Find out the week’s top mobile stories from around the world.
This week… Facebook launches app that will pay users for their data, European mobile traffic mysteriously routed through China for two hours, 5G sign-ups outpace 4G’s launch in South Korea and much more.
Facebook launches app that will pay users for their data
Guardian
A new Facebook app will allow users to sell the company data on how they use competitors’ apps.
Facebook announced on Tuesday that it is recruiting participants to download its new app Study from the Google Play store. Once it is downloaded, it will transmit data with Facebook on what other apps the users have, what features they use, and how much time is spent on them.
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European mobile traffic mysteriously routed through China for two hours
Independent
European internet traffic was mysteriously forced through Chinese servers for around two hours last week, prompting some mobile phone users to report slow speeds.
Some of the continent’s largest mobile phone networks, including Swisscom of Switzerland, KPN of Holland, and Bouygues Telecom and Numericable-SFR of France passed through network infrastructure belonging to state-owned China Telecom – one of the country’s largest internet providers.
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5G sign-ups outpace 4G’s launch in South Korea
BBC
More than one million people have subscribed to a 5G mobile contact in South Korea, meaning demand for the high-speed technology has easily outpaced the country’s adoption of 4G.
The government has said it took 69 days for the landmark to be reached. That is much faster than the 80 days it took the last-generation, 4G, service to hit the same figure, in 2011.
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Huawei trademarks its own mobile OS following US ban
Engadget
Huawei is making moves to sidestep the Trump administration’s de facto ban by trademarking its own operating system. The OS, which has reportedly been in the works for years, has been trademarked in Peru under the name “Hongmeng,” for use within nine countries and Europe (although in Europe it’s been trademarked under the name “Ark OS”). The company has previously suggested the system could roll out as early as this fall, but it only seems likely to do so if it is permanently denied access to Android.
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Apple wants to acquire Intel’s 5G business to build its own modems, sources claim
Ars Technica
Apple is still looking into the possibility of acquiring Intel’s Germany-based modem business, The Information claimed yesterday, citing sources familiar with Apple’s plans.
Intel has reportedly considered selling off pieces of its modem business, and the heart of that business is in Germany, where Intel acquired and integrated Infineon for $1.4 billion in 2011. The engineers that ended up in that division previously worked on chips that ended up in the iPhone about a decade ago.
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Most US mobile banking apps have security and privacy flaws, researchers say
Tech Crunch
You might figure the biggest U.S. banks would have some of the most secure mobile apps. Spoiler alert: not so much.
New findings from security firm Zimperium, shared exclusively with TechCrunch, say most of the top banking apps have security flaws that put user data at risk. The security firm, which has a commercial stake in the mobile security business, downloaded the banks’ iOS and Android apps and scanned for security and privacy issues, like data leaks, which put private user data and communications at risk.
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Facebook Data Sharing With Mobile Carriers Raises New Privacy Concerns
CPO Magazine
With every new data privacy scandal, Facebook promises to mend its ways and restore control to users over their personal data. And, yet, Facebook continually seems to find new ways to monetize the data of its users, all without their knowledge or consent. Case in point: a newly leaked internal document from Facebook suggests that the much-maligned Silicon Valley tech giant is looking for ways to court the nation’s top mobile carriers (such as AT&T and T-Mobile) with exclusive access to personal data and information.
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Outlook: Cellular IoT connections to jump to 4.1B by end of 2024
Future IoT
The estimated 1 billion cellular internet of things ( IoT) connections globally today is expected to rise to 4.1 billion by the end of 2024, of which 45% are represented by Massive IoT.
These are among the findings of the June 2019 edition of the Ericsson Mobility Reportpublished recently.
Ericsson explained that industries using Massive IoT include utilities with smart metering, healthcare in the form of medical wearables, and transport with tracking sensors.
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AI Helps Businesses Get Smarter About Fraud
PYMNTS.com
If it seems like cases of fraud and hacking are always in the news, that’s because new incidents pop up practically every day. One of the latest involves hackers successfully accomplishing account takeovers (ATOs) of users of Zelle, the digital payment service.
According to the new Digital Fraud Tracker, total losses due to fraud equaled $4.2 trillion in 2018, and fraudulent mobile app transactions increased 680 percent between 2015 and 2018.
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App Annie: Games accounted for 33% of mobile downloads and 74% of spending in 2018
Venture Beat
Mobile market research firm App Annie knows our phones are practically game consoles, and it’s sharing some stats to show just how many of us play games, how long we do so, and what genres are on the rise.
And just how many games come out in one year on Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
