Author: BWild

A new effort to ban “stalking apps” could also cause the digital marketing industry to feel a pinch.

New legislation has been proposed by Senator Al Franken to help to ban “stalker apps” in the hopes to help better protect the privacy of individuals, but at the same time, this could kick the pins out from under a broad range of cutting edge mobile advertising technologies and campaigns.

Senator Franken has been an important voice in Washington D.C. for the protection of privacy rights.

The senator identifies the “stalker apps” as a range of different types of applications that use the GPS data from a user’s mobile device. Clearly, this effort is very well intentioned as millions of device users have voiced concerns about invasions to their privacy due to the lack of protection for them in this area. However, at the same time, this is causing the mobile advertising industry to push back – hard. The reason is that they have been making a tremendous effort to use this technology in order to build the fastest growing service in that industry, which involves the use of a device owner’s location in order to provide him or her with promotions, ads, and offers that are relevant to that position.

The goal of Senator Franken’s bill is not to harm mobile advertising but is rather to stop stalker apps completely.

During the hearing for the Location Privacy Protection Act of 2014, Senator Franken stated that “My bill would shut down stalker apps once and for all.” He added that “my bill doesn’t protect just victims of stalking. It protects everyone who uses a smartphone, an in-car navigation device, or any mobile device connected to the Internet.”

The target of the bill is the mobile apps that are designed in order to give parents the ability to monitor the activities and locations of their children, such as Spyera and Flexispy. The reason is that these applications are often used for other purposes and are finding themselves in situations of domestic disputes in which every move that partners make are being monitored and tracked. People are stalking others without even having to physically follow them, anymore, making it much harder for the victim to recognize.

Unfortunately, by banning this type of app, it means that other areas, such as the current forms of child safety through parent monitoring, and such as mobile advertising, will also suffer.

While tablets may be the leaders in the mobile tech marketplace, their shipments are notably slowing.

Until now, t-commerce has been leading the way among mobile devices and the growth rate has only continued to climb, but it looks as though tablet shipments are now starting to lose steam and their growth is experiencing a significant decline.

There has been a far larger decline in the demand for tablets than had been predicted in Q1 2014.

Based on the size of the decline in t-commerce that has actually been experienced, when compared to what was predicted in the first quarter of the year, concerns are now being raised regarding what tablets and 2 in 1s will be facing in terms of additional challenges to the marketplace throughout the rest of the year. In fact, the International Data Corporation (IDC) has now decreased its worldwide tablet plus 2 in 1 forecast for 2014 to be 245.4 million units.

This represents a massive drop in the IDC t-commerce shipments forecast that had previously been made.

Last quarter, the IDC had released a prediction that 2014 would see 260.9 million unit shipments. Clearly, this represents a dramatic change in the direction that tablet sales are expected to take. Still, the IDC pointed out in its report that this forecast continues to represent a year over year growth rate of 12.1 percent.

While this is still a healthy rise, it is nowhere near the growth that was experienced in 2013, when tablet shipments had a year over year rise by 51.8 percent.

According to the IDC program vice president of devices and displays, Tom Mainelli, there are two primary issues that are causing the t-commerce marketplace to slow down. “First, consumers are keeping their tablets, especially higher-cost models from major vendors, far longer than originally anticipated. And when they do buy a new one they are often passing their existing tablet off to another member of the family.”

Secondly, he pointed out that as “phablets” – that is hybrids between smartphones and tablets which have screens larger than 5.5 inches – make a bigger splash in the market, consumers are starting to think twice about buying individual smartphones and tablets and are thinking about combining.