Find out the week’s top mobile stories from around the world. Headlines this week include… Tim Cook would rather have you buy an iPhone than use RCS, Emergency text averted possible California power cuts, Online and mobile banking payments hit record high and much more!
Tim Cook would rather have you buy an iPhone than use RCS
Tech Crunch
Tim Cook is not a fan of Rich Communication Services (RCS). The Apple CEO made this clear at the Code 2022 conference, when an audience member asked Apple to adopt RCS so his mother could better see the videos he sends, Cook told him, “Buy your mom an iPhone.”
For the uninitiated, RCS is like hypercharged SMS that lets you send high-quality multimedia files like other chat apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram, while also providing now-standard messaging features like typing indicators, delivery and read receipts, among other things.
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Emergency text averted possible California power cuts
BBC
An emergency text message helped to prevent possible blackouts in the state of California on Tuesday.
The message asked residents to limit energy use for three hours to cut the risk of power cuts being implemented.
The California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO), said it “saw an immediate and significant drop” in the use of power after the text was sent.
The alert was issued after record temperatures put pressure on the state’s electrical grid.
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Feds claw back $30 million of cryptocurrency stolen by North Korean hackers
Ars Technica
Cryptocurrency analytics firm Chainalysis said on Thursday that it helped the US government seize $30 million worth of digital coins that North Korean-backed hackers stole earlier this year from the developer of the non-fungible token-based game Axie Infinite.
When accounting for the more than 50 percent fall in cryptocurrency prices since the theft occurred in March, the seizure represents only about 12 percent of the total funds stolen. The people who pulled off the heist transferred 173,600 ethereum worth about $594 million at the time and $25.5 million in USDC stablecoin, making it one of the biggest cryptocurrency thefts ever.
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Online and mobile banking payments hit record high
Charged
Online and mobile banking payments have hit record highs as consumers switch more to contactless payments.
According to the Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI), both online and mobile banking volumes grew by almost 12% to 36 million payments taking place in the second quarter of the year. The highest level since the data began in 2016.
The figures show there were 49 million euros worth of contactless payments per day between the beginning of April and the end of June 2022.
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5 Ways iSIM Reduces Manufacturing Costs for Cellular IoT Devices
IoT For All
Some IoT solutions work great with short-range connectivity: WiFi, Bluetooth, LoRaWAN, etc. An industrial IoT system may only have to operate within the factory, for instance, or across a limited campus. But if you manufacture devices that travel—mobility tools, inventory trackers, wearables—or you operate in a nationwide or global market, cellular IoT and iSIM are the way to go.
All the major cellular technologies have reached a fair level of maturity. Across the globe, you’ll find the infrastructure for LTE-M, NB-IoT, or LTE Cat 1 connections (even if these technologies vary from one place to the next). Cellular is the only connectivity technology with a globe-spanning scale, which means it’s the best choice for consumer and/or mobile IoT devices.
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Mobile Money And Crypto -What Will The Future Of Africa Look Like?
Ventures Africa
Africa could well be the next big frontier for cryptocurrencies. Many crypto owners are already residing in Africa. The success of mobile money in Africa could be why this is possible. Many users are already comfortable using digital payment solutions.
This comfort with digital payment solutions is already helping the penetration of cryptocurrencies. Triple A’s crypto ownership data places three African countries among the top 20 countries with the highest number of crypto owners. These include Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya at numbers 4, 10, and 13 respectively.
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Tackling the technology gap to build web3 mobile games
Pocket Gamer
From its origins as a successful hypercasual games studio to the cutting edge of web3 mobile games, PlayEmber CEO Hugo Furneaux, charts the company’s quest to reimagine development
Blockchain gaming has certainly had some bad press in the gaming community – you are probably used to reading words like ‘ponzinomics’ or hearing about ‘Degens’ and a lot of ‘LFG’s’. As an industry, there has been a lot of debate around the concept of asset ownership, what you actually own and the benefits blockchain technology can bring to gaming. Not to mention the crypto industry now being in a bear market.
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News Analysis: How Turkish mobile gaming thrives against economic downturn?
xinhuanet
Over the last few years, Türkiye has become one of the world’s fastest growers in mobile gaming, attracting investments home and abroad despite the country’s economic downturn.
In the first half of 2022, the Turkish game industry attracted 333 million U.S. dollars in capitals, the highest in Europe, according to a recent report by Game Factory, an online game developer and incubator based in Türkiye’s largest city Istanbul.
The report also showed that Türkiye has overtaken Italy to become the fifth largest mobile game maker in Europe by total revenue, only behind Germany, Britain, France and Russia.
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In Ghana, mobile apps help smallholder farmers get fairer prices
DW.com
Newly-developed farming apps have brought relief to farmers in Ghana who struggle to access fair market prices. Developers hope the apps will soon also be used on a wider scale to tackle food insecurity on the continent.
Abel Agbango is a a vegetable farmer and has spent the past 12 years carefully cultivating his farmland in Ghana.
The 38-year-old doesn’t have any other profession: His vegetable farm is his only source of livelihood. But Agbango isn’t worried about that right now. His main concern is accessing the direct market in urban areas and getting a decent price for his produce — a problem for which he still hasn’t found a solution after all these years.
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