Mobiles equivalent to the globe’s population…

Who knew that the number of mobile telephones worldwide is set to catch up to the globe’s population in 2014?

According to the The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), it has been said that all mobile subscriber numbers are set to top a staggering seven billion! “More than half of all mobile subscriptions are now in Asia, which remains the powerhouse of market growth,” the ITU said.

Its quite amazing, that potentially by the end of 2013, overall mobile penetration rates will have reached 96% globally, of which 128% in the developed world, and 89% in developing countries.”Near-ubiquitous mobile penetration makes mobile cellular the ideal platform for service delivery in developing countries,” said Brahima Sanou, director of the ITU’s telecommunication development bureau.

According to the ITU, it is forecasted that 2.7 billion people, or rather 39% of the world’s population, would be using the internet by the end of this year. Its quite a “wow” thought to know what the stats of “going mobile” has brought to the globe! Europe is set to remain the world’s most connected region, with a total of 75% internet penetration which far exceeds the Asia-Pacific region at 32%, and Africa with 16%.”Household internet penetration – often considered the most important measure of internet access – continues to rise. By end 2013, ITU estimates that 41% of the world’s households will be connected to the internet,” the agency noted.

Over the past four years, household access has grown fastest in Africa, with an annual growth rate of 27%, it said. Its great to see that Africa is catching up…..at a slow pace- but  at least we can see that there is certainly “space” for new innovative ideas coming from the mobile and internet sector- so that Africa can start reaching a higher potential within this market.

(article by Ashton)

3 things that could affect the future of payments

The future of payments is hard for anyone to predict, but with the payments landscape changing, what could the future hold?

In the ‘50s and ‘60s plastic credit cards quickly replaced paper money as the major payment method and now it seems that we’ll be staring down the barrel of a completely digital money world soon enough.

A world where coins are nothing more than foil wrapped chocolate you give to children during the holidays and paper money is naught but a myth.

At least that’s how I see a future of money forming amongst the consumer, and I think this because of the rapid pace at which payment models have taken off in the last decade.

If they continue on at such a pace, where could we end up?

Below are three of the key factors that I think will dictate the change modern payment methods.

1. Consumer Choice

It’s already happening as we speak, but consumers are becoming more empowered by the day. Because of this, payment models have started to bend to their whim, letting them dictate how and when they want to pay.

In the future this means that payments will need to be available to be made absolutely everywhere at any time and any place. This also means that banking will happen 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as consumers don’t want to be restricted by such trivialities.

2. The Decline of Bricks and Mortar Banks

This may be a highly controversial point, but more and more people are shying away from going to physical banks – instead preferring to use online or mobile banking instead due to the flexibility it offers and the speediness of making payments and amending details. It’s fast, accessible and easy – why wouldn’t you do it?

If this trend continues to grow in the direction it seems to be, the future will be a place with far fewer brick and mortar banks for consumers to stroll in from off the street. There will still be banks – after all there has to be for anyone to be exchanging money – but their physical high-street presence will be diminished as the need to visit such places to conduct the more advanced interactions can be carried out online or over the phone.

In their current guise, many banks make online and mobile a rather tasking procedure of memorising numbers and codes in the name of security. Once that’s been streamlined, there’s very little – besides human interaction – that could tempt someone to sorting out a problem in store.

3. The Mobile Phone Market

While technology such as NFC has been around for a little while now in cards and payment devices, it’s still very much in its infancy. The major deciding factor for its future comes from what the mobile phone market are doing.

Visa’s partnership with Samsung for the Galaxy S4 shows just how important card companies see the modern mobile phone. The incredible uptake of mobile banking in low-income countries with high levels of the unbanked also show just how impressively powerful the mobile phone market is in dictating how consumers handle their finances.

In the future, payment methods will be dictated by the technologies phone manufactures decide to include and the usability they decide to implement. In the West, mobile banking really only took off on the advent of the smartphone where it became incredibly accessible – while in the East and Africa it’s been a much more prevalent method of payment, so it could really sway either way.

What three factors do you think will dictate how the payments market will change in the future? Could you see us ever living in a cashless society?

(article by Vaughn)

Financial Services – Will mobile break the bank?

If money is the quintessential social symbol, and the mobile phone is the quintessential social platform, what innovations will the mobile age bring to financial services? We look beyond the mobile-wallet zeitgeist to make predictions for the short-, mid-, and long term.

