Global Mobile News Round-up – Week 24th November

Each week the MEF team curates mobile stories from around the world. Essential news you may have missed, the latest market insight & data nuggets, the Global Mobile News Round-up offers an instant international mobile content and commerce snapshot.  Global News Stories More than half of UK consumers have used digital wallets to pay for online goods The Drum More than half of UK consumers (54 per cent) often or always use digital wallets to pay for goods online, research from Skrill has found. The research of 2,000 UK adults found that more than one in ten 18-24 year …

The 2014 Mobile Market in Brazil [Infographic]

With global attention still on Brazil for the final stages of the World Cup, US Media Consulting has put together this timely infographic offering key stats for Brazil’s mobile market. Brazil has 134% mobile penetration while smartphones account for 18% of the mobile market for example. Earlier this year MEF's LatAm Chairman Arturo Galvan contributed a great piece on the growth of mobile and the market opportunity in Brazil, discussing the trend as a "Digital Tsunami".  This Infographic originally appeared on Latin Link. Seen or created an informative mobile infographic? Let us know. …

Meffys Winner Spotlight – SwiftKey

With the Meffys 2014 open for entries, we are taking a look at some of last year's winners to find out what winning a Meffy meant to them and what they’ve been up to since they celebrated their success in the international mobile content & commerce awards. This week, Innovation in Mobile Apps Award winner SwiftKey, best known for their  'mind-reading' touchscreen keyboard apps, fill us in on their busy year so far. What did SwiftKey win a Meffy for? Founded in London in 2008, SwiftKey specializes in building technology that makes it easy for everyone to create and communicate on …

Has the iPad peaked? Industry Views

Apple’s recently announced Q2 2014 earnings broke all previous company records with growth across all product lines in all markets – all apart from the iPad. The company sold 16.4 million units in the quarter – a 16% drop from 19.5m units in the same quarter 2013. The problem? Customers will balk at paying more for a product that’s not too dissimilar from a cheaper, rival machine, regardless of that product’s reputation. Tesco in the UK for example has just announced that it will soon be releasing its Hudl 2 budget tablet that will come pre-loaded with Tesco apps and services like its …

Mobile gaming for kids: stay on the right side of the law

The UK government recently shone a light on the underhand techniques some developers used to get kids and their parents to spend more on in-app purchases. Here MEF’s Senior Advisor for Policy & Initiatives, Simon Bates takes a look at the right and the wrong ways to involve kids in the app experience. Earlier this year, the UK Office of Fair Trading investigated 38 mobile games aimed at children. It found a number of causes for concern, and not just for kids and their parents. It is likely that many of the games-makers in question were in breach of several different laws and …

What’s the Deal with Adware on Android?

In most cases, the “free” Android applications you download from Google’s Play store aren’t free at all. These developers aren’t just developing apps for you out of the kindness of their collective hearts. Like most online services that don’t ask for the traditional up-front payment, the mobile application profit-model relies on advertising and in-app purchases.  Kaspersky Lab Mobile expert Brian Donohue explores the android app ecosystem . During the development process, whoever is building an application will often choose some third party ad library and bundle it into their app. Once an …

An Android that robbed your bank account

It was predicted, it was feared, and the day has come.  An Android Trojan that has the ability to steal money from bank accounts has emerged in Russia. Kaspersky Lab Mobile expert, Serge Malenkovich takes a closer look, and shares top tips to avoid falling foul of the cyber-criminals. We have discussed all of the dangers posed by potential smartphone viruses. Your smartphone contains private and financial data, valuable to cybercriminals. Nevertheless, most “commercially-oriented” Android malware steals from users by sending text messages to premium-rate numbers. Although unpleasant, this …

App Discovery & Download behavior: Why developers can no longer ignore China

This blog entry has been reproduced with kind permission from InMobi and first appeared on the InMobi blog on May 21, 2013.  The author is Arun Pattabhiraman,  Global Marketing Lead- Performance Advertising & App Developers at InMobi. It is evident that the competition for the world’s most lucrative mobile app market is getting fiercer by the day.  While the US had long established itself as the de-facto market developers look to for superior monetization opportunities, it is becoming clear now that its burgeoning alter ego from the Far East – China, can no longer be ignored. Last …

Distimo report highlights growth of in-app billing

Distimo, the leading mobile app analytics company, has today released its reports examining the movers and shakers for the year in each of the major mobile app stores across several territories. The reports contain a huge amount of data from the whole year covering Apple's App stores for the iPhone and iPad, Android marketplace, BlackBerry's App World, Windows Phone Marketplace, Nokia Ovi Store, and the Amazon Appstore. The key findings from the reports are:1. In all appstores the proportion of free applications surged significantly over the past year. In most appstores the average price of …

MEF Responds to GetJar Study

Yesterday, a study from GetJar and Chetan Sharma Consulting predicted that mobile apps downloads will increase from more than 7bn downloads in 2009 to 50bn in 2012. It also projected that the global mobile application economy will be worth $17.5bn in 2012, more than CD sales, which it predicts will reach $13.83bn. What’s more, Google announced that the number of mobile apps on Android Marketplace have doubled to 30,000 in the past three months.Here, Rimma Perelmuter, Executive Director of the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF), the global association of the mobile media industry, comments:“The …