from overseas. Their family back home can keep in touch for the price of a local call.

I signed up for numbers in Paris, London and Barcelona, and then asked friends in those cities to call me. They dialed local numbers, and my phone rang in New York — very slick. Voice quality was typical of Internet calls: perfectly understandable, but slightly muffled, with a quarter-second to one-second voice delay.

Even that’s not the end of this phone’s possibilities. For a flat $42 a month, you can turn on its unlimited Wi-Fi calling option. It lets you receive unlimited unmetered calls to any numbers in the world from Internet hot spots, or make them for a penny a minute. Either way, you have little fear of racking up your bill.

This works on hot spots that require a password, but not ones that require a Web-page login. And in contrast to the new HotSpot@Home phones from T-Mobile, which seamlessly hand off calls between Wi-Fi and the cellular network as you move, the Cubic phone drops the call when you leave the hot spot.

Still, if you make a lot of international calls, this option could save even more money. The voice quality is excellent, although these Wi-Fi calls are sometimes marred by random beeps, clicks or dropped connections.

In some ways, the Cubic phone isn’t just different; it’s actually eccentric. As a phone without a country, it requires a country code and area code for every call, even next door.

The bigger weirdness: when you dial a number and press send, your phone rings a few seconds later. When you answer, you hear a voice saying, “Connecting your call,” and then you hear the other person answer.

Intel Wins Nokia Contract For WiMAX Chips

Espoo, Finland (AHN) - Cell phone giant Nokia Wednesday picked Intel to supply WiMAX chips for a tablet device expected in 2008.

The company said Intel's "Baxter Peak" mobile WiMAX chipset will enable streaming movies or high-quality music.

In early 2008, Sprint is expected to launch its Xohm nationwide WiMAX service.

Nokia's upcoming tablet, similar to its N800 device, may be linked to the launch of Sprint's high-speed wireless network.

SOURCE.

The iPod Touch that killed the Cell Phone

The iPhone is very cool, but it’s not as revolutionary as the iPod Touch. It may lack a cell phone, camera, and even Mail.app, and it’s precisely because it lacks these features, among others, that the Touch represents a leap-forward, not only a glimpse of the future, but also the future manifested, tomorrow today. Because you could buy the iPod Touch and give up your cell phone, if not yet your cell service. And if you’re like me, you may even lose weight in the bargain!

The Touch itself is economically designed, extremely simple, and works well. It’s able to capture and keep a wi-fi signal even better than my MacBookPro, and its screen, when displaying lighter objects, is magnificent. There’s room for improvement in the display of darker objects, such as the shadows and darkness common in Sleeper Cell, the TV series my mom recommended I download to watch after I told her how much I don’t like 24. Watching these darker scenes, even while in a dark room, I found myself tilting the screen slightly to try to adjust for the glare, my only material complaint.

At the gym, I was able to place the Touch on its side in a receptacle next to a drink holder on the stairmaster, and at less than two feet from my eyes, the screen was pleasant to watch. The audio was, as expected, exceptional, made more so by sound-isolating earbuds. I found myself sticking around, stepping up to watch a second episode of Sleeper Cell. At 2 hours of hamstering instead of 1, this may be my ticket to staying in some kind of shape over the pending Chicago winter! A way to watch TV that encourages more exercise, there may yet be hope for us North Americans… now if we could only use the energy from my steps to power the Touch, or the air-conditioning at the club… again, the iPod Touch’s excellent antenna enabled 100% connectivity to the gym’s free wifi network.

Getting email on the system does not require hacking, just a decent webmail client. In fact, it seems as if Apple is encouraging us to use a web client for email by not including Mail.app… intentional? In any event, I use the Zimbra “standard” client, which is the lightweight version of the Zimbra Ajax webmail client that provides access to email through the Touch’s built-in Safari web browser. I paused episodes here-and-there to check my email, watch the voice mails roll-in…

What the iPod Touch is, is an elegant, small computer. Battery life seems to approximate Apple’s claims of 5 hours for video play-back. Unlike many other palm devices, it’s snappy and responsive. Surfing the web seems as quick as surfing the web on any computer. Because it does such a good job at what it is, of course it makes you want more..!

From 01.com’s secure Zimbra webmail, I can access voice mails left at my office, which are attached to emails by our office PBX/telephone system, along with basic information, like caller ID and message length. When Zimbra 5 comes out in November, it will ship with iZimbra, which will give us iPhone/Touch users access to a full Zimbra feature set, including chat, calendars, contacts and document sharing, all syncing back to Mail.app, iCal and AddressBook on the MacBook through Zimbra’s iSync connector. That’s good, but discontinuing my cell service would be even better.