One-click everything

Short-term prediction: mobile payment will be increasingly prevalent, not as a stand-alone service but as an integral part of mobile applications with a broader purpose.

Our expectations about services in the real world are increasingly formed by our online experiences. These have set the benchmark for being able to effortlessly and fluidly search for, compare, purchase, and consume products and services. Mobile phones promise to bring this same fluidity to the world formerly known as “offline,” in the physical realm.

A good example is the new generation of taxi apps such as “GetTaxi,” “Hailo,” and “Uber,” which are revolutionizing the cab-riding experience with new models of sharing rides or information about taxi availability.

Such new services have far-reaching consequences for the underlying, preceding business models. These applications are designed around the customer journey, providing an end-to-end solution for ordering a cab, tracking its arrival, and paying for the ride. GetTaxi, for example, cuts traditional dispatch services out of the loop, placing all taxi drivers on a level playing field in their ability to win rides – and freeing up a niche in the value chain for GetTaxi to extract revenue. Taxi drivers who had previously refused credit card payment have virally adopted the GetTaxi service, which uses a mobile payment solution based on credit cards and connects directly into the metering system. From a mobile payment perspective, the key lesson here is that new payment systems will often be rejected on their own merits, but accepted if they are an integral part in a larger value proposition.

In a similar vein, from a payment perspective the much-publicized Square card-reader and mobile wallet solutions, act purely as aggregators to underlying, pre-existing credit card and interchange infrastructure. If a mere vehicle for payment were all they offered, they wouldn’t be attractive to customers or vendors. The real value of Square is that it radically simplifies the user experience of payment, while enriching the user experience either side of payment. It does so by bundling it into a rich overall customer journey that includes vendor discovery and loyalty programs. This has driven Square’s market growth and allowed them to justify extracting much more revenue than if they were purely processing payments.

The rapid growth of Square has spurred PayPal, previously a pure online player, to launch PayPal Here, a nearly identical service. These services, which bring together location data, mobile applications, credit cards, and loyalty programs, can be considered as bridges between online and offline purchasing behavior. They may ultimately dissolve this distinction.

Parallel currencies

Mid-term prediction: Mobile e-currencies will thrive in the “post-cash economy,” allowing telcos and retailers to compete with banks for many of their core services – and often without submitting to the same regulatory controls.

Since the launch of the Internet many e-currency solutions have been explored in theory and practice, but most have remained limited in scope. But recent examples of mobile money from East Africa seems to show that mobile phone based e-currencies offer advantages that could be applied globally.

The M-Pesa branchless banking solution in Kenya and Tanzania is the most striking and well-known example. The service enables use of the mobile phone to deposit and withdraw money, transfer money to other users and non-users, pay bills, purchase airtime, and transfer money to and from a conventional bank account – all without being categorized as a bank. M-Pesa has given almost 30 million users in Kenya and Tanzania access to banking services for the first time, with a level of convenience and simplicity that leapfrogs the standards of the “developed” world. Among the several remarkable aspects to this service is the fact that it was born out of a user-generated innovation – the use of airtime credits as a cash-alternative for money transfers – improved upon through the creation of the M-Pesa service. The M-Pesa is also, to all intents and purposes, a parallel, privately controlled e-currency, backed by the Kenyan shilling but separate from it. In just 5 years of use, this has grown to be the currency in which 25% of Kenyan financial transactions occur. In other words, M-Pesa has expanded the national money supply by 25%, outside the control of the central and commercial banking system. In November 2012, an additional blurring of boundaries occurred with the launch of M-Shwari, a mobile-only banking service linked to M-Pesa that provides an interest-earning savings account and a micro-financing service.

In the light of this runaway success, we’re anticipating that the launch of a parallel currency by Amazon, announced for May 2013, may be much more than a mere micro-payment solution for in-app purchases on the Kindle Fire. (That would scarcely be justifiable, given that Kindle users already have convenience of one-click payment). It may rather be the first step towards a parallel Amazon economy, with a supranational and hyper-liquid e-currency. That would have far-reaching consequences for the international financial system – as well as providing the perfect vehicle for Amazon to enter the field of mobile payments.

The crisis of risk

Long-term prediction: real-time Big Data will challenge the insurance industry as we know it, radically changing our way of understanding risk.

