Author: Dan Gendro

Application developers felt that providing consumers with a smooth experience was by far the most important consideration.

Adding a mobile commerce experience to apps has given developers a whole new way to monetize their products. Now, they aren’t simply reliant upon the purchase price of the application to make money. Furthermore, enabling ads is also not the only route available to them, particularly when offering a free app.

That said, the choice to include an m-commerce checkout option also comes with several additional decisions.

For the vast majority of app developers, providing a smooth and seamless mobile commerce experience is the highest priority. They strive to provide the consumer with a frictionless experience. The hope is to add to the experience for the user, instead of detracting from it. This, according to The Evolving State of Mobile Commerce study by VisionMobile.

That research provided insight based on the participation of 1,986 app developers. These developers all used the VisionMobile platform for the m-commerce component of their apps.

The mobile commerce experience survey revealed that there are certain strategies that most developers have in common.

Among the respondents, 53 percent said they used app-store billing. This made it by far the most popular among the mobile payments options available. Geography played a role in the most popular billing methods. In emerging markets, operator billing – also known as carrier billing – were most common. This was because those are markets in which it is not commonplace to have credit cards. Thirty three percent of app developers in Africa and the Middle East used that form of payment method for their mobile commerce apps.

The survey revealed that there are three main considerations for app developers when choosing m-commerce payment methods. Those considerations were:

• Seamless and frictionless user experience – easily the most important factor, taking a top priority by 66 percent of respondents. In fact 53 percent said smooth mobile commerce experience was more important than cost.
• Security and the ability to prove it – they need to be able to enable secure payments and show that to consumers.
• Capabilities for international expansion – apps need the potential to grow beyond specific borders or regions.

Students between the ages of 10 and 15 years have thrown their support behind banning classroom phone use.

A mobile phone ban in schools is a rapid way to drum up controversy. It has already caused many debates in the United States as well as other countries around the world. That said, in Swedish classrooms, students aged 10 to 15 years old have supported the decision to stop the use of phones at school.

With the rapid penetration of smartphones among students, the schools suddenly found themselves falling behind.

The school regulations were not keeping up with the massive rise in smartphone use among students. This allowed policies on the subject to be established on a class by class basis. That said, universal policies regarding phone usage in the classrooms were not created. It was up to the individual teachers. While some implemented an all-out mobile phone ban, the majority decided to simply turn a blind eye.

Many parents opposed a mobile phone ban as they wanted to be able to be in direct contact with their kids.

Over time, the trend toward a smartphone ban became greater among the schools. Still, the degree of the ban was different from one school to the next. Some were far more restrictive than others.

A Norwegian telecommunications company called Telnor recently conducted a survey. Results revealed only 6 percent of students between the ages of 10 and 15 years old in Sweden say smartphones are permitted in their classrooms. Though 53 percent said they can use mobile phones at school, this is not permitted within the class.

That said, there remains 40 percent of Swedish students aged 10 to 15 years who say their smartphones are not banned in any way. Among those, 57 percent support a ban. Only 14 percent feel a ban is bad.

There are many reasons for a mobile phone ban, according to Telnor. Lina Sundqvist is the person at Telnor’s who is responsible for the company’s Nätprat (‘net speak’) initiative and for consumer security. Sundqvist said “The reasons for the bans are many and seem to vary between different schools. Amongst other reasons are: to decrease distractions in the students’ working environments, to make students exercise more during recess, and to decrease internet bullying and abuse.”