Data privacy research reveals “reputation timebomb” waiting to blow up for many brands

Mobile Marketing Magazine

Measures taken by companies to protect consumers data are “not working” and are exposing brands to massive reputational risk, according to research commissioned by law firm, Schillings.

The study found that company data practices, often owned by marketing and IT teams, are falling short of legal requirements, and in some cases are harming customers by contributing to incorrect online profiles.

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Mobile money growth surpasses GSMA expectations

Developing Telecoms

Mobile money accounts grew 13% to 1.6 billion in 2022 as daily transactions reached in value of US$3.45 billion, according to trade body the GSMA.

Total transaction value grew by 22% between 2021 and 2022, from US$1 trillion to around US$1.26 trillion. The GSMA highlighted despite the success, 1.4 billion people remain unbanked.

There are now 315 live mobile money deployments globally with peer-to-peer transfers and cashing/cash-out transactions being the most popular use cases.

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Future of Marketing: How Mobile Technology is Changing the Advertising Landscape in the UK

Telemedia Online

With the rise of smartphones and mobile devices, how we consume content has dramatically changed, and so has how businesses reach out to potential customers.

In this article, we will explore how mobile technology is revolutionizing the future of marketing in the UK and the innovative ways companies are using this technology to engage with their audience.

Mobile marketing has become integral to any marketing strategy, with the UK population owning a smartphone. According to a recent study, mobile ad spending in the UK is projected to reach £16.88 billion in 2022, accounting for more than half of all digital ad spending. This demonstrates the growing importance of mobile technology in the advertising landscape and its potential to reach a vast audience.

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App developers on Google Play store offered payment choices following CMA probe

Gov.uk

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is consulting on commitments offered by Google which would give app developers the freedom to break away from Google Play’s billing system and use alternatives to process in-app payments.

Google Play accounts for over 90% of native app downloads on Android devices and restrictions placed on app developers currently require them to use Google Play’s own billing system for in-app transactions involving digital content.

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Leveraging Mobile Phone Data with Machine Learning to Target and Fight High Poverty

Market Tech Post

Social protection systems provide crucial assistance during crises, increase productivity, and protect vulnerable populations. With the COVID-19 pandemic, global extreme poverty has risen for the first time in two decades, making the need for effective social protection programs more urgent than ever. However, targeting eligible households in low to medium-income countries presents a significant challenge, as traditional administrative data, like tax records, is often unavailable due to a large proportion of informal workers.

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India smartphone shipments fall

Mobile World Live

Smartphone shipments in India fell 20 per cent year-on-year to 30.6 million units in Q1 due to uneven demand across segments, with weakness causing inventories to rise, Canalys revealed.

Canalys analyst Sanyam Chaurasia predicted 2023 will be challenging as the mass-market segment is still moving slowly, but noted the premium market is poised for growth, boosting ASPs in the nation.

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The Rise of Mobile Gaming in Europe: Opportunities and Challenges

European Gaming

Mobile gaming across the continent has become a major industry in modern times.

Scroll through the apps on the average person’s phone and you will likely come across the same collections of social media apps, work apps and long-neglected things like Duolingo that once seemed like a good idea.

You will also seldom come across a phone that also has a handful of mobile games downloaded from a variety of developers, showing just how far mobile gaming in Europe has risen since the days of Snake on a Nokia 3310.

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Orange metaverse chief shares vision for the immersive future

TelecomTV

French telco group Orange remains bullish about the potential of the metaverse, especially on the business-to-business (B2B) side, and is exploring novel virtual reality (VR) developments that contribute to society and environmental sustainability. At a media and analyst event in Paris last week, the group’s global head of XR and metaverse, Morgan Bouchet (pictured above), elaborated on the telco’s vision to capture opportunities in the future of immersive technologies and services.

The company does not want to “develop a lot of projects in VR” because, with every project, it needs to ensure there is “balance between the impact on society and the planet”. For instance, the operator’s business in Spain has opened a virtual shop (an announcement on this development is available in Spanish here) to get a better understanding of the “future of a boutique in the city virtually,” he explained, adding that this is the type of project that needs to have guidelines related to the carbon dioxide (CO2) impact from its operation.

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Blog: How green is the cloud?

Mobile World Live

Discussion around climate tech dominated a sustainability conference I attended earlier this month in London. There, tech vendors to environmental lobbyists honed in on decarbonisation goals, an ambition which tails the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Google EMEA president Matt Brittin emphasised the company’s AI sustainability play, while GM for Europe at IBM Ana Paula Assis branded the technology as key in green IT.

But at the heart of this sustainable computing debate is the cloud, which allows organisations to minimise electricity consumption on-site by migrating workloads to virtual servers.

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