The basic idea of insurance is to mutualize risk: a very large group of people put their money in the pot in case one of them needs it later. It’s very simple when we believe that our likelihood of needing a pay-out (essentially, our risk profile) is approximately equal: anyone can contribute to the pot on the same terms. However, risk profiles are not equal, and the trend of the insurance industry has been to create more and more sophisticated models to define risk categories. This tends towards the asymptote of the “risk category of one,” where everything known about me is combined to calculate a unique risk profile for me as an individual. This profile in turn defines how much my insurance costs. And the more accurate the profiling, the greater the cost variance, eroding the basic principle of risk-sharing to the point where those most likely to require insurance may no longer be able to afford it.

Already today, the limitations on the accuracy of this risk-profiling are not in the data science, but in our social, legal and commercial conventions. In the US, for example, car insurance premiums are calculated including such factors as age, gender, and marital status, but factors such as race, religion, and income are excluded by law. But big data will enable insurers to work around these exclusions and uncover additional statistically relevant factors, from my personal and family history, the neighborhood I live in, my social circle, school, workplace, profession, and even genetic code, which may be used to calculate an increasingly accurate, unique risk profile. And before long, the differential between risk profiles might no longer be measured in percentage points, but in orders of magnitude.

Now imagine taking this static data and intersecting it with the real-time data provided by mobile devices. What happens to my car insurance risk profile if my GPS shows I drive erratically, or park my car in a bad neighborhood (maybe not the neighborhood where I have declared my residence)?

How would my health insurance risk profile change if my mobile purchase history shows me buying cigarettes, or alcohol, or even just high-cholesterol food? And if my call history shows erratic sleep patterns and

a reduction of my social circle – common signs of depression – will my life insurance risk profile change?

Today we deliberately turn our eyes away from the predictive value that such real-time Big Data could provide – because of our justifiable fear for its social and individual consequences. But this ostentation of innocence cannot be sustained for long. Whether we like it or not, our fundamental ideas about choice, destiny, discrimination, individual and social responsibility will be put to the test by the emerging data science – and we predict that insurance as we know it today will be one of the first casualties.

It’s unlikely that all three predictions will play out exactly as we’ve called them. But they are representative of recurring patterns we see in the expansion of disruptive platform technologies, from the pc to the Internet to the mobile phone. Firstly, the new platforms allow existing services to be offered through new channels, and by new players. Secondly, they allow new “native” services to emerge, that solve old problems in new ways.

And finally, they shift the balance of power and value in whole industries in ways that lead to the collapse of existing business models, and the rise of their replacements from unexpected quarters. The players who benefit from this are those who combine fluency with the new technology, with willingness to embrace change and disruption – which gives us reason to suspect that many will be from outside the boundaries of the financial services industry today.

(article by T. Sutton)

In the multiscreen world, context is king

With the appearance of each new device, the experts have weighed in on what it will mean for the future of advertising. In the late 1930s, industry commentators worried about whether advertising could ever succeed on television screens. A letter to the editor of The New York Times asserted, “It will prove difficult to prepare and present a television advertising message”, while the author of Television: A Struggle for Power claimed “there is considerable doubt that advertising will be successful when presented to the eye as well as the ear.” So, there are always skeptics. And that’s not a bad thing: they motivate the dreamers among us to prove them wrong.

But the truth is we won’t build the future of advertising device by device. We need to learn to look at these devices as a way of understanding the context in which consumers are looking for information. Real people use these newest devices — phones, tablets, “phablets”, touch-screen laptops and Web-enabled TVs — to connect with each other, shop, navigate the world, watch videos, play games, and take pictures. It’s how, when, and why people use their devices we should be paying attention to and less so the devices themselves.

Part of the reason for this is that we can no longer deduce a customer’s context purely by the device she is using. We used to assume that your mobile meant you were on the go, your tablet meant you were at home on the sofa, and your desktop meant you were at work, but this is no longer accurate. These devices are now bleeding into new realms and your behavior is very different depending on the context in which you’re using the device. Think about your own life. You might email on your laptop in front of the TV and simultaneously use your tablet to look up a takeout menu, or listen to music. Don’t believe me? Spend time with a 16 year old!

Today, most people constantly switch between devices in order to stay connected. And despite advertisers’ initial concerns, consumer eyeballs are not necessarily being “lost” from one screen to another. Rather than splitting a finite number of hours across a greater number of screens, consumers are often using multiple screens simultaneously. This is the new multiscreen world.

