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 working on mobile payments using Messenger, leak reveals
Guardian
Facebook’s plans for a mobile payments system using its Facebook Messenger iPhone app have been revealed by screenshots from hidden features of the app.
The screenshots and code from the app show a method for adding a credit or debit card to a Facebook account and the ability to send money to friends via messages.
Snapchat CEO Spiegel Says Untargeted Advertising Is Coming Soon
WSJ
Snapchat, the popular mobile app for disappearing messages, is close to launching its first disappearing ads as the company sets out to prove its $10 billion valuation.
Evan Spiegel, the startup’s 24-year-old co-founder and chief executive, said Wednesday at a conference that the company will “soon” debut its first ads. The messages will appear within the Snapchat Stories feature, in between the photos and videos shared by users, and will not be targeted to individual users based on their tastes, he said.
iOS and Windows Makes Small Gains, but Android Still Dominates the US
MMM
Android continues to be the dominant smartphone operating system in the US, despite small gains made by both Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Windows.
According to comScore‘s data, which covered June to August 2014, 52 per cent of US smartphone subscribers used Android, a drop of 0.1 percentage points from the previous three month period. iOS covered 42 per cent of users, a 0.1 per cent gain, while Windows was a distant third with 3.5 per cent, having also grown by 0.1 per cent.
How is the internet improving people’s lives in Africa? [T4A]
Memeburn
There are five key characteristics reflecting how the internet has “greatly improved” people’s lives in Africa, so says research conducted by On Device Research. The company, which presented its findings of a survey conducted recently, addressed some key consumption patterns for audiences in Africa and how the internet has changed their lives and the ways they consume content. “The data is representative of mobile internet users. That means that in the UK it is all smartphones whereas in the African markets the vast majority are feature phone users,” said Alistair Hill of On Device told the audiences at the Tech4Africa conference, which is now in its fifth year.
Facebook Opens Its Mobile Ad “Audience Network” To All Advertisers And Apps
Tech Crunch
After announcing its mobile ad network at f8 in April, Facebook today officially launched “Audience Network” and started letting any advertiser buy any third-party app host ads powered by its targeting data. The big new detail is that Audience Network isn’t a separate set of ad inventory from what’s available in Facebook’s own apps and site with a direct buying interface. Instead, it’s “a simple way to extend Facebook advertising buys across mobile apps to increase relevancy for people, yield for publishers, and results for advertisers” using the same Facebook biographical, interest, and activity targeting data, according to Audience Network’s product manager Sriram Krishnan.
Apple, Samsung platforms key to use of smartphone accessories in healthcare
Fierce Mobile
Driven by Apple’s HealthKit and Samsung’s SAMI platforms, healthcare smartphone accessory sales will top $3 billion by 2019, predicts Juniper Research.
With greater available of healthcare smartphone platforms, device manufactures are expected to launch an array of sophisticated mobile health (mHealth) products, such as blood pressure cuffs, oximeters for diabetes and sleep monitors for sleep apnea, says Juniper
One in Three UK Children Has Their Own Tablet
MMM
One in three children in the UK now has their own tablet computer, a figure which has almost doubled since last year. The figure comes from Ofcom, whose study found that 34 per cent of children aged five to 15 had their own tablet, rather than using a device belonging to one of their parents or their school, up from 19 per cent in 2013. 62 per cent of children now use a tablet at home, up from 42 per cent in 2013, while 11 per cent of children aged between three and four have their own tablet, up from just three per cent in 2013.
M-payments volume to grow 60.8 per cent in 2015
Mobile Money Revolution
Bought anything on a mobile lately? You’re not alone.
According to the 10th annual World Payments Report from Capgemini and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), online transactions are still rising, but it’s mobile-based purchases that are powering all the growth. The report says m-payments will grow by 60.8 per cent from 29.2 billion transactions in 2014 to to 47.0 billion transactions in 2015.
SingTel, FireEye invest S$64m to combat cyberthreats
Today Online
SINGAPORE — Following increasingly sophisticated large-scale cyberattacks here and globally, Singapore telco SingTel is teaming up with American cybersecurity solutions company FireEye to invest a combined US$50 million (S$63.9 million) over the next five years to provide information technology security services in the Asia-Pacific region.
Global News Round-up – These articles are not written by MEF and do not represent any views of individuals, members or the organisation.
