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
Mobile Users, Women Shoppers Fuel India’s E-Commerce Boom
TechCrunch
Among everything else that’s driving e-commerce growth in India, the ease of buying things sitting inside homes, avoiding the hazards of traffic snarls, worsening air pollution and finding a parking slot, will easily rank at the top, no matter how simplistic it sounds.
African investment in mobile banking pays off – report
Human IPO
Efforts made by African banks to invest in mobile banking in the past few years are finally paying off as more people take to banking through their phones, which now is now second only to online banking as an electronic channel, according to a survey carried out by audit firm Ernst & Young.
In-app Ad Revenue Outpacing Desktop and Mobile Browser Ads
Mobile Marketing Magazine
In-app advertising is outpacing browser advertising on both mobile and desktop in revenue growth, according to a joint study by App Annie and IDC. In-app ad revenues grew 1.6x between 2012 and 2013, compared to 1.5x for mobile display ads, and 1.1x for desktop display. However, its growth is lagging behind the overall growth of app store revenue, up 2.3x, as in-app purchases become the primary method for monetisation.
The mobile user scores are in: Facebook 1bn; Instagram 200m
Mobile Entertainment
Facebook made the $2 billion swoop for virtual reality biz Oculus yesterday, claiming the technology is the platform of tomorrow while mobile is today’s shining star. And speaking of mobile, Mark Zuckerberg has appeased investors by revealing the social network now has over one billion monthly active users.
EE signs MVNO deal with BT
Mobile News
EE and BT have confirmed their MVNO partnership that will see the mobile operator take over BT’s estate of 80,000 staff connections. The five-year deal – which the two firms announced they were in exclusive discussions for in October 2013 – replaces BT’s existing relationship with Vodafone, who withdrew from the tender process following its purchase of BT’s rival Cable and Wireless Worldwide.
WEARABLE APPS: Inside The Race To Create A New App Ecosystem
Business Insider
Several prominent wearable devices have hit the market in the past year — Samsung Galaxy Gear, the Pebble Smartwatch, and the Explorer version of Google Glass. But despite the flurry of launches, there is a surprising lack of apps. And without apps, there’s little reason to buy wearables.
Read More… (Report)
Apps in car dashboards aim to make vehicles smarter
Reuters
Building the next Mxit: where is South Africa’s next big mobile business?
Memeburn
There are (easily) 16-million smartphones in South Africa. Sure, some are (increasingly) stretching the definition of what a smartphone is. But, even without a chunk of BlackBerry OS 7 devices, there’s still a market… There are 5-million or active Android and iOS devices in the country. Still not a market? And it’s a market that is almost wholly mobile. For the great majority of South Africans, the ‘internet’ is mobile. Facebook is mobile (in fact millions of South Africans have never used Facebook.com on a PC). Why then are people in the country seemingly so preoccupied with starting online and moving to mobile?
FireChat sees 100K app downloads a day with a huge uptake overseas
Gigaom
When Open Garden launched its new anonymous messaging app FireChat in iTunes last week it expected to draw some attention, but its creators were shocked by just how much attention it got. As of Tuesday, FireChat was being downloaded from the App Store more than 100,000 times a day, adding 1.14 new users a second, Open Garden told Gigaom.
Global News Round-up – These articles are not written by MEF and do not represent any views of individuals, members or the organisation.
