Imagine eCommerce Conference Highlights Magento Momentum

LAS VEGAS–(EON: Enhanced Online News)–Today at the Magento Imagine eCommerce 2012 conference, Magento, a leading eCommerce platform and a division of X.commerce, Inc., an eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) company, highlighted momentum made since its last conference in helping customers spur business results and announced new product features and updates.

“As part of eBay Inc., our collective mission is to enable commerce”

Over the past year, the Magento community has doubled in size to 808,000 registered members and with X.commerce, there are a total of 1.1 million members in its developer community. Magento is sustaining growth through its continued investment across its full product suite, including its Enterprise Edition and its open-ecosystem solutions to its cloud-based Magento Go offering.
“From the beginning Magento has been leading the charge in empowering merchants to do what they do best: engage with their customers in unique ways and sell more products,” said Roy Rubin, general manager of Magento and chief product and customer officer of X.commerce. “Now as part of X.commerce and a member of the eBay Inc. family, not only will we accelerate our momentum but help drive the next phase of the commerce evolution.”
The growth of the Magento community has also driven the growth of Magento Connect, one of the world’s largest eCommerce application marketplaces. With more than 5,600 extensions now offered in Magento Connect – reflecting growth of 73 percent – any merchant can now customize, enhance and extend almost any area of their Magento store. Additionally, Magento saw 71 percent growth in its Solution Partner network to reach almost 400 solution partners around the world.
“As part of eBay Inc., our collective mission is to enable commerce,” said Matthew Mengerink, vice president and general manager of X.commerce. “With Magento, our goal for X.commerce remains focused on helping merchants of any size thrive in the new commerce era by inspiring, empowering and connecting them in ways they never thought possible before. We are excited to be taking another major step toward that goal this week at Imagine eCommerce 2012.”
At Imagine eCommerce 2012, Magento unveiled several important advances that deliver exceptional scalability, flexibility and value to merchants and developers:

• New capabilities now available on the latest Magento Community (version 1.7) and Magento Enterprise (version 1.12) software include native HTML5 for Magento Mobile, more robust visitor segmentation, sophisticated rules-based relations, automated generation of coupon codes, support for multiple wish lists, as well as an expansion of the integration of PayPal Payments, to name a few. These technology updates give merchants and developers more tools to deliver customized and seamless shopping experiences.
• Magento customers are now also able to take advantage of new integrations to the X.commerce fabric, which provides a single integration point for Magento customers to offer end-to-end commerce capabilities while minimizing technical complexities and costs. Newly announced partners Avalara, eDialog Express, Fanplayr, Kabbage, Lexity, M2E Pro and TheFind, open exciting new capabilities for merchants’ Magento-powered sites.

Magento and X.commerce are committed to creating a thriving open ecosystem for customers and partners, empowering all participants to take advantage of an unprecedented choice of technologies needed for end-to-end commerce – shopping carts, payment services, inventory management, marketplace integration, SEO, tax guidance and more, all in one location.
for more info: http://eon.businesswire.com/news/eon/20120424006590/en/Magento/X.commerce/eBay-Inc.

Galaxy S3 Versus LG Optimus LTE2: Can 2GB RAM Phone Pose a Threat to Samsung?

The Samsung Galaxy S3 threat is great, so great that LG, fearing a threat, was forced to announced its newest Android based smartphone, the LG Optimus LTE 2, the same day. The company hopes consumers will forget about the Galaxy S3 and set their sights on something with 2GB worth of RAM, but is it enough to have die-hard Galaxy S fans shy away from a device they have been waiting for with bated breath? Probably not.

LG's new superphone announcement is not as extravagant when compared to the Samsung Galaxy S3, nor are the specs and features really a match for what Samsung is offering, but the biggest talking point here is that 2GB of RAM that sits like a deadly sin inside the Optimus LTE 2. Other specs include a 2150mAH battery and wireless charging capabilities, LTE, dual core chipset, and a what appears to be a 4.7-inch "True HD IPS" display, which is LG's own proprietary display technology.

Is 2GB worth of RAM enough to encourage potential Galaxy S3 buyers to jump ship and ride the LG Optimus LTE2 train instead? Probably not. Android is well known for eating up RAM like its chocolate, but LG needs to bring more to the table than an extra gigabyte of RAM. On May 3, Samsung didn't just showcase a new phone, it showed a phone with cool new features, many of which will not be found in the Optimus LTE2, and these are the features smartphone buyers will be looking at closely than anything else.

You might find the few who would choose this over the Galaxy S3. Maybe they are not big fans of Samsung, want to try something different, their smartphone act as a PC so they use a lot of RAM, or they just don't care much about what they are buying since it's a powerful kit.

Having powerful hardware is not the only end game; it needs to be complemented with great software, something Samsung and many others are learning from Apple. We won't lie, 2GB of RAM is extreme and awesome beyond words, who would have expected a smartphone to ever one day have that much memory? Not us.

LG has announced the Optimus LTE2 for Korea, but no word on when we should expect it for Europe and North America.

Question: which would you choose? The Samsung Galalxy S3 or the LG Optimus LTE2?

(reported by Vamien McKalin, edited by Dave Clark)

Source Link: http://www.mobilenapps.com/articles/1999/20120505/galaxy-s3-versus-lg-optimus-lte2-comparison.htm