I don’t mind paying the cell phone company, or phone company, or my local ISP for the speed at which I’m connected to the internet, on a monthly, flat-fee basis. This encourages them to improve the speed and quality of our connections, which makes sense: they’re infrastructure providers, let them make money improving their infrastructure. We just shouldn’t have to pay on a per minute basis for network access anymore.

To get rid of my cell phone, I forwarded the cell number to the phone number (DID) corresponding to my extension on my office phone system. All calls then either come to my softphone on my computer, or if I’m not available, by voice mail to my email. To make outbound calls, I use the softphone with a Logitech USB headset plugged into the MacBookPro.

If this was more than a test, we could use local number portability to port my cell phone number permanently, directly to our VOIP provider, and by-pass the cell phone company entirely. Then only one step remains to reduce the cell phone company to nothing more than an infrastructure provider, an internet access provider, exactly what they should be doing, and nothing more: get the softphone onto the iPod Touch. That will require some hacking at this point, more on that subject another day. But it does get you thinking that Apple’s iTunes would make a good vector for introducing a simple, complete VOIP solution. Can you see .Mac offering international calling for $.002/minute, and your own 800 number that is aliased to your .Mac website?

While it’s possible to dismiss your cell phone, you still need to stay connected to the internet (most of the time). If you live in a covered area, and don’t spend all of your time at a Starbucks, the best solution so far for this is the Verizon and Sprint highspeed cards. I use the Verizon card to stay connected wherever I’m traveling in the city. The quality of the access is usually good enough so that I can use the softphone on the MacBook Pro to send and receive all my phone calls. And sometimes the quality on the VOIP softphone is even better than that of my cell phone. But not often.

So what’s the iPod Touch missing? For my money, only an express slot for a broadband wireless, whether 3G or wimax, it’s the only thing missing that’s keeping me in the “minutes” game, away from one, sweet, unlimited data plan…

Here’s what the softphone looks like on Mac OS X:

To review, how did I replace my cell phone with an iPod Touch? It’s not yet a recipe for the faint-of-heart. Here are the ingredients:

• 1 Apple iPod Touch (15GB)
• 1 Verizon or Sprint Express Card with unlimited data service
• 1 account on the Apple iTunes music/video store
• 1 Apple MacBookPro (although you may substitute your favorite Wintel system here, warning: it changes the taste of the results, and to each their own)
• 1 License for the EyeBeam softphone by CounterPath
• 1 Asterisk VOIP pbx server software, hosted at your favorite data center on Mac or other linux variant
• 1 inbound/outbound VOIP calling plan
• 1 pair Logitech Premium Notebook Headset
• 1 pair Shure SE310 Sound Isolating Earbuds
• 1 Zimbra hosting account with 01.com

You’ll ask, well, how much did all that cost? Not much. My company already uses most of this equipment, so the only things I had to buy is the iPod Touch, and that was a gift (thanks!).

What’s the difference between a 3g card and being on the cell phone network, aren’t they the same thing, and wouldn’t that make it an iPhone? Perhaps. While it remains the phone company that may be providing a 3G card, the card is only for internet access. And if the iPod touch had an express slot, then you could also use a wimax card, and use a local ISP to connect wherever you happen to be. The goal here is being able to be connected to the internet all the time, but not necessarily the phone network. Do we need a phone, or just a computer that can stay connected to the internet all the time? The iPod Touch is the smallest and most promising computers I’ve used, and just a step or two away from replacing my laptop, too.

Beyond Ringtones and Games

Feeling guilty about leaving his wife behind during an extended business trip, Richard Davis sprang for a last-minute gift. Sitting on the runway at Boston's Logan Airport, he pulled out his BlackBerry, launched Digby -- a free shopping application he had downloaded to his device -- and purchased a bouquet of flowers, along with a miniature teddy bear, from retailer FTD.com with just a few clicks.

"My wife was really pleased," says Mr. Davis, 46 years old, who works for investment bank Needham & Co. LLC and lives in Wellesley, Mass. "It's pretty nice to be able to shop online from a hand-held."

Retailers and wireless companies have been buzzing about enabling consumers to purchase everything from flowers to flat-screen television sets from their mobile phones for years. But mobile versions of popular online Web sites like Amazon.com have been slow to catch on because they have been difficult to find and can be painfully slow to load.

