Find out the week’s top mobile stories from around the world.
This week.. Apple is left reeling after the first major attack on the IOS store, China nears one billion mobile web users and the mhealth app market sees $400 million growth in the next 5 years, plus much more.
Apple Reeling Following Major Attack on iOS App Store
Mobile Marketing Magazine
Apple suffered the first ever large-scale attack on its mobile software store over the weekend, with a malicious program called XcodeGhost embedded in hundreds of legitimate apps after making its way through Apple’s stringent security.
The attack was discovered by several cyber security firms, and involved hackers embedding malicious code in apps by convincing legitimate software developers to use compromised, counterfeit versions of Apple’s development software, Xcode.
Read more…
China nears one billion mobile web users
Tech In Asia
How big is China’s mobile web? So big that it’s genuinely hard to comprehend. According to the latest data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), China is closing in on the one billion mobile web user mark.
Specifically, MIIT says that there are 946 million mobile web users in China.
The vast majority of them, more than 900 million, are accessing the web via mobile phones (as opposed to tablets or other mobile devices). And more of those mobile users are accessing the web via 4G, too: China has hit 270 million total 4G users.
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Starbucks’ Mobile Order & Pay Now Live Nationwide, Delivery Service In Testing By Year-End
Tech Crunch
Starbucks, a longtime industry leader when it comes to adoption of mobile payments and mobility loyalty in-store, announced this morning that its “Mobile Order & Pay” system is now available nationwide. The service, which allows Starbucks customers to place orders via the company’s mobile application ahead of arrival at their local store, was previously available in several thousand locations across the U.S. while in beta testing for users on iOS devices.
Today, the company says the service is available in more than 7,400 stores, including those in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Additionally, Mobile Order & Pay is now available to Android users.
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mHealth App Market Sees $400 Million Growth in Five Years
mHealth Intelligence
The mHealth apps market is a quickly growing industry, specifically provided the growth of mobile devices in healthcare. According to a recent study by Kalorama, there has been significantly fast growth in the mHealth app industry since 2010.
According to the study, the total worth of mHealth apps in 2010 was a mere $85 million. Since then, it has grown to approximately $489 million in 2015. Kalorama explains that while $489 million is not a huge amount in comparison to the entirety of the apps market, it still shows considerable growth for a five year span.
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Chevy sets Android Auto rollout date for select 2016 models
Mashable
Making good on its promise, GM will be adding Apple CarPlay and Android Auto to its 2016 Chevrolet models by spring.
Chevys fitted with the 7-inch MyLink system will be able to use Android Auto as soon as customers take delivery on their vehicle. But customers who purchase a 2016 Chevrolet model optioned with the 8-inch MyLink system will have to wait until March 2016 to receive the Android Auto update.
Being the egalitarian brand that it is, the Android Auto rollout will span 14 vehicles in the range, from the subcompact Spark to the 650-horsepower, Italian supercar-trouncing Corvette Z06.
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Brazil mobile market to have 304 million users in 2018
Telecom Lead
The mobile market in Brazil will have more than 304 million active lines in 2018 from 283.2 million mobile lines in 2014, according Dataxis.
This figure will represent 80.3 percent of the total number of telecommunication accesses estimated for this year.
The contribution of mobile market to total telecommunication revenues will grow from 65.3 percent in 2014 to 67.4 percent in 2018. Data revenues from fixed telephony and fixed broadband services will remain above $40 billion.
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Mobile user acquisition: Ad networks teaming up in ‘Collective’ to share data on mobile gamers
Venturebeat
Mobile ad attribution company Kochava is teaming up with agencies, networks, and advertisers to pool data on mobile gamers, share ways to target them, and improve mobile publishers’ capabilities to find, advertise to, and acquire new users.
All without compromising mobile users’ security, Kochava CEO Charles Manning said.
In the mobile advertising game, data is everything. Top independent players, such as Vungle, Chartboost, AdColony, and AppLovin, push over two billion ad impressions monthly through their networks, touching hundreds of millions of mobile users. Google’s and Facebook’s ad networks touch even more, and that scale provides big amounts of data, which in turn enables better targeting.
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Samsung Pay racks up $30M+ in transaction volume
Mobile World Live
Samsung handled more than $30 million in accumulated transaction volume since the debut of its payment service in South Korea on 20 August, a performance it described as “beyond our expectations”.
In what were the first official statistics for Samsung Pay, the vendor also revealed it has had more than 1.5 million transactions to date.
It did not reveal how many users Samsung Pay has attracted. However, it recorded 36 per cent active users in its first month, with about 10 per cent using Samsung Pay daily.
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In 2 Years, India Slips 42 Ranks in Mobile Broadband Connectivity
NDTV
From e-governance, online education to e-healthcare, the Union government has massive plans for its Digital India platform at an estimated cost of Rs. 100,000 crore. But this ambitious plan could hit a roadblock given that India has slipped on its ranking on the global scale when it comes to the reach of the internet.
The United Nations’ Broadband Penetration report 2015 says India, ranked at 155, has slipped 42 ranks in two years when it comes to mobile broadband connectivity. Even on fixed broadband connections, India has dropped from 125 to 131 in just one year.
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Price hike for UK mobile spectrum
BBC
The amount the government charges mobile operators to use airwaves space – known as spectrum – has risen from £64.4m to £199.6m per year.
Although less than originally suggested by regulator Ofcom, the price hike is likely to infuriate operators who have previously warned higher spectrum fees could put up consumer prices.
Ofcom defended the rise, saying it reflected the value of the spectrum.