And we’re starting to see remarkable data suggesting just how quickly the multiscreen world is taking hold with consumers. For example, let’s look at the Holy Grail of traditional TV advertising, the Super Bowl. Traditional Super Bowl campaigns focused a huge amount of brand energy on one, expensive slot of air time. Now, even if people leave the living room to grab chips and soda from the kitchen during the breaks, it doesn’t mean they’ll miss your ad. Super Bowl advertisers can bank on an extended online audience to justify and add value to their TV buys. This year, Super Bowl ads on YouTube were watched more than 76 million times before game day and we saw a total of 200 million views on 100 video ads and teasers tied to the Super Bowl.

The multiscreen world creates opportunities for marketers by helping them reach people in the right context with the right message on any device. For example, a pizza restaurant wants to show one ad to someone searching for pizza at noon downtown on their smartphone (click-to-call and restaurant locator), and a different ad to someone searching for pizza at 9pm on their laptop or tablet at home (link to online order form or menu). Context-aware ads like this are more likely to get a positive response because they help people achieve something quickly and simply so they can get on with life.

Advertisers should focus their investments on the contexts they care about. For example, our pizza restaurant may be having a slow day and want to attract more walk-in customers for lunch. Their ad could show lunchtime discount offers, directions and a click to call function to people searching mid-day for pizza within a 5 mile radius of the restaurant location. Or, if someone’s searching for your retail housewares store on a mobile device during business hours, your ad can direct them to call you or provide a map of your location, whereas if they search for you when you’re closed, you can direct them to your website to research and make purchases online.

Context-aware ads create a connection, they entertain, inspire and influence. They don’t feel like an intrusion because they provide a great experience that’s based on the user’s context. So rather than focus solely on the device as the centerpiece of your next campaign, go a level or two deeper to examine the context. That’s where the opportunities lie in today’s multiscreen world.

(article by Nikesh Arora)

Instagram is the surging platform for businesses and why more brands are getting committed. Are you?

Picture speaks a thousand words!

This explains why the Instagram is so popular nowadays. Within two years after its first launch at October 2010, it transforms from a mere app for people to post pictures which did not have a lot of marketing value to an effective platform largely tapped by business marketers as a channel to reach out to new audiences.

Just like Facebook and Twitter, Instagram allows us to immediately get the latest news happening around us. The advantage of Instagram over other typical social media platforms could be that it appears to be more classic and stylish – with all the filters and add ons for our pictures. It is an arising social platform for people from all around the world to be connected together. Furthermore, certain times when words are hard to explain for ourselves, pictures can actually do a better job! What’s more – pictures are able to attract more attention as compared to words.

These are the reasons why more and more businesses are leveraging on Instagram nowadays. As mentioned by Social Media Examiner, there are 5 ways a people can use the Instagram to promote their businesses:

1. Use Instagram Profiles to Reach a Wider Audience
2. Create Engagements with Contests
3. Reward Followers with Promo Codes
4. Feature your Customers
5. Get more Interest in Your Events

With millions of users betting their money and time on visual social networks, marketers have extended their arms in grabbing all they can. Though engagement is heavily concentrated among certain brands, all the companies are soon catching up!

The photo-sharing smartphone app Instagram may have created a bit of controversy last year when it made changes to its privacy policy, but that doesn’t appear to have slowed brand and consumer uptake of the service. According to findings from social media measurement and analytics company Simply Measured, adoption by the Top 100 brands (based on Interbrand’s rankings) rose five percentage points (54% to 59%) from November 2012 to February 2013.

Although brand presence on Facebook-owned Instagram is light compared to their activity on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and even Google+, it is growing. The growth may be partially due to Instagram’s recent introduction of web profiles and feeds, both of which provide brands with a chance to better present their content and engage with followers.

According to Simply Measured, the top brands on Instagram include MTV, Starbucks Coffee, Nike, Burberry, Tiffany & Co., Gucci, Audi, GE, Ralph Lauren and Adidas – all of which have more than 100,000 Instagram followers.

Interestingly, Simply Measured made note that the top-followed brands on Instagram accounted for the vast majority of brand engagement on the platform. Currently, the top 8 brands are responsible for 80% of engagement. But that is down from November, when the top 8 brands accounted for 92% of engagement, suggesting that other brands are getting more involved and adept on the network.