Now new services, many of which are being offered for the first time through wireless carriers, are trying to make mobile commerce more mainstream. While many still require multiple steps and an agility with small screens, they are making mobile shopping easier through better interfaces, wider selections and more secure payment options.

Ultimately, the services hope to transform the mobile commerce industry -- currently dominated by purchases of digital content such as ringtones and games -- into a mirror of the online shopping world where virtually any item can be retrieved with just a few clicks.

Sprint Nextel Corp. today plans to announce its launch of Mobile Shopper, a mobile shopping service that is free minus charges for data usage. The service allows users to search for and buy items from some 30 stores, including Target and eBags, by clicking on a Web icon on the main menu of their data-enabled phones.

Users can search among seven million items by entering the brand and style number or clicking through product-category menus. To make a purchase, users set up a mobile account with their shipping and credit-card information and enter their phone number and PIN.

Retailers, for their part, are continuing to invest in improving their own mobile Web sites, often through partnerships with established online-payment companies. More than 35 retailers selling everything from DVDs to golf clubs, for example, are accepting PayPal Mobile Checkout, which eBay Inc. launched in July.

The service allows consumers to purchase items from partner retailers from their PayPal accounts, which users can access with their standard PayPal user name and password or by their mobile number and PIN. Google Inc., which offers a mobile version of its Google Checkout online-payment service, recently entered the fray further by filing for a patent for its own mobile-payment system.

Other companies are launching software applications. Digby, operated by 30 Second Software Inc., stores retailers' best-selling items within an application users download on their BlackBerry, refreshing the selection every night. Storing items this way can dramatically cut back the time it takes to find popular items like chocolates and books by reducing the number of times the service has to connect to the mobile Web. The company also provides access to more than one million products over the mobile Web.

Digby, which takes a commission on all items sold through the service, eases the checkout process by allowing users to store their credit-card information on their phones.

Barriers such as handset limitations and consumers' relatively low rates of adoption of mobile Internet services have prevented wireless carriers, who have extraordinary control over the types of services consumers can easily access on their phones, from investing heavily in the market.

Carriers have generally preferred to be involved in billing customers for mobile media content like ringtones, for example, because it allows them to take a healthy cut of the transactions. But they will have to accept processing payments through credit cards and PayPal accounts if they want to make the mobile-shopping experience as much like shopping on a PC as possible. Sprint declined to comment on whether it will get any direct revenue from sales, saying it hopes to capitalize on interest in mobile shopping by signing up more subscribers for data plans.

But new payment services and the growing adoption of other mobile Internet services such as music and video are causing carriers to take the market more seriously. Thom Russell, director of business development for consumer products at Verizon Wireless, says the carrier sees potential in a variety of approaches to mobile commerce, from mobile-phone coupons and promotions to handsets that double as credit cards. Such experimentation is more possible now than a few years ago, he said, because "our customers are getting much more technically savvy about the things that can happen on a phone," he says.

AT&T Inc., meanwhile, conducted a trial earlier this year in which users were able to wave their phones over MasterCard PayPass systems in restaurants and other locations to make purchases that were charged to their credit cards. A spokesman for AT&T said the trial went well but the company hasn't announced plans to roll out the technology nationwide.

By 2011, the total transaction value of mobile payments is forecast to reach $22 billion world-wide, according to Juniper Research, up from just $2 billion at the end of 2007. While the bulk of the transactions still happen in markets like Asia, where cellphones are more advanced, demand in North America is forecast to increase as handsets, connection speeds and services improve.

"Mobile phones are a great on-ramp to buying all kinds of goods and services on the Internet," says Anil Malhotra, senior vice president of alliances and marketing for Bango, a United Kingdom-based firm that processes mobile transactions for carriers and helps companies develop mobile Web sites. Initially, products like flowers and small gifts might be the most popular mobile commerce purchases, Mr. Malhotra says. But over time, he expects the lines between shopping online via a PC and a cellphone will blur.

Many consumers, though, remain unconvinced. While trying to purchase a DVD from a mobile version of Amazon recently, 27-year-old Serene Hammond of Washington, D.C., was hit with multiple error messages and quickly gave up. "It is a useless technology," says Ms. Hammond, who works for a pharmaceutical company and says she doesn't see the urgency of shopping from a phone when she is regularly around a computer. An Amazon spokesman said he looked into the complaint and that "everything is working just fine."

Still, companies believe that demand for on-the-fly purchases will grow as the process becomes easier and are trying to make it so. 2B Wireless Inc.'s mShopper, which powers the new service from Sprint, reformats product listings so they render well on the mobile screen, reducing photo sizes and reducing extraneous text. The company also offers access to live customer-service agents.

