Category: Featured News

Consumers in the European country are less likely to trust ads that they feel will use their personal data.

According to the results of a recent survey conducted by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) France, consumers in that country feel suspicious of advertising they receive over their smartphones and tablets when it becomes intrusive or will utilize their personal information.

This survey involved the participation of more than 1,000 people with smartphones or tablets.

The research was conducted on behalf of the association by GfK. Among the respondents to the survey, about 60 percent said that they felt as though brands were being invasive on their smartphones or tablets as a result of too many spam like mobile marketing messages. Another 67 percent said that they were uncomfortable with the fact that they felt as though they were sharing information with brands, even without their knowledge. On top of that 68 percent expressed that they felt as though they were being spied on through their mobile devices.

The Mobile Marketing Association France said that it is vital for companies and brands to take care with privacy.

The MMA France said that the results of this survey show that it is very important that they take careful control over mobile advertising so that they will understand when consumers will find their actions to be relevant, and when they will find them to be intrusive or unwelcome.

Although 56 percent of the respondents to the survey feel that it shouldn’t be useful at all to have a company or a shop recognize them and while they haven’t any real interest in being personally welcomed when they enter a store’s physical location, it doesn’t stop there. Half of the respondents said that they did find it useful when stores use geolocation based marketing in order to provide them with discounts to the stores that they have just entered (or that they’re walking by at that moment).

This showed that it isn’t necessarily mobile marketing in general that is putting off French consumers, but it is the relevance that matters to them. Renaud Menerat, the president of MMA France explained that this research places the spotlight in the expectations that consumers have toward brands for understanding the notion of simplicity, service and transparency when it comes to their advertising overt his channel.

The success of the upcoming Android based smartphone will decide whether or not devices are in its future.

According to a statement from CEO John Chen, if the BlackBerry Priv does not manage the become profitable within the span of a year, it will likely mean that the company will step away from the hardware market of smartphones and will turn its attention toward selling secure software on various large mobile platforms.

This statement was made in California at Code Mode while showcasing the next BlackBerry smartphone.

Chen explained that the company is currently in a make or break phase when it comes to its hardware segment. The BlackBerry Priv simply needs to turn a profit next year, “Otherwise, I have to think twice about what I do there.” It looks as though the company is seriously considering a withdrawal from the smartphone hardware market if it doesn’t manage to be successful with its new upcoming Android based device.

That said, Chen has said that he is confident that the BlackBerry Priv has the potential it needs to succeed.

He explained that “Android in the enterprise is a very underserved space. With our connections, our accounts, our security know-how, this has expanded our market. The market wants privacy and security and they also want apps.” Because of this, Chen feels that he has found a place for the company’s hardware that could be a very profitable and a very defining one.

BlackBerry has always been a pioneer within the mobile device space, particularly when it comes to smartphones. In 1999, it was the first to launch a two-way pager, and its cell phone and smartphone handset had long been the dominant player in the marketplace, even among competition from extremely powerful players including Apple, Samsung, and others.

However, the company’s user base bottomed out and the company is still losing money on hardware even though it has strategically outsourced some of its manufacturing to Foxconn in Taiwan.

The hope the company has is that the Android operating system in the BlackBerry Priv will allow it to see successes that simply were not great enough in the recent handsets the company has released, including the Classic and the Passport. Chen’s goal is for a minimum of five million handset shipments per year.