Mobile Loose Ends 30/07/10
A weekly round up of things we thought were useful but didn’t have time to cover
1) Are your apps secure?
Smartphone security business Lookout has launched the App Genome Project the largest study of mobile apps ever. It’s intended to be an ongoing effort to map and study mobile applications in order to identify security threats in the wild and provide insight into how applications are tapping into personal data and accessing other phone resources.
The App Genome Project has already scanned nearly 300,000 applications, and fully mapped nearly 100,000. Early findings show
29% of free applications on Android have the ability to access a user’s location, compared with 33% of free applications on iPhone. Additionally, nearly twice as many free applications have the capability to access people’s contact data on iPhone (14%) as compared to Android (8%).
Read more on their blog http://blog.mylookout.com/2010/07/introducing-the-app-genome-project/
2) Four screen marketing heaven – Mobile, TV, Consoles and PCs
According to Microsoft consumers want content that is consistent across all channels, and that concept applies to mobile advertising as well. Microsoft has identified that consumers are using their PCs, mobile phones, televisions and gaming consoles —sometimes at the same time— to perform the same functions, whether to research products, for social networking, to play games or make purchases.
The study, which covered activities across computers, smartphones, TVs and game consoles, found that:
• 69% of multi-screen consumers believe that being able to access similar content—media and advertising—across different screens makes the content more useful and their media experience more relevant and informative.
• 80% of consumers surveyed expect improvement in the delivery of content and advertising across devices, and they report that these improvements will increase their engagement.
Read a full interview with Microsoft’s Alison Engel Marketing Director of Microsoft Advertising at Mobile Marketer http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/ad-networks/6959.html
3) Google’s Schmidt forecasts annual Android revenues to top $10B
In the Wall Street Journal Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt said the company is positioning its Android mobile operating system to drive revenues exceeding $10 billion a year, galvanized by advertising and digital content downloads.
Schmidt said Android’s growing popularity with consumers guarantees Google’s signature web search, maps and ad-subsidized services will continue to thrive as consumers migrate from the desktop to the smartphone–Google now activates 160,000 new Android devices each day. “If we have a billion people using Android, you think we can’t make money from that?” Schmidt said, explaining Google could earn $10 billion annually at a rate of $10 per user per year. Schmidt added revenues could derive from selling premium digital content from newspapers and other media providers.
Read the full blog post from the Wall Street Journal here http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/07/28/eric-schmidt-on-google%E2%80%99s-next-tricks/
4) Opera Mini hits a billion downloads a day
Opera joins the exclusive one billion served per day club. According to Opera Software statistics, Opera Mini users viewed more than one billion pages on July 25, 2010 (that’s 11,500 pages a second), an amazing achievement considering that just two years ago in June 2008, Opera Mini’s servers were processing just 100 million page views per day.
5) Do you accept mobile phone?
According to research from mobileSQUARED around 33% of UK mobile users are likely to use their mobile phone as a credit card (around 19 million users). And that approximately two-thirds of these will willingly spend in excess of £10.”
For more see their ‘Taking Internet Mobile: UK’ Report http://mobilesquared.co.uk/reports/india-mobile-content-market
Have a good weekend
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