Retailers go digital to stem downturn

Depressed UK retailers are looking to exploit digital channels to tackle lower customer spending during the downturn, reports Business Week.

According to a survey carried out by the British Retail Consortium and software vendor SAP, around half of respondents are looking at new channels to market - such as transactional Web sites - as a way of insulating their business from lower customer spending.

Retailers are also looking to update their existing digital channels in an effort to please customers.

Invitrogen, a division of Life Technologies, announced significant enhancements to its online store, www.invitrogen.com, says Trading Markets.

These improvements simplify product selection and ordering, and further streamline laboratory workflows for users of the site, which is the top-rated online source for life science products.

The new features are part of a series of improvements designed to create a significantly enhanced online retail experience for scientists who are increasingly using the Web to inform their purchase decisions and to buy the products they need to conduct their experiments.

Qualcomm is offering a service that enables mobile devices on any network to access an online application store, states San Diego Business Journal.

Called Plaza Retail, the service will be platform-neutral and allow developers and mobile operators to sell applications to mobile users.

“It's completely agnostic. The good thing for Qualcomm is that it opens up a much larger market for us,” said marketing director Sunni Tweet, who added that Plaza Retail will also work on phones without Qualcomm-designed chipsets.