Although the top Instagram brands have varying strategies and objectives on the platform, they share some common metrics and sharing habits. According to Simply Measured, 41% of the top 100 brands share more than 1 photo on Instagram per week.

MTV, which Simply Measured ranked as the No. 1 followed Instagram brand account, is less interested in using photo filters on Instagram. Rather, the company posts photos of musicians and celebrities, often behind the scenes of popular MTV programs. The photos receive a high level of engagement, especially when fans recognize famous faces in the photos.

Starbucks, the No. 2 brand on Instagram, takes an artsier approach than MTV, often posting filtered shots of coffee mugs and hand-crafted beverages. Nike, which saw engagement grow 6% since November, uses the platform to showcase its products in motion. Its photos of newly released sneakers appeal to a niche community of “sneakerheads” and tennis shoe collectors.

It makes sense that MTV, Starbucks and Nike – all of which have a stake in reaching younger consumers – would make Instagram a social media priority. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Instagram may resonate more with millennial consumers than other age groups. Pew’s data indicated that 28% of US internet users between the ages of 18 and 29 used Instagram in December 2012, compared with 14% of those between 30 to 49. Very few Instagram users were older than 50.

Although Instagram is currently an immature social network compared to well-established platforms like Facebook and Twitter, the mobile social network may provide a good opportunity for marketers interested in visual content marketing. It gives brands a chance to be creative and connect with younger fans at a relatively low cost.

(Article by Lizhen, Ayushi, eMarketer)

Mobiles to match globe’s population

The number of mobile telephones worldwide is set to catch up to the globe’s population next year, the United Nations’ telecommunications agency said on Thursday.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) said mobile subscriber numbers looked set to top seven billion in 2014.

“More than half of all mobile subscriptions are now in Asia, which remains the powerhouse of market growth,” the ITU said.

By the end of 2013, overall mobile penetration rates will have reached 96% globally, 128% in the developed world, and 89 percent in developing countries, it added.

“Near-ubiquitous mobile penetration makes mobile cellular the ideal platform for service delivery in developing countries,” said Brahima Sanou, director of the ITU’s telecommunication development bureau.

The ITU also forecast that 2.7 billion people, or 39% of the world’s population, would be using the internet by the end of this year.

Europe will remain the world’s most connected region, with 75% internet penetration, far outpacing the Asia-Pacific region at 32%, and Africa with 16%, it said.

“Household internet penetration – often considered the most important measure of internet access – continues to rise. By end 2013, ITU estimates that 41% of the world’s households will be connected to the internet,” the agency noted.

Over the past four years, household access has grown fastest in Africa, with an annual growth rate of 27%, it said.

10% connected

But despite a positive general trend, 90% of the 1.1 billion households around the world that are still unconnected are in the developing world.

It also highlighted disparities in the field of broadband internet.

It said the star performers in terms of access speeds were South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan, alongside some surprises in Europe, including Bulgaria, Iceland and Portugal.

The cost of fixed-broadband services has dropped precipitously over the past five years, declining by 82% if measured as a share of gross national income per capita, it said.

In developing countries, however, such services remain relatively expensive, with residential fixed-broadband accounting for just over 30% of average monthly gross national income per capita.

Broadband is most affordable in Europe, where a basic subscription costs on average less than 2% of gross national income per capita, the ITU said.

(article News24, AFP)

5 tech myths debunked: cell phones don’t cause cancer & more

Myths are more common than most people will admit. They perpetuate because they sound like they could be true – and nobody has time to fact-check every last detail. Eventually, as the myths are repeated time and time again, they sound more factual than the truth.

Technology is as susceptible to myths as any other niche. The complexity of the subject, combined with the rapid introduction of new, unfamiliar innovations, creates a perfect breeding ground for misunderstanding. Let’s set these tech myths straight.

RAM Usage Is Bad

MakeUseOf will occasionally receive a question from a reader that asks about how to reduce RAM usage on a computer, tablet or smartphone. Their alarm is understandable. A user browsing the web in Windows 7 might open their task manager to find over six gigabytes of RAM used. “Ack!” they think, “no wonder my computer is so slow!”

