The “Starbucks experience” could be for sale soon. The Starbucks mobile app is the envy of the retail world.It processes 14% of the company’s transactions, 75% more than a year ago. With 10 million active mobile app users — twice the number of users from a year ago — and 5 million mobile app transactions a week, the Seattle-based coffee giant is head and shoulders above the competition at the mobile point-of-sale. The competition, of course, has noticed, and some companies have even approached Starbucks about licensing the technology for themselves. On yesterday’s earnings call, CEO Howard Schultz had this to say about such a proposal: We’ve been approached by tech companies and national retailers as to whether or not we would consider licensing or white-labeling the Starbucks’ mobile platform. I think you have to ask yourself, why are they asking us to do this? We have such a significant lead. There isn’t a company that we can identify that is processing anything close to a million transactions a week, and we’re now way over 5 million. Most of the national retailers did not invest ahead of the growth curve. They do not have the capability in-house at this point to […]
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