Recently in secu Category
Pyramid Research just published its Q3 2009 Handset Forecasts that show a dramatic increase in demand for
smartphones. RIM which has 50% of the current smartphone marekt especially at Verizon.
Pyramid estimate smartphones will represent 31%
of new handsets sold in the US in 2009, up more than double from 15%
two years prior. Indeed, market leader Verizon claimed that smartphones
represented 40% of its device sales in Q2 2009. These smartphone sales will be propelled by US consumers' love for messaging
and mobile Internet-based services on devices with qwerty keyboards,
touch screens, HTML browsers, larger screens and sophisticated
operating systems.
Pyramid believes that Verizon is the world leader in the sale of BlackBerry devices. Second place AT&T, the world leader in iPhone sales, reported similar success. AT&T sold 4.3m integrated devices in Q3 2009, and 75% were iPhones. At the end of the third quarter, 41.7% of AT&T's postpaid base had an integrated device, up from 22% in the year-ago period.
According to Pyramid smartphones will grow
to comprise roughly 60% of new handsets sold in 2014. By then, they expect Apple's exclusive relationship with AT&T to have ceased,
which could potentially make the iPhone available to an additional 200m
US wireless customers.
According to a Cloudmark-commissioned survey from Harris Interactive, nearly two thirds of mobile device owners are concerned about security. The survey showed security concerns are preventing many users from adopting new mobile services for financial transactions and shopping. Spam is reaching more mobile users and becoming a greater nuisance.
Survey results showed that users' perception of security is proving to be a significant barrier to their adoption, especially for mobile financial transactions:
- 65 percent of all mobile device owners expressed concerns about the security of their device.
- Nearly half (46 percent) of these concerned device owners said that their worries about security prevented them from conducting activities on their mobile device.
- Of the activities mobile device owners said they were prevented from doing because of their concerns, financial transactions such as paying bills (73 percent), conducting banking activities (71 percent) and shopping (56 percent) were named most often.
- 79 percent of mobile device owners said that they have never sent or received confidential information of any kind through their device, which may further illustrate their lack of confidence in security.