In truth, this relationship should be flipped on its head. RAM is very, very quick. Mechanical hard drives and some forms of flash storage (like most SD cards) are slow. By storing data that might be needed in RAM, a computer can increase the load speed of frequently accessed software. If RAM is not full of data, it’s effectively doing nothing, so why have it sit empty?

Smartphone users shouldn’t worry for the same reason. Background apps can negatively impact performance on an Android phone, but this usually isn’t because of memory. Instead, the culprit is usually an app that’s running in the background. Clearing memory appears to improve performance only because the offending app is closed to free up space.

Improperly Unmounting A USB Drive Will Delete Data

Windows has long sounded the alarm about improperly unmounting disk drives. To this day, you may still receive warning messages when you remove a drive that you haven’t properly disabled through the operating system. Given the alarm, you’d think that the consequences of disobeying would be disastrous.

Not true. USB drives can be freely removed from a computer without issue in most situations. I can attest to this personally. As part of my work, I often have to move flash drives from one PC to the next, and I’ve never lost data from a drive because of it.

So why the warning? Microsoft is playing it safe. Data corruption can occur, but only if a USB drive is actively in use at the moment it is unplugged. Most users don’t do this. Still, Microsoft doesn’t want to be on the hook for the 1-in-1000th  time it does occur. And that’s why the alarm is raised even when there’s no fire.

You Don’t Need An Antivirus If You’re Careful

Whenever I write an antivirus article I inevitably receive a reply from some smart-alec who claims that you don’t need an antivirus if you’re careful. Viruses come from infected files, right? So just don’t download them! You’ll be fine.

Well, actually, that tech myths couldn’t be more wrong. A decade and a half ago, most viruses were distributed through infected files, but they’ve become far more sophisticated since then. Worms, a specific class of virus, can infect any vulnerable computer through networking exploits. Other viruses spread using browser vulnerabilities. And still more are designed to spread via USB drives or local networks.

Clever users might respond by claiming people don’t have to worry if their software is up to date. This too is no guarantee. Zero-day exploits are common and even a patched system is a sitting duck. An antivirus may be able to stop such an attack (even though it’s unknown) by using heuristic detection to raise the alarm when a file behaves suspiciously. Those without antivirus, however, have no defense.

Cell Phones Cause Cancer

Many consumer technologies rely on energy and therefor emit or use some form of radiation. Even radio waves are a form of radiation, and since cell phones use them, there’s been concern that having a source of radiation close to our heads could cause cancer. This has been backed up by an alarming report from the World Health Organization which labeled cell phones a “Class B Carcinogen”.

You’d expect that to be based on some fairly hefty evidence, right? Actually, the WHO report is less damning than it sounds in headlines. Class B simply means that a study has indicated that there might be a link, but the link is too weak to be definitive. Meanwhile, numerous other studies have found no link. This includes a massive Danish study involving 350,000 people that was released in late 2011.

Further evidence against the risk of cancer can be found in what we know of physics. Radiation comes in multiple forms, and humans only need to worry about radiation energetic enough to damage DNA. Ultraviolet rays from the sun, which can cause skin cancer, are over 400,000 times more energetic than those emitted from cell phones. Low energy waves like radio can’t hurt DNA, and that means they can’t cause cancer.

Everything Electronic Causes Cancer

This means that what holds true for cell phones should hold true for other wireless devices, as well. The rise of wireless networks has caused distress about what all those waves bouncing through the atmosphere might do to our cells. The answer is simple – nothing.  Sleeping on a bed made of wireless routers would be uncomfortable, but it’s not going cause cancer.

Some users become concerned because of another alarming effect. Heat. As electronics are used, they put out heat, and that heat is absorbed by our bodies. That’s why your thighs are warm after using a laptop.

Computers can be harmful if they’re too hot, but the problem isn’t limited to electronics. Dermatologists have long known that constant exposure to heat can cause scaly, discolored skin which is often permanent. A hot computer can cause this – as can a heating blanket, seat warmer, fireplace or oven.

While skin discoloration and minor burns can be a problem to a handful of people, there’s no evidence that normal, intermediate use of a computer will cause cancer. The lesson from dermatology is simple. If something is hot, don’t hang around it too long.

Conclusion

This is merely a handful of tech myths. There are plenty more out there, ranging from the believable to the utterly outrageous. Have you heard a tech myth that you later found out wasn’t true? Tell us about it in the comments.

