Mobile will Soon Become the Number One Video Screen

Mobile Marketing Magazine

Mobile is rapidly heading towards becoming the number one video screen in the UK, with 52 per cent of people watching videos on their smartphones daily – the same amount as those watching video on desktops or laptops.

According to AOL-commissioned InsightsNow research, conducted in the US, UK, Canada, France, Japan, South East Asia and Australia, 57 per cent of consumers now watching videos on their mobile phones every day globally, compared to 58 per cent on desktops or laptops.

A survey found that 71 per cent of UK consumers say they cannot live without their phones. This increase in dependency has impacted the growth of people viewing videos on their smartphones across all lengths of video.

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Kaspersky Lab Discovers Security Flaws in Connected Cars

CIO Today

In order to examine the security of connected cars, Kaspersky Lab researchers tested seven remote car control applications developed by major car manufacturers. The research discovered that each of the examined apps contained several security vulnerabilities.

This is according to a research report by Kaspersky Lab researchers, which examines the security of applications for the remote control of connected cars from several famous car manufacturers.

As a result, the security company’s experts discovered that all of the applications contain a number of security issues that can potentially allow criminals to cause significant damage for connected car owners.

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Facebook’s next hardware play? Instagram Spectacles

Venturebeat

Snapchat Spectacles — called a “toy” by founder Evan Spiegel — are a serious business weapon wrapped in neon-colored plastic. The high-tech sunglasses record 10-second snippets of video at the touch of a button. Critically, they relay the video wirelessly to the Snapchat app on your phone, allowing for frictionless, hands-free posting to the network.

Given how intensely heated the video space is, with multiple networks vying for billions of daily views, this direct pipeline to users and their videos is nothing short of brilliant. It’s also a shot across the bow of the reigning king of social media, Facebook. The question is: Do Zuckerberg and co. have a counterattack planned?

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Olympics, smartphones push Twitter revenue up 30 pct in Brazil

Reuters

Twitter Inc has found a bright spot in Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, even as weak advertising sales across the globe have punished the social network’s stock in recent weeks.

Advertising revenue rose about 30 percent in Brazil last year, Twitter’s top executive in the country told Reuters, defying a two-year slowdown in the local economy and more than doubling the company’s 13 percent revenue growth globally.

Twitter, which does not break down its revenue by country, gave no concrete sales numbers in Brazilian or U.S. currency. It was an unusual move for the company to give details on its performance in one country.

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How Xcertia plans to introduce standards for mobile health apps

MobiHealthNews

Xcertia, the new standards body for mobile apps that launched late last year at the Connected Health Conference, held a meeting at HIMSS to explain more about the organization’s approach and to extend a plea for more industry voices to join the membership-based organization. The founding members include the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association, HIMSS, and DHX Group.

DHX Group, led by founder David Vinson, is a key part of the collaboration despite having quite a bit less name recognition than the other three founding members. DHX has been involved in most of the major app curation efforts over the years, launching SocialWellth and acquiring the assets of — and recently relaunching — Happtique.

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One telecom carrier is fixing a major privacy problem you probably don’t know about

Mashable

Vodafone, India’s second largest telecom operator by subscribers, has introduced a new way for its subscribers, especially women, to top up talktime credit to their phones without disclosing their phone number to strangers.

The new program, called Private Recharge Mode, allows people to add credit to their phones with a unique code instead of their phone number.

It might sound like a non-issue to many, but in India, where over 90% of the billion mobile phone users are on prepaid connection, walk into mom-and-pop shops and hand out their phone numbers to top up their accounts.

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5G edges closer as China Mobile announces large-scale testing

Telecoms Tech

China Mobile, alongside partners Qualcomm and ZTE, has announced plans to conduct large-scale 5G tests based on specs being developed by 3GPP.

Before a new generation of mobile technology is rolled out, interoperability tests and over-the-air field tests need to be conducted. With today’s announcement, China Mobile is looking to get an early start in this process while the 5G standard is still being finalised.

“The trials will operate in sub-6 GHz mid-band spectrum at 3.5 GHz and intend to drive the mobile ecosystem toward rapid validation and commercialization of 5G NR technologies at scale, enabling timely commercial network launches based on 3GPP Rel-15 standard compliant 5G NR infrastructure and devices,” wrote Qualcomm in a press release.

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The changing shape of mobile apps

Computer Weekly

In the mobile device world, there is no such thing as one size fits all. Although just two mobile platforms dominate the market today – Android and iOS – applications will need to work well on devices of all shapes and sizes, from the sleekest smartphones to the bulkiest tablets.

Apps might also need the ability to support new classes of mobile device as and when they take off, such as smartwatches or augmented reality viewers such as Microsoft’s HoloLens.

And the explosion of fixed and mobile connected sensors and appliances – the internet of things (IoT) – opens up countless opportunities to develop ever more useful mobile apps that control and/or communicate with these devices to enable innovative capabilities and services.

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Skype Lite app announced just for India: Here’s all you need to know

Indian Express

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella today announced a Skype Lite application designed for Indian mobile users at the Future Decoded event in Mumbai. Skype Lite, as the name suggests, is a lighter, more data friendly version of the video calling app, and will only be available in India.

The app will also get Aadhaar integration feature by June 2017.

“Skype helps people bring them closer together. Skype was first built on PC platform. But, today we live in a mobile-first environment and this is especially true in India,” said Eugene Ho, Director of Product management at Skype in an interaction with the Indian media.

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