One Billion Mobile Apps: What’s Next?
JUNE 9, 2009 
(Editor's Note: Hopefully some Mobile Payments Security?)
eMarketer reports that Mobile Phone/Internet (especially smartphone) usage will surge, resulting in a ton of mobile applications. HomeATM has designed a payment application for smartphones which enable them as secure payment devices.
Unlike other applications, (software based) our platform enables the user to attach a SmartSwipe to their Smartphone's earjack, swipe their card, (and enter their PIN if swiping a debit card) which activates that card as a payment instrument on a users smartphone.
When you are done activating your cards, pass our SmartSwipe on to your friends and/or family and they can do the same to enable THEIR phone as a secure mobile payment device. In terms of security, your cardholder data is instantaneously encrypted and securely transmitted to the Hardware Security Module (HSM) at the Network Operations Center (NOC) Simply put, there is NO other Smartphone application more secure than HomeATM's SmartSwipe application.
Here's the eMarketer report:
Applicationsfor mobile devices date back to the 1990s, when Palm—by far the largestPDA player at the time—built an open platform that developers soonfilled with thousands of applications. Users downloaded applications toPCs and synchronized them with their PDAs.
Enter the Apple App Store in July 2008.
“Apple did not invent either the model of aftermarketapplications or the notion of building a store to house them,” saysNoah Elkin, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Mobile Applications: Moving Beyond Apple, “but it did succeed in radically improving an existing idea.”Excitement over the iPhone and App Store transformed thesefunctional utilities into full-blown consumer experiences. Apple andothers in its wake have jolted the mobile advertising market and arepaving the way for paid branded applications.
As a result of rising smartphone popularity, eMarketerprojects that mobile Internet access will see significant gains overthe next five years, with the number of mobile Internet users reaching134 million in 2013.
Click Picture Below to Enlarge and Read
Global economic forces are taking their toll on the mobile devicemarket, but smartphones have been spared the ravages of the economicdownturn.
Even in the face of a worldwide recession, the International Data Corporation (IDC) expects smartphone shipments to grow by 3.4% this year, and expand at triple the rate of feature phones in 2010.
This sales growth will dramatically reshape the device market. By 2013, Informa predicts smartphones will make up 38% of all handset sales worldwide, more than double their share in 2009.
“As integrated devices grow more sophisticated in functionality andmore accessible in price, consumers are responding by upgrading theirhandsets,” says Mr. Elkin. “And once they have experienced the mobileInternet through improved browsers or installed applications, theyappear unwilling to let it go.”
Piper Jaffray,one of few organizations to project the extent of the growth, estimatesthat combined spending on consumer and business mobile applicationswill top $13 billion worldwide by 2012, a nearly fivefold increase over2009.
“It is increasingly evident that for many marketers, mobileapplications constitute a necessary avenue for reaching and engagingwith their customers, either by building and marketing a proprietaryapplication or sponsoring a third-party app,” says Mr. Elkin.
“In bothcases, the essential challenge remains: to understand consumer behaviorand craft experiences that not only resonate with a target audience butalso integrate with other channels.”
To find out more about this topic, check out the new eMarketer report, Mobile Applications: Moving Beyond Apple (available only to Total Access subscribers).
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