SOURCE.

Trustcash Joins with Netbilling for Credit Card Processing

Trustcash Holdings, Inc. (OTCBB:TCHH), a provider of a secure and anonymous online payment system, announced today that it has contracted with Netbilling for online payment processing services. Netbilling's credit card processing service delivers fast, secure and robust billing and processing of credit card transactions.

"Using Netbilling for credit card processing ensures our customers that they are getting a high level of security when using credit cards to purchase Trustcash cards," said Greg Moss, CEO of Trustcash Holdings, Inc. "The combination of secure credit card processing through Netbilling and the privacy provided by using a Trustcash payment card ensures consumers that their internet usage will be totally secure and anonymous."

America has become an e-commerce culture, and nowhere has there been more of a recent demand for secure, swift and scalable electronic payment processing than in the adult industry. One of the leading providers of fully integrated e-commerce solutions is Netbilling. For almost a decade, this company has been the place to go for credit card processing, hosting, streaming, digital rights management, fraud scrubbing, online marketing and affiliate management services. The company's client roster represents a cross-section of leaders in the industry, and its quality of service and support is top-rated by each one. Netbilling's protection systems are widely recognized by the banking community as the most secure, efficient and effective in use on the Internet today.

Since 1998, Netbilling has provided processing services to thousands of internet merchants and companies of all sizes. Netbilling's flexible solutions process credit cards, electronic checks and telephone orders, and work with any business model, including internet, broadband, wireless, call centers and retail establishments. Services include advanced reporting, membership site management, fraud scrubbing, a free shopping cart, and 24/7 live service for merchants and their customers.

About Trustcash Holdings, Inc.

Trustcash Holdings, Inc. through its Trustcash brand is a pioneer of anonymous payment systems for the Internet. It developed a business based on the sale of a stored value card (both virtual and physical) that can be used by consumers to make secure and anonymous purchases on the internet without disclosing their credit card or personal information. Trustcash has initiated relationships with hundreds of web site partners as well as thousands of retail outlets, and utilizes a proprietary technology and processing system which supports secure and private payments. The Company is based in New York City.

Feds: `Iceman' Was Internet ID Thief

A man who used the Internet alias "Iceman" stole credit card and identity information from tens of thousands of people by hacking into the computers of financial institutions and credit card processing centers, federal authorities said Tuesday.

Max Ray Butler, 35, of San Francisco, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh on three counts of wire fraud and two counts of transferring stolen identity information. He could face up to 40 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine if convicted on all charges.

Butler was charged in Pittsburgh because he sold more than 100 credit card numbers and related information to a Pennsylvanian who is cooperating with the investigation, said Margaret Philbin, spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan of Pittsburgh.

Authorities said Butler also operated a Web site that served as an online forum for people who steal, share or use others' credit card information illegally in a practice is known as "carding."

Federal court records do not list an attorney for Butler, who was arrested in California on Sept. 5 on a criminal complaint filed under seal in Pittsburgh.

Butler remains in federal custody in California. It was not immediately clear when he would return to Pittsburgh to face the charges. A detention hearing is scheduled for Monday in San Francisco.

The indictment charges Butler with e-mailing people about buying stolen card numbers and selling them for several hundred dollars per batch.

According to the criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday, one person told investigators he received "tens of thousands of cards" from Butler. In the affidavit, federal agents said Butler used the aliases "Iceman," "Aphex," "Darkest" and "Digits" on his Internet forum, in e-mails with other carders or when hacking into financial institutions.

Witnesses told agents they were present as Butler moved to various hotel rooms where he would use a high-powered antenna to intercept wireless communications. From there he allegedly hacked into financial institutions and credit card processing centers to obtain confidential card information.

One witness told agents that Butler hacked into the Pentagon Federal Credit Union, Citibank and a government employee's computer.

Philbin could not immediately say which kinds of credit card numbers were sold or whether authorities planned to alert cardholders of potential problems.

Wireless, Cashless Payments Come To The World Of Taxi Drivers

Right after Labor Day, a slew of New York City taxi drivers protested plans to roll out credit- and debit-card payment systems in the back seats of all 13,000 medallion cabs.

They feared they would lose money on tips if passengers didn't pay in cash.

But proponents, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, outnumbered the protesters.

Supporters say the ongoing program will better serve customers and actually help bring in more money for cabbies.

