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
Facebook Seeks EU Antitrust Review of WhatsApp Deal
WSJ
Facebook has asked European Union antitrust regulators to examine its $19 billion deal to buy messaging service WhatsApp, in an attempt to avoid antitrust reviews by multiple EU countries, people familiar with the matter said. The move was unexpected because the deal had been approved in the U.S. and wasn’t expected to face scrutiny by the European Commission, the EU’s central antitrust authority. But, in light of the potential for reviews by some of Europe’s national antitrust watchdogs, Facebook is seeking one hearing that will cover the entire 28-nation bloc, the people said.
Over a Third of Online Retail Sales now via Mobile
MMM
Mobile commerce has continued to increase its share of the UK eRetail market, with over a third of all online sales now made on mobile devices, according to the latest results from the IMRG Capgemini Quarterly Benchmarking report.
The report, based on sales figures from February to April 2014, showed mobile commerce rose to 34 per cent, up from 32 per cent in the previous quarter and only 20 per cent in the same period last year. Over the past four years, mCommerce penetration has grown by 3,400 per cent, showing a dramatic shift towards smartphone and tablet use in eRetail.
The Next Wave Of Mobile Growth Won’t Be Dominated By Apple And Samsung
Business Insider
Apple and Samsung have dominated the smartphone market for years. But now that the developed market is basically saturated, the next wave of mobile growth will come from emerging markets, and especially India and China. In these countries, sales to people buying smartphones for the first time will absolutely overshadow sales in developed markets. And many of these first-time smartphone users will be buying from local manufacturers making cheap but serviceable smartphones.
Read More… (report)
Mobile Is Eating Global Attention: 10 Graphs on the State of the Internet
The Atlantic
Mary Meeker’s State of the Internet presentation is a primordial soup for fledgling think pieces about the Future of Digital, and I mean that in a good way, actually. It’s a 164-page slideshow of graphs and big-think proclamations about where our attention—and money chasing our attention—is going.
Here are my favorite charts, with some commentary…
Mobile analytics company App Annie acquires Distimo, raises $17M
Venture Beat
In a sign of the growing importance of mobile analytics, App Annie has raised another $17 million from its existing investors and is acquiring one of its competitors, Distimo. Both companies provide data on how people are using mobile apps and mobile websites. App Annie has built a strong reputation in the mobile gaming world for providing data on the game apps it tracks, while Distimo has focused more on non-gaming apps.
Twitter sees growth in emerging markets
Japan Today
Twitter is seeing strong user growth in the Asia-Pacific region, helping the messaging platform compensate for a slowdown in the U.S. and Europe, a research report says. The report by eMarketer forecasts that Twitter’s global user base will increase 24.4% in 2014, led by big gains in countries such as Indonesia and India, and to a lesser extent Argentina, Mexico and Brazil.
China Is Projected to Overtake the U.S. in Mobile Revenue
WSJ Blog
More evidence, if any was needed, that the balance of global mobile telecom power continues to tilt away from the West towards Asia. China will overtake the U.S. to become the world’s largest mobile phone market by revenue for the first time this year, according to a report Wednesday from Strategy Analytics, a Boston, Massachusetts-based research group. Mobile phone sales in China will rise 15% to 430 million units in 2014 driven by the country’s rapid shift to 3G and 4G smartphones, and generating a 53% surge in trade —or wholesale —revenue to $87 billion in 2014, it forecasts.
Sen. Franken’s anti-stalking bill calls location-tracking tools on the carpet
Venture Beat
Sen. Al Franken is reintroducing a new piece of privacy legislation that prevents companies and government organizations from tracking a person’s location data. While U.S. citizens already have a degree of privacy when it comes to their data, there are various legal loop holes and technicalities that allow some organizations to gain access to it anyways.
Yankee Group exec: Beacons answer many mobile user insight questions
Mobile Commerce Daily
A Yankee Group executive speaking during a Mobile Commerce Daily webinar yesterday said that 90 percent of all commerce occurs in-store, signifying that businesses should be responsive in prioritizing mobile to deliver optimized mobile experiences using technologies such as beacons. During the “How Beacons Tie in with a Retailer’s Larger Location Marketing Strategy” webinar, panelists from several different companies discussed the challenges and opportunities presented by beacon technology in relation to consumer acceptance.
Global News Round-up – These articles are not written by MEF and do not represent any views of individuals, members or the organisation.