(article by Matt Smith)

Come i malware prendono di mira social media e dispositivi Mobile

Il 32% dei link abbreviati nascondono contenuti maligni. L’82% delle App malevoli usa gli SMS come parte dell’attacco. I contenuti memorizzati sullo smartphone sono sempre più a rischio. Il Threat Report 2013 illustra, in 25 pagine, come stanno cambiando i malware, le procedure di attacco e i consigli per difendersi.

websense-2013-threat-report copy

Il 2012 ha visto il conseguimento di numerosi successi da parte dei pirati informatici, che sono riusciti a violare molti dei siti web e delle difese più affidabili del mondo.

Le minacce informatiche hanno trovato un terreno fertile nei dispositivi mobili e sono penetrate in profondità nei social media. I cybercriiminali inoltre hanno anche fatto un salto di qualità negli attacchi perpetrati via email, Web e tramite gli altri vettori tradizionali.

Il Threat Report 2013, realizzato da Websense, affronta in 25 pagine queste tematiche, con l’obiettivo di fornire ai professionisti della sicureza gli spunti e gli strumenti per migliorare l’efficienza delle soluzioni di protezione esistenti e identificare le  lacune nella sicurezza che possono richiedere un nuovo approccio e strategie più innovative.

In particolare, il rapporto illustra i cambiamenti significativi nel panorama della sicurezza secondo diverse prospettive:

• Le minacce del Web
• Le minacce dei social media
• Le minacce Mobile
• Le minacce via email
• Il comportamento del malware
• Il furto e la fuga dei dati

WHITE PAPER | 11 Marzo 2013 | fornito da: Websense | lingua: Inglese

Week’s review: Reasons to be fearful

Mixed economic messages, threats from North Korea, and a wary outlook on Europe’s telco sector means it could be time to head for the hills.

At times this week it has been impossible to know which way is up; right from left; Pepsi from Coca-Cola, and so on.

After years of economic doom and gloom, the Dow Jones Industrial Average twice hit all-time highs this week, while on this side of the Atlantic, the European Central Bank revised down its Eurozone growth forecasts for 2013 and held interest rates at 0.75%.

One minute North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un was embracing retired basketball nutter Dennis Rodman and hanging out with the Harlem Globetrotters, the next he was tearing up the armistice with his southern neighbour and threatening the U.S. with pre-emptive nuclear strikes.

Spring fleetingly arrived in the U.K., albeit for just one day, as temperatures in some areas of the country reached a balmy 17 degrees Celsius. However, a day later forecasters were warning us to prepare for the return of snow next week.

And as for telecoms, analysts at Berenberg Bank released a report on Wednesday that contained six reasons to be optimistic about the European telecoms sector… but seven reasons for pessimism.

First, the good news.

Berenberg said increasing talk of M&A – think Verizon buying Vodafone out of their U.S. mobile joint venture, and the latter linked with a move for Kabel Deutschland – is positive because it could open up new investment opportunities, improve scale and ease competition. Of course, it is just talk at the moment, and there are no discernible signs that regulatory concerns about either in-market or regional consolidation will go away any time soon.

Meanwhile, “increased fibre take-up in many markets is driving improved ARPU trends,” claimed Berenberg, while increases in line rental fees in the U.K. fixed market may provide “more reason for optimism”, if they are replicated in other countries.

It also pointed to the EU’s softening stance on regulated wholesale copper prices; no fresh regulated cuts in mobile termination rates or roaming charges in the offing; and the potential for further cost-cutting as reasons investors should be cautiously optimistic.

However, some of Berenberg’s six reasons to be cheerful rely on things that might happen, rather than things that have actually happened, and they contrast starkly with its seven reasons that may cause one to run to the hills, craft a tinfoil hat and hoard canned goods.

“Capex has generally been on the increase in the sector as incumbents commit to more aggressive roll-out plans associated with fibre, and also accelerated roll-out associated with 4G,” said Berenberg. It said 2013 capex estimates have increased by 4% on average.

That’s before we get to the myriad threats and structural problems afflicting Europe’s telco sector.

European mobile players are still seeing flat or falling service revenue growth, noted Berenberg, thanks to the combination of the aforementioned regulation of MTRs and roaming, and intense competitive pressure.

