Mobile Enterprise: Badges, Behaviors and Advertising

By Marisa Peacock (@marisacp51) Sep 29, 2010

Has the smartphone become an all-one-device? Is it changing the way you interact with other media devices? This week we explore those questions and more!

A Badge for Your App

When we talk about mobile security, the issues range from ensuring the safety of secure information to downloading applications to smartphones. But what if there was an app that could ensure the quality of an app?

TRUSTe, a company that gives websites a privacy stamp of approval, will start doing the same for mobile sites and apps. It’s not really an app, but more of a badge. And the certification process is a little bit different for mobile sites.

While TRUSTe does not evaluate security, like the safety of entering a credit card number on a mobile commerce site, it does test each app, through automatic and manual methods, on a variety of phones and smartphones, platforms and carriers to see how personal information like location is used and whether or not it shares that information with third parties.

Using a checklist of privacy and regulatory requirements, and technology from DeviceAnywhere, a mobile phone testing service that creates a virtualized phone so people can see how an app would act, TRUSTe creates test accounts set up with new email addresses and monitors the levels of spam and other unwanted electronic interactions.

Once certified, companies and websites will be able to display a badge, big enough for users to see via mobile devices. Not only does having an TRUSTe certification help endear you to prospective customers, the company also claims that businesses that include a TRUSTe badge on their websites have seen an increase in sales, sometimes more than 25 percent.

The Next Big Thing in Mobile

When a study called “What’s the Next Big Thing? Revolutions 2010: A State of the Media Democracy Survey” is released you’d better hope that it provides some candid details of what’s to come. Fortunately for Deloitte, whose Technology, Media & Telecommunications practice commissioned the report, it does.

Intended to take a current “pulse” on how all generations of American consumers are interacting with potentially “revolutionary” technologies and devices, the study found that smartphones and the subsequent apps downloaded to them are shifting consumers’ behaviors with other media. For instance,

42% have reduced or stopped using their portable digital music players
38% have ended or diminished their use of traditional AM/FM radio
30% have reduced or stopped using their handheld videogame consoles
28% have ended or diminished their use of stand-alone GPS devices

Is the supreme functionality of smartphones replacing other devices? The research seems to be suggesting that it is. However, the rapid sales and competition surrounding tablets and e-Readers may suggest otherwise.

Speaking of iPads and Kindles, the report also found that digital books are catching on, as well. In fact, 61% of U.S. consumers that purchased e-Books are buying more books in digital format than what they bought in hardcopy/softcopy and 72% of Millennials who purchased e-Books are reading more books in digital format than what they read in hardcopy/softcopy.