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Global Mobile News Round-up – Week 2nd December

By December 6, 2013News Roundup

Global_News_MEF Each week the MEF team curates mobile stories from around the world. Essential news, the latest market insight & data nuggets, the Global News Round-up offers an instant international mobile content and commerce snapshot.


 Global News Stories

Tablets Are Becoming More Important Than Smartphones For Online Shopping, But Retailers Aren’t Ready

Business Insider

This year will mark a major milestone for tablets and their influence on Internet retailers. We believe tablets will draw even with smartphones, and account for 50% of the total value of U.S. retail sales made over mobile devices.

How is it that tablets are beginning to overtake the smartphone for retail, despite the fact that there are fewer tablets than smartphones in consumer hands?

Read More… (report)


Digital goods’ sales drop as mobile subscription-based services gain traction: report

Mobile Commerce Daily

Although more consumers are shopping from their mobile devices, sales of digital goods such as individual video and music downloads is down as consumers rely more on their smartphones and tablets as a primary way to access entertainment, according to a new study from MEF.

Read More…


How long before tablet saturation? IDC predicts single digit growth by 2017

Second-screen-tablet

Memeburn

If you were one of those people who thought that the iPad was a giant, pointless version of the iPhone, chances are you’ve changed your mind recently. The global tablet market has exploded over the past few years, finding applications in areas of life even Steve Jobs couldn’t have dreamed of.

Like all big technology form factors however, its growth will inevitably slow down. Indeed, technology research house IDC reckons that tablet growth could slow to single digit figures by 2017.

Read More…


Apple and China Mobile to Strike iPhone Deal, Report Says

Mashable

After years of wrangling over various issues, China Mobile, the world’s largest wireless carrier with 740 million subscribers, has finally struck a deal with Apple to offer the iPhone on its network in China, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The first hints of the deal came earlier this week when Fortune uncovered graphics on a China Mobile subsidiary website that showed the iPhone being offered under the company’s banner. However, when Fortune questioned China Mobile regarding the graphic, the company stated that there was no deal in place.

Read More…


How Facebook Went Mobile, In Before And After Org Charts

Tech Crunch

Facebook used to be a website translated to mobile by a tiny team, but over the last two years it’s reorganized to make every department in the company mobile-first, as revealed in two new org charts it shared today at a small press conference “Whiteboard Session” at its Menlo Park HQ. It also said its 90 open source projects have over 2,500 contributors.

Read More…


Obama Sticks With BlackBerry ‘For Security Reasons’

Tech Week Europe

While President Barack Obama is a fan of the late Steve Jobs and has an Apple Inc. iPad, he acknowledged Wednesday that he can’t participate in the iPhone revolution. “Now, I am not allowed, for security reasons, to have an iPhone,” Mr. Obama told a group of young people while pitching his signature health-care law at the White House. But he said his daughters, Sasha and Malia, do have iPhones and “seem to spend a lot of time” using them.

Read More…


17 per cent of Cyber Monday shopping was mobile
Mobile Shopping blog pic2

Mobile Money Revolution

There goes another mad internet shopping day then. Cyber Monday just keeps getting bigger, and seems to be crossing over from its US heartland to the rest of the world. IBM stats for 2013 show that Cyber Monday online sales in the US grew by 20.6 per cent over 2012. Within that mobile sales grew to 17 per cent of total online sales, an increase of 55.4 per cent year-over-year.

Read More…


Why Your Brand Must Analyze Traffic by Device

Mashable

smartphones-and-tablets

Of all global Internet traffic, an estimated 20% and 33% comes from mobile, according to a report by digital agency Walker Sands and StatCounter, and the percentage continues to rise. iPhone traffic is outpacing Android, and on tablets, users are more likely to make purchases. But your brand’s traffic is not the same as the Internet’s, and your audience or target market may have different behaviors than web users at large. Although trends can offer direction, measuring your own traffic by device can be a powerful metric in making both marketing and product decisions.

Read More…


Google Wallet Cards Arriving Now, But Consumer Benefits Remain Unclear

Tech Crunch

Those who signed up for the new Google Wallet debit card at the end of November are now receiving their cards in the mail, following the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S. This MasterCard-powered prepaid debit card allows you to link your online Google Wallet balance to a real, plastic card you can use at point-of-sale, at ATMs, or anywhere else a MasterCard is accepted, stateside.

Read More…


Global News Round-up – These articles are not written by MEF and do not represent any views of individuals, members or the organisation.


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