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. 

If the user would like to activate another card, simply swipe it/enter  PIN.  Repeat this process with as many cards as you would like to activate in your m-wallet. 

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:

Applications
for mobile devices date back to the 1990s, when Palm—by far the largest
PDA player at the time—built an open platform that developers soon
filled with thousands of applications. Users downloaded applications to
PCs and synchronized them with their PDAs.

Enter the Apple App Store in July 2008.

“Apple did not invent either the model of aftermarket
applications or the notion of building a store to house them,” says
Noah 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 these
functional utilities into full-blown consumer experiences. Apple and
others in its wake have jolted the mobile advertising market and are
paving the way for paid branded applications.
As a result of rising smartphone popularity, eMarketer
projects that mobile Internet access will see significant gains over
the next five years, with the number of mobile Internet users reaching
134 million in 2013. 
 

Global economic forces are taking their toll on the mobile device
market, but smartphones have been spared the ravages of the economic
downturn.

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 and
more accessible in price, consumers are responding by upgrading their
handsets,” says Mr. Elkin. “And once they have experienced the mobile
Internet through improved browsers or installed applications, they
appear unwilling to let it go.”

The size of the mobile applications market is something of a
moving target, given how quickly app stores are proliferating and their
catalogs growing.

Piper Jaffray,
one of few organizations to project the extent of the growth, estimates
that combined spending on consumer and business mobile applications
will top $13 billion worldwide by 2012, a nearly fivefold increase over
2009.

“It is increasingly evident that for many marketers, mobile
applications constitute a necessary avenue for reaching and engaging
with their customers, either by building and marketing a proprietary
application or sponsoring a third-party app,” says Mr. Elkin.

“In both
cases, the essential challenge remains: to understand consumer behavior
and craft experiences that not only resonate with a target audience but
also 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).