Nintendo is bringing its pocket monsters, Pok&#233mon, to both Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS. A Japanese website reported that this is the first time a first party app from Nintendo will be arriving on hardware not made by it.
Nintendo and Game Freak will be working together to create the original Pokemon title for both iOS AppStore and Android Market.

The new app is basically an on-screen card game based on timing which uses music as well. Users can download it for free though there is a possibility the company would charge for additional cards or music.

The news of Nintendo’s Pok&#233mon app has come when Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play smartphone is already out in the market, on which users can play PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games as well.

It was just a matter of time before something related to Nintendo also reached smartphones, and luckily for users it is not from some unknown developer.

Some users might be surprised by the arrival of a Nintendo title on iOS devices, which are directly competing with Nintendo for users. Nintendo was earlier trying to sell its titles at high prices, directly taking on the iOS games.

Google Plus App for iOS device will soon be released once Apple approves it for its devices. Erica Joy, executive support technician at Google, said this in a blog posting posted on her Google+ social network account.

We already reported that Google is working on the iPhone following its freshly launched Google+ App for Android devices.

Last month, we reported that popular social network Facebook is working on a Facebook app for iPad and touted it to be a major announcement.

Dubbed as Project Spartan, the Facebook App for iPad will offer full screen photo and video resolutions for the tablet. Besides, Facebook is also reportedly working with third-party developers over the app and its chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg himself is said to be “heavily investing” in the app. Obviously Facebook is looking to lure all the iPad owners with its new app.

In order to gain the lead in social network app competition, Google has already submitted the Google Plus iOS app that could be for both iPhone and iPad.

Joy didn’t confirm which app it would be but, based on her follow up, it is expected that the app is likely to hit iPad and iPhone together.

The Google+ App for Android is quite sleek, neat and quick in terms of function. Its instant upload feature allows publishing photos in matter of few seconds. However, its group chat option, Huddle, appears as separate app once the users have synced their Google accounts to the Google+ App.

Similar approach is likely to be taken for the Apple iPad 2 that comes with camera at the back as well as the front. That way the users would be able to quickly share the images through Google Plus.

An interesting part is that both Facebook and Google are counting heavily on Apple’s iOS platform for gaining popularity of their respective social network. It is no secret that Apple iPad has started contributing to larger audience that browses web on the tablet.

Facebook is planning to launch “something big” later this month and it is said to be the party spoiler for Google. At this moment, both sides are working on their projects diligently. It is just matter of weeks till Apple approves Google+ app and the new Facebook App for iPad.

Microsoft has rolled out a new version of its Bing application for iPad. Named as Lasso, the new version allows the users to draw a circle around one word or a group of words with their finger to make a new search on Bing.

The usual iPad method involves nine steps compared to only two required by the new version of Bing App for iPad. Those who are comfortable typing on iPad, however, do not need this update.

The Bing team says on the official blog, “From our research, we know that many searches are inspired by things people see on the web. Today, it can be somewhat painful to search on a tablet when you’re engaged in reading something; just copying and pasting pieces of text from a webpage to a search box can take up to nine steps on the iPad. With Lasso you can circle and search in just two steps.”

The new version will also allow the users to go back by up to one week old Bing home page images. Earlier, whenever users had to search for a word on a webpage, they had to select just the right amount of words to select it through a search engine, which was tedious.

The new Bing app takes the hard work out of the process, so the users just have to move their fingers around the words, and once the selection is made, the Bing app automatically conducts the relevant search.

Bing has become popular due to its ability to utilize the iPad features better than others.

The mobile payments market is growing and is expected to touch the $670 billion mark by 2015. The forecast has been made by Juniper Research, which values the current mobile transaction at $240 billion.

Mobile payments do retain a great amount of interest both among the users and the service providers.

Explaining the findings, senior analyst, Juniper Research, David Snow, said, “Our analysis shows that emerging segments such as physical goods payments, NFC and money transfers will fuel market growth by a factor of 2.7 times by 2015. Digital goods is the largest segment and, although forecast to more than double, it is not growing as quickly as some of the newer segments.”

The Juniper Research report says that 75 per cent of the mobile payments would come from North America, Western Europe, and East Asian countries. A look at the current mobile payments scene suggests most of the transactions currently come from the purchase of digital goods, which is expected to be 40 per cent of the total market by 2015.

The increase in the mobile payments would be driven largely by the rapid adoption of mobile ticketing, NFC contactless payments, physical goods purchases and money transfers as it is expected the users in both developed and developing countries would start using their mobiles for day to day transactions.

Those markets where credit cards or banks are not used in large volumes but have a large number of cellphones in circulation may turn out to be just the right kind of market for the mobile payments evangelists.

Only some time ago, another research report (of Forrester) said that the mobile payments in the US would become worth $31 billion by 2016. But the Juniper Research forecast is for worldwide mobile payments, whereas Forrester’s report is only for the US. Juniper Research also sees the mobile payments replacing the wallets altogether, whereas Forrester just seems to be taking mostly digital goods purchase into account.

The Juniper Research report further says, “Some 20 countries are expected to launch NFC services in the next 18 months, resulting in transactions approaching $50 billion worldwide by 2014. Meanwhile, the need for financial access in developing countries is such that active mobile money users will double by 2013 and drive transaction values accordingly.”