Find out the week’s top mobile stories from around the world. This week.. Mobile health apps have ‘serious problems with privacy’ Data privacy is the main barrier to mobile marketing growth, How Mobile Technology Has Evolved Into the IoT World and much more…
Mobile health apps have ‘serious problems with privacy’ – study
Evening Standard
Thousands of mobile health apps have “serious problems with privacy”, a study suggests.
Researchers from Macquarie University in Australia examined more than 15,000 medical and health and fitness-related apps on the Google Play Store and compared their privacy practices with a random sample of over 8,000 non-health apps.
The study, which has been published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ), found that while health apps tended to collect less user data than other apps, 88% could access and potentially share personal data, such as a user’s email address and geolocation information.
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Data privacy is the main barrier to mobile marketing growth
WARC
Consumer concerns about data privacy and the need to meet regulatory requirements like GDPR are the main barriers to growth in mobile marketing, according to WARC’s survey of over 500 marketing professionals in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in association with the MMA.
More than one-third (35%) of marketers say consumer concerns about privacy/security are a barrier to mobile marketing’s growth, the most reported answer and a strong increase from the 25% who said the same last year.
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How Mobile Technology Has Evolved Into the IoT World
socPub
Of all the major tech innovations to reshape the world over the past few decades, one of the biggest has been the rise of internet of things (IoT) devices.
As the number of IoT devices has grown — and both consumers and businesses have adopted the tech — mobile technology has had to evolve fast to keep up.
These are the most significant changes that mobile technology designers have made to meet the needs of IoT technology in the consumer and business worlds — and how all mobile device users are likely to benefit.
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UK’s CMA opens market study into Apple, Google’s mobile ‘duopoly’
TechCrunch
The U.K.’s competition watchdog will take a deep dive look into Apple and Google’s dominance of the mobile ecosystem, it said today — announcing a market study which will examine the pair’s respective smartphone platforms (iOS and Android); their app stores (App Store and Play Store); and web browsers (Safari and Chrome).
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is concerned that the mobile platform giants’ “effective duopoly” in those areas might be harming consumers, it added.
Latest Singapore mobile operator Gorilla uses blockchain to give back users unused data
A new mobile telco has emerged in Singapore with an innovative strategy that could shake up the crowded market.
Gorilla Mobile will unveil a novel service called SwitchBack which allows customers to turn their unused mobile data into digital tokens called Gorilla Go Tokens.
These can be used to offset future bills or redeem mobile services. The tokens will not expire and can be shared with others.
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The power of mobile advertising in the Covid era
Financial Mail
In an era where people are becoming more reliant on internet technology to stay connected with friends and family, and their employers and employees, from work-from-home locations, they are spending significantly more time online, making mobile technology a huge opportunity for marketers and brands.
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Mobile game spending hits record $1.7B per week in Q1 2021, up 40% from pre-pandemic levels
Tech Crunch
The COVID-19 pandemic drove increased demand for mobile gaming, as consumers under lockdowns looked to online sources of entertainment, including games. But even as COVID-19 restrictions are easing up, the demand for mobile gaming isn’t slowing. According to a new report from mobile data and analytics provider App Annie in collaboration with IDC, users worldwide downloaded 30% more games in the first quarter of 2021 than in the fourth quarter of 2019, and spent a record-breaking $1.7 billion per week in mobile games in Q1 2021.
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China’s 5G mobile phone shipments up 7% in May
China Daily
China’s domestic shipments of 5G mobile phone witnessed a 7 percent year-on-year increase to 16.74 million units in May this year, The Paper reported on Wednesday.
Domestic mobile phone shipments stood at 22.97 million units as a whole in the same period, down 32 percent year-on-year, according to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT). In the first five months of this year, China’s domestic mobile phone shipments increased rapidly, showing an overall upward trend, among which 5G mobile phones grew substantially.