How? By speeding up turnovers and generating higher tips than normal from cash-strapped riders.

It certainly will help bring in more revenue for San Jose, Calif.-based VeriFone Holdings (NYSE:PAY) PAY. The company is a leading maker of point-of-sale terminals and wireless systems.

VeriFone -- in partnership with MasterCard's MA PayPass -- was the first firm approved to provide the wireless systems in New York's cabs. The systems make use of an ATM-style interface to accept credit and debit fare payments.

The company's back-seat screen monitors also deliver news, weather and tidbits on restaurants, night life, hotels and other attractions. An extra bonus: Like billboards, they bring in revenue-generating ad money.

"Every year, we find a free ride on a new segment of the economy that is going electronic," said Doug Bergeron, VeriFone's chief executive.

A few years ago, it was a big drive by fast-food chains. Cashless pay-at-the-table systems have been gaining steam more recently.

"Who knows what it will be next year?" Bergeron said.

The company's bread-and-butter business remains landline-based point-of-sale, or POS, terminals, especially in the U.S. But contactless wireless products are its fastest- growing business, and a higher-margin one at that.

After the market closed Thursday, VeriFone reported earnings of 42 cents a share for the third quarter ended July 31, beating Wall Street's consensus by two cents. The firm earned 28 cents in the same period last year. Revenue in the quarter rose 57% to $231.9 million.

The company said it expects to post another banner quarter in the fourth. It raised its full-year guidance to $1.59 to $1.60 per share, compared with Thomson Financial's current estimate of $1.56.

International wireless sales have been especially strong. One reason: In areas such as Mexico, Brazil, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region, wireless connections are cheaper than landlines. Some governments, notably Mexico's, have been promoting cashless payments.

In addition, a growing middle class in largely cash-based developing nations is fueling demand for plastic.

"Two years ago, wireless was only 10% of our total revenue of $500 million. Today it is 30% of $900 million," Bergeron said.

Last year's acquisition of Israel's Lipman Electronic Engineering boosted VeriFone's wireless capabilities. It also gave it a stronger presence in Western Europe, Turkey and Asia-Pacific, including China.

"With Lipman, they are the undisputed leader in the global market," said Aravind Vanchesan, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan.

VeriFone's chief rivals are France-based Ingenico and to a lesser extent Phoenix-based Hypercom HYC, which has been losing market share for the past two years.

About 75% of VeriFone's sales are to banks, which in turn provide the systems to retailers. VeriFone's systems -- which are manufactured by low-cost third parties -- are integrated and bundled with bank processing services.

VeriFone sells to just about every major bank in the world that is involved in credit card processing. In addition, new innovations by card issuers such as MasterCard "require our involvement," Bergeron says.

Besides New York's cab program, MasterCard's PayPass system was the lead player in the rollout of cashless payment systems in Philadelphia's taxi cabs starting last year. VeriFone was a partner in that program as well. About 12% of Philly's cab fares are now paid with plastic, Bergeron says.

The remaining 25% of VeriFone's customers are oil companies (think gas pumps), government agencies and large global retailers that buy direct, such as TJX TJX, Walgreen WAG, Rite Aid (OOTC:RADCO) (NYSE:RAD) RADand Albertsons.

The U.S. POS terminal market is a mature one. Even wireless cashless systems in U.S. fast-food units have about a 90% penetration rate, analysts say. But fast-food expansion outside the U.S. will provide further growth, Bergeron says.

VeriFone intends to keep sales growing in the U.S. by bringing out new products, including outdoor payment systems and pay-at-the-pump technology that protects consumers' identities.

Bergeron calls VeriFone "a software company in disguise." Of the $60 million spent on research and development this past year, he says, $55 million was in new software that runs on its systems or servers.

"Does Motorola (NYSE:MEU) (NYSE:MOT) MOT download new software on old phones? No. They sell you a new phone. Software gets delivered on new devices," said Bergeron. "We live on that model. New encryption and capabilities result in new system sales."

In parts of Europe, South America and Asia, new security protocols to limit fraud might spur growth of new "smart card"-type terminals, Vanchesan says.

VeriFone makes terminals that use smart cards as well as magnetic swipe cards, which are ubiquitous in the U.S., where fraud isn't as much of a problem.

Even so, new security standards in the U.S. are driving some growth in new POS systems.

"The question is, what level of terminal replacements (is required)," said Robert Dodd, an analyst at Morgan Keegan. "A lot of (security) work being done is back-office stuff. So merchants may be able to get by without replacing terminals."