Find out the week’s top mobile stories from around the world. Headlines this week include… Mark Zuckerberg and team consider shutting down Facebook and Instagram in Europe, Apple empowers businesses to accept contactless payments through Tap to Pay on iPhone, Mobile app frauds increased in 2021, rural India an opportunity for app marketers and much more…
Mark Zuckerberg and team consider shutting down Facebook and Instagram in Europe if Meta can not process Europeans’ data on US servers
City AM
If Meta is not given the option to transfer, store and process data from its European users on US-based servers, Facebook and Instagram may be shut down across Europe, the social media giants’ owner reportedly warned in its annual report.
The key issue for Meta is transatlantic data transfers, regulated via the so-called Privacy Shield and other model agreements that Meta uses or used to store data from European users on American servers. The current agreements to enable data transfers are currently under heavy scrutiny in the EU.
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Apple empowers businesses to accept contactless payments through Tap to Pay on iPhone
Apple
Apple today announced plans to introduce Tap to Pay on iPhone. The new capability will empower millions of merchants across the US, from small businesses to large retailers, to use their iPhone to seamlessly and securely accept Apple Pay, contactless credit and debit cards, and other digital wallets through a simple tap to their iPhone — no additional hardware or payment terminal needed. Tap to Pay on iPhone will be available for payment platforms and app developers to integrate into their iOS apps and offer as a payment option to their business customers. Stripe will be the first payment platform to offer Tap to Pay on iPhone to their business customers, including the Shopify Point of Sale app this spring. Additional payment platforms and apps will follow later this year.
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Mobile app frauds increased in 2021, rural India an opportunity for app marketers: AppFlyer report
The Indian Express
Mobile apps in India are experiencing tremendous success, but this is also making them a prime target for cybercriminals to carry out fraudulent activities, says a new report by AppsFlyer. The research firm’s “State of App Marketing in India 2022 Report” also highlights that rural India is a promising opportunity for app marketers, particularly in the verticals of finance, gaming, news, shopping, utilities, and entertainment.
“Over 80 per cent of all non-organic installs in India were seen to be coming from non-metros. Users from Tier 2 and 3 cities, who prefer vernacular content, are now actively contributing to India’s mobile-first economy as they become increasingly hyperconnected,”Aditya Maheshwari, Director of Customer Success at AppsFlyer told indianexpress.com.
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TikTok Doubles Share Of Ad Spend, AdTech Consolidation Hits 29%
Forbes
The number of top ad networks dropped by about a third in the last year as the rich got richer in mobile advertising. TikTok, in particular, grew very fast, doubling the share of ad spend it captured. So did Apple’s ad network, Apple Search Ads, which grew about 33% last year. What precipitated the consolidation? Apple’s introduction of App Tracking Transparency in 2021, which Meta/Facebook has blamed for reducing ad effectiveness.
The consolidation data is from the 2022 Singular ROI Index, a report that analyzed data on over 300 of the world’s largest ad networks, 5,000 apps, and $20 billion in revenue.
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’Astronomical’ rise in hypercasual helps mobile games market smash $116 billion
Pocket Gamer
The global mobile games market hit new highs in 2021 according to the App Annie State of Mobile 2022 report, with hypercasual games as important in terms of downloads and revenue as console-quality titles, big-name franchises and well-known intellectual property (IP).
While large budget titles including Genshin Impact, Roblox, Call of Duty, League of Legends, and Crash Bandicoot all featured prominently in the charts and the year’s most popular games lists, many of the titles alongside them were simple, single mechanic hypercasual breakouts such as High Heels, Hair Challenge, Count Masters, and Bridge Race.
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Ethiopia’s telco battle will take place in the mobile money arena
Quartz
Safaricom opened an office in Ethiopia last month, as Kenya’s largest mobile operator aims to take on one of Africa’s most sought-after telecoms markets, with a population of around 120 million people. The company has hired local employees and built a multi-story office in downtown Addis Ababa after warding off competition from other telecommunication companies to secure a $850 million operating license in May.
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The trend for amped-up cross-breed IoT – and tension with stripped-back pure-breed IoT
Enterprise Insights
Is there a trend for hybrid IoT, to marry together different radio technologies to serve different use cases? Well, yes there is; but, then, there always has been. Because the internet of things (IoT) is a broad church so far as its congregation goes – and many, sometimes, worship together in order to get their messages across. “There is no one-size-fits-all connectivity solution to serve every use case; IoT is an all-for-one discipline, and not one-for-all.”
It is a recurring line in this parish; here it is voiced by Henri Bong, co-chief and co-founder at Singapore-based IoT production house UnaBiz, a one-time Sigfox practitioner that has reinvented itself as a “multi-tech” IoT solutions provider, also offering LoRaWAN and cellular IoT among low-power wide-area (LPWA) networking protocols, plus all the inbetweener tech that goes into its own version of hybrid IoT. But others say the same, almost exactly.
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Telstra lands massive IoT deal
Mobile World Live
Telstra secured its largest ever IoT deal by value and number of connections, a AUD100 million ($71 million) contract with utility services company Intellihub.
The ten-year agreement involves delivering up to 4.1 million IoT SIMs for Intellihub’s smart meters, providing real-time insights to manage the different elements of an energy network. David Burns, group executive for Telstra Enterprise, stated it had connected around 500,000 Intellihub smart meters to its IoT network.
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Starling, Monzo and Triodos top bank poll
Your Money
Starling, Monzo and Triodos achieved customer scores of 85%, 83% and 83% respectively. Users ranked the brands highly for their customer service and mobile apps. The trio were followed by First Direct (82%), Revolut (78%) and Metro (77%).
Most of the traditional high street banks were found at the bottom of the table with Royal Bank of Scotland ranked the least popular bank with a score of 56%. HSBC scored 57% and TSB 59%. RBS has been one of the three lowest-ranked banks in the Which? survey every year since 2014.
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Zynga Eyes Blockchain Firms For Potential NFT Mobile Games Integration
Tech Times
Following its acquisition under Take-Two Interactive, Zynga is now establishing a blockchain gaming team that will undoubtedly attempt to make NFT and cryptocurrency experiences at the forefront of their endeavors. Zynga is surveying partnerships and purchases of said blockchain firms to build out not one but several original NFT mobile games.
This comes off the month-long heels of Zynga and Forte’s strategic partnership, which will see the two devising more economical strategies for blockchain gaming. It’s clear Web3 as a formula is at the focal point of Zynga’s future ambitions, not merely pushing into NFT gaming but going well beyond in building out better parameters for fun in the space with a specific eye on the mobile platform.
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