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How Yahoo can stay relevant in the mobile-first world, Asia mobile app usage overtakes US, mHealth could save $100 Billions, Africa leads the way for mobile money services and more…

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


 Global News Stories

How Yahoo Is Fighting To Stay Relevant In The Mobile-First World

TechCrunch

Yahoo’s business has always been about using the latest tech to capture people’s attention with interesting content. They were many people’s first real home page on the web.

Before search and social, you’d go to Yahoo to see links worth checking out. In the interim periods of change in consumer tech, they’ve adapted their product strategies to follow their model, with points of success and failure. In a recent visit to Yahoo’s Sunnyvale headquarters, we got a better look at how the company is adapting the mobile-first world.

Yahoo’s efforts in mobile over the last several years have focused on improving product by bringing in new talent and technology through acquisition. For instance, Yahoo News Digest (built from acquiree Summly’s tech) aims to keep a broad audience informed with the top news of the day, just like the Yahoo home page before it. But the app’s updates are partially algorithmically written, reducing the need for human curators.

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Asia Mobile App Usage Overtakes US Usage, Playing Games Accounts For Much Of Asian Surge

International Business Times

Asia is now the biggest market for mobile apps, according to data from Yahoo’s Flurry analytics, which tracks mobile app use around the globe. From April 2014 to April 2015, the analytics firm found mobile app usage grew 77 percent, driven by an explosion in shopping apps as Asian economies leapfrog the PC and start shopping en masse on smartphones. Shopping and lifestyle apps nearly tripled in the past 12 months compared to the same period measured in the previous year.

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mHealth’s $100 Billion Savings Potential

Health IT Outcomes

The U.S. healthcare system could save over $100 billion over the next four years by using mHealth devices, according to an Accenture report. According to the report, the $100 billion will be saved simply by using technology such as Web-enabled devices, digital diagnostic tools, and other FDA-approved IT.

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mobile-money-nigeriaReport: Africa leads the way for mobile money services

Mobile Payments Today

New data from Juniper Research has revealed how service providers are benefiting from the boom in mobile money transfer services with $2 billion in revenues forecast for this year and $4 billion annually until 2018, according to a press release about the report.

The new research, “Mobile Money Transfer & Remittance: Domestic & International Markets 2015–2020,” pointed to Africa as the leading market. Several African mobile operators — such as Vodacom Tanzania and MTN Uganda — are now generating more than 10 percent of their revenues from mobile money, according to the report. Meanwhile, Safaricom’s M-Pesa service, the trailblazer in the sector, recorded mobile money revenues of more than $330 million in the latest financial year, making it the most successful mobile or online money transfer service worldwide.

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Uh oh: Mobile user acquisition fraud almost doubled in 2015

VentureBeat

Last year about a third of mobile developers and publishers said they were cheated when acquiring new app users. This year, that number has jumped to almost two thirds.

Clearly, many more developers are now paying good money for bad users.

Last year VB published one of our first-ever research reports (yes, we do that now) on the hot topic of mobile user acquisition. We’ve updated it regularly since then, but are now completely redoing the study for 2015. It’s still very much in the kitchen, but early returns indicate a massive swing in user acquisition fraud incidence rates.

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Despite Growing Awareness, Interest in Mobile Payments Remains Stagnant

Harris

Mobile transactions are a growing category in a very real sense, with awareness of the various payment opportunities the category offers continuing to rise. What’s more, majorities of Americans indicate that tapping to pay could be useful across a broad gamut of retailers and service providers. However, interest in actually capitalizing on such features – which can include anything from using a smartphone for “tap-to-pay” transactions to utilizing mobile apps to redeem offers to having your payment card swiped through a smartphone or tablet attachment – remains stagnant. What’s more, though majorities of Americans do foresee tap-to-pay transactions eventually displacing cash or cards, few think this prospect is likely to become a reality within the next few years.

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privacy_iphone-100034044-galleryMobile Brings A Paradigm Shift To Privacy

Forrester

Sixty-three percent of US smartphone users are concerned about their privacy and security when they access the Internet via their mobile device.

This compares with 56%, 64%, and 58% of UK, French, and Chinese citizens, respectively, according to new Forrester surveys of more than 20,000 online adults. However, the majority of global consumers are either the same or less concerned about their privacy on their mobile device compared with on the computer.

But if firms think this means it’s safe to push mobile privacy to the side for even one more day, think again..

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Facebook to partner with Cell C for free internet in SA

Memeburn

It was only a matter of time before Facebook launched its free internet service in South Africa, but it can now be confirmed that its launch partner for the service will be Cell C, the country’s third-largest mobile operator.

The service, aimed primarily at emerging markets, was first announced as far back as 2013 and has already been rolled out in a number of other African countries, including Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, and Ghana.

According to technology news site TechCentral, the deal is an extension of Cell C’s strategy of reaching out to over the top (OTT) players. The company already provides free access to WhatsApp for people on its network.

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Consumers Spend 85% Of Time On Smartphones In Apps, But Only 5 Apps See Heavy Use

TechCrunch

New research on mobile behavior released today points to the growing struggle that app businesses face in establishing themselves as a must-have download on users’ smartphones. Today’s consumers are spending over 85 percent of their time on their smartphones using native applications, but the majority of their time – 84 percent – is spent using just five non-native apps they’ve installed from the App Store.

Those five apps will vary from person to person. For some, their top five could include social media or gaming, while others may spend more time in instant messaging.

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

MEF