Indeed, you only have to look at some of the recent numbers from the sector’s big names to know that: Telefonica saw revenue at its European business fall 6.7% in Q4; during the same three-month period, Deutsche Telekom saw group revenue contract 1.4%; and on Thursday Telecom Italia announced full-year revenue fell 1.5% in 2012 compared to the year before.

Berenberg also warned quad-play services could put the squeeze on pure-play mobile operators, increasing downward price pressure, with “73% of consumers citing cost savings as their primary motivation to bundle, looking for an average cost saving of 20%.”

While we’re on the subject, “while pricing for mobile operators has been deflationary, the cost base has been inflationary,” Berenberg said, citing increasing smartphone subsidy costs and rising commission fees as a growing proportion of new customers are added via third-party retail partners.

The bank also raised concerns about ongoing free cash flow leakage driven by restructuring, pension top-ups, and spectrum costs among others. That, combined with decisions by some telcos to go on the hunt for more equity financing, KPN being a recent example, is also making credit agencies twitchy too, it warned.

If all that wasn’t terrifying enough, there is still the threat of some pesky new entrant coming along and stealing a chunk of your revenue.

Iliad is the most recent high-profile example, its Free Mobile unit capturing an 8% share of the French mobile market within 12-months of launching and forcing the country’s incumbents to slash prices.

“For France Telecom, for example, contract ARPU declines are running close to 10%, while Q4 voice ARPU declined by 16%,” said Berenberg.

In summary, “we are retaining a cautious stance on the sector,” it said, which I would argue is a somewhat mild way of putting it…

Moving on, and reports this week revealed that China is expected to issue ‘4G’ licences this year, although China Unicom Chairman Chang Xiaobing said an exact date has yet to be announced, and so itdoes not expect to spend much on its 4G infrastructure in 2013. This is a contrasting approach to rival China Mobile, which aims to deploy 200,000 TD-LTE base stations by the end of the year.

Another country that looks set to get 4G soon is Iraq, after it emerged that Alcatel-Lucent has been contracted by local player Regional Telecom to supply it with equipment for the country’s first LTE network.

Elsewhere, Dutch cable operator Ziggo announced that Deutsche Telekom’s outgoing chief executive, Rene Obermann, will become its new CEO from 1 January 2014; O2 Health’s U.K. arm brought its Help at Hand mobile monitoring service to high street retailers; BT announced it will reuse dormant fibre cables to bring high-speed broadband to the remote Isles of Scilly; Millicom said it aims to approximately double annual group revenue to $9 billion over the next five years; Juniper Research predicted operator billing revenues will reach $13 billion worldwide by 2017; and IDC expects globalsmartphone shipments will outstrip feature phone shipments this year.

Finally, Deutsche Telekom announced a partnership with crowd-sourced WiFi provider Fon; the U.S. Justice Department raised no objections to T-Mobile’s proposed merger with MetroPCS; India said it will go ahead with its plan to allow holders of BWA spectrum to offer basic mobile services; and the EU slapped Microsoft with a €561 million fine for not giving Windows users the option to use rival Web browsers.

(article by N. Wood – Total Telecom)

EU ministers agree on risk-based approach for data protection

Law would account for sensitivity of data held, importance of its theft or misuse.

Proposed new laws on data protection in the 27-nation bloc should take into account the nature of data companies hold, rather than just being based on their size or the amount of data, European Union justice ministers agreed Friday.

 “Among a number of issues discussed was the concept of using a risk-based approach to determine the obligation of data processors,” Alan Shatter, the justice minister of Ireland, which holds the EU’s six-month rotating presidency, told reporters. “This idea is that there would be varying levels of obligation based on the inherent risk of the data processing undertaken by a particular business.”

This means the law would account for the sensitivity of data held by a corner shop or bakery making deliveries, compared to a highly-sophisticated online marketing company – and the importance of this data being misused or stolen. 

EU ministers, in parallel with the European Parliament, are discussing a new set of laws for the bloc. The current law dates from 1995, and there are currently huge variations between the data privacy regulations in each country.

 European Union Commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding said this approach would help ensure companies were treated appropriately, and show that “we are not here to create a toy for the lawyers of multi-nationals.” 

”We should provide legal certainty to SMEs who should know clearly what their data protection obligations are,” Ms. Reding said following the meeting. “We need standard criteria and parameters, which allow simple compliance and supervision.”

(article by F. Robinson – Dow Jones Newswires)