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  • Mobile Payments: Increasingly Popular!

    Total value of mobile payment transaction will exceed $171.5 billion worldwide in 2012, meaning an increase of 61.9% compared to 2011, according to the latest figures provided by the consulting company Gartner.

    Total value of payments made with mobile devices will amount to $105.9 billion, while the number of users will reach to 212,200,000 in 2012 from 160,500,000 users in 2011.

    Company specialists expect the overall volume of mobile transactions and the average annual growth to be around 42 percent between 2011 and 2016, estimating a market worth $ 617 billion, with 448 million users by 2016. Sandy Shen, Research Director at Gartner, says that this growth will bring new opportunities for service and solutions providers that will have to respond to local requests to customize their offers.

    Mobile payment market will experience different fragmented services and solutions for the next two years. Technology providers will have to adjust their solutions for the local markets using different access technologies, business models and partnerships, under different regulatory conditions.

    The SMS remains the dominant technology access in developing markets because of constraints on different types of mobile and the easiness in using SMS.

    Web / WAP access is the preferred technology for North America and Western Europe as mobile Internet is commonly available and enabled on users’ devices. Gartner expects that by 2016 account access by Web / WAP to be active for about 88% of transactions in North America and 80 percent in Western Europe.

    Near Field Communication (NFC) transactions will remain relatively low until 2015, although the growth level will begin to increase starting from 2016.

  • Efficient Data Center Design Can Lead to 300% Capacity Growth in 60% Less Space

    Emerging trends in data center design mean that new data centers will be able to provide a 300 percent growth in capacity in 60 percent less space than existing data centers, according to Gartner. New data centers are being designed to be efficient in terms of power utilization, space allocation and capital expenditure.

    “There is a real and growing desire to increase productivity in data centers,” said Dave Cappuccio, chief of infrastructure research at Gartner. “Organizations are starting to take a serious look at consumption ratios of compute power to energy consumed and then compare them against estimated productivity of applications and the equipment to deliver that application. Couple this with the realization that most IT assets are underutilized — for example, x86 servers are running at 12 percent utilization, racks are populated to 50 to 60 percent capacity, floor space is ‘spread out’ to disperse the heat load — it becomes clear that an efficiently designed and implemented data center can yield significant improvements.”

    Traditionally, organizations would mitigate the power and cooling issues in data centers by spreading out the physical infrastructure across a larger floor space, but this trend is coming to an end as more servers are needed and floor space is becoming a premium. This is forcing organizations to more densely populate existing server racks, and as a result driving an increase in localized power and cooling demand.

    Cappuccio said the trend toward higher-density cabinets and racks will continue unabated through 2012, increasing both the density of compute resources on the data center floor, and the density of both power and cooling required to support them. IT managers for the past few years have focused solely on solving the power and cooling issue with hot and cold isles, distributed equipment placement, specialty cooling and self-contained environments.

    Gartner said in the future the issue will move up the corporate food chain as executives realize that the substantial energy costs for IT today are but a fraction of what future costs will be at current growth rates. At current pricing the operating expense (that is energy) to support an x86 server will exceed the cost of that server within three years.

    Given current trends it’s likely that operating costs of servers could easily equal their capital costs within the first few years, putting severe strains on IT organizations to fully utilize equipment they have, while only using equipment absolutely necessary. “The days of idle machines sitting on the data center floor during off peak hours will be a thing of the past. At current energy rates a 40kW rack could cost upward of $5,400 per server, per year,” Mr. Cappuccio said.

    “The new data centers are not like the old ones. Organizations need to make a break with the past and realize that innovation in data center design will yield both reduced capital and operating expenditure,” said Mr. Cappuccio. “Think small, think dense – the objective is the highest compute performance per kilowatt.”

    There are actions that can be taken today to reduce power consumption and thereby improve overall efficiencies in data centers. They include:

    1) Implementing row- and rack-based cooling for higher-density equipment can reduce energy consumption by up to 15 percent while making the data center more scalable.

    2) Rightsizing the new data center by building and provisioning only what is needed — and then expanding only when needed — can reduce the long-term operating expenses by 10 to 30 percent.

    3) Using air economizers in certain geographies is a simple step with sizable rewards. Gartner said that many data centers actually have air handlers with economizer modes on existing equipment but have it disabled from the early years when energy was not the issue it is today.

    4) Paying particular attention to floor layouts, not only with respect to hot aisle/cold aisle factors, but with regard to overall air movement (distance) to reduce workloads on your air handling equipment.

    5) Virtualize as much as possible — especially on x86 equipment. The average x86 server has very low utilization levels but requires a high degree of its maximum power to run. Push these systems to higher utilization levels to reduce overall energy consumption, reduce floor space and see more-efficient use of your IT assets.

    Gartner said that energy consumption will be the most dominant trend in data centers during the next five years — both from efficiency and a monitoring/management standpoints. Reduction in energy consumption will take on many forms, from introducing ‘green’ technologies, such as chilled water or refrigerant cooling at the device level, to real-time infrastructure management, which allows the movement of resources based on workloads and time of day. With potential regulatory involvement in data center efficiencies, IT and facilities managers will be required to show continuous improvements in how resources are utilized.

  • Gartner: The Use of Mobile Fraud Detection in Mobile Commerce Environments is Imperative

    By year-end 2013, location information or profile information from mobile phones will be used to validate 90 percent of mobile transactions, according to Gartner.

    The research firm says that the rapid adoption of smartphones is forcing banks, social networks and other e-commerce providers to implement the kinds of fraud detection capabilities that have become mainstream with fixed-line computