Author: Julie Campbell

According to the latest Hipcricket survey, this channel will show its true value before the end of the year.

Although the holiday shopping season has become synonymous with crowded malls and waiting in tremendous lineups once the perfect items have been found, mobile commerce is predicted to begin a sizeable change in this tradition, this year.

The prediction is that many more shoppers will be looking to their smartphones and tablets to skip the lines.

Moreover, shoppers will also be using mobile commerce to be able to hunt for the products that they want and find the best prices so that they can buy them in store, reducing the amount of time that they will actually spend going from one brick and mortar store, so that they can beeline to exactly what they want. Not only will they be purchasing gifts over smartphones and tablets but they will be finding them and tracking them down before buying them in person.

This is according to the latest mobile commerce data that has been released by Hipcricket.

The Hipcricket study has shown that 53 percent of the participants in its holiday shopping study intend to spend a larger amount over mobile commerce in 2013 than they did at the same time in 2012.

The report stated that “Hipcricket survey data shows that 42% of respondents will shop more on mobile devices this holiday season compared to 2012. This means that the total number of mobile purchases should increase significantly, as the survey also found that in the past six months, close to 59% of smartphones users made at least one purchase on their device.”

It also went on to say that mobile commerce will contribute to the overall sales made in over different channels from traditional online shopping (over desktops or laptops) and in store. They said that there will be two ways that smartphone and tablets will be contributing, and that is a driver of sales, as people shop over the devices themselves, and as a research tool that will send people directly into the stores or to their traditional computers where they will complete the transaction based on what they found on the smaller screens.

This is exacerbated by the number of devices that remain unprotected.

Mobile security solutions providers are already struggling with the practices of many clients through their BYOD initiatives – which are becoming increasingly common – but a new report has indicated that the problem is growing on a large number of levels.

The report indicates that cybersecurity threats have taken off over the last two years, particularly in smartphones.

The study was conducted by Juniper Research Ltd., a firm based in the United Kingdom, and indicated that mobile security threats have taken off over the last couple of years and despite that fact, the majority of smartphones still remain nearly entirely unprotected.

This is because mobile security threats are starting to change in their primary focus.

Although cyber criminals had initially transferred their focus from PCs to mobile devices for consumers, they are starting to concentrate on the enterprise space to a growing degree. By the end of this year, it is expected that there will be one million types of mobile malware that will be thriving by the end of 2013.

In fact, the analysts at Juniper determined that over 80 percent of all consumer and enterprise owned smartphones will continue to be unprotected throughout the remainder of the year, despite the large exposure and considerable threat of malware. The slow mobile security protection is the result of low awareness among device users to the vulnerabilities, and the overall perception that these devices are too expensive to protect.

These findings were published in Juniper’s “Mobile Security: BYOD, mCommerce, Consumer &Enterprise 2013-2018” report. Within that report, Juniper divided the online landscape for mobile security threats down into various different segments. Approximately 70 percent of the threats were found to be able to steal a smartphone owner’s personal data that is stored on the device. An additional 20 percent of these types of malware are forms of adware and spyware that need the permission of the user for installation and that then proceed to collect device location, personal data, or usage behavior.

Though the mobile security situation may look bad, the report did indicate that there is a growth in awareness and that this is beginning to have an impact on the attitudes and behaviors of device users in securing their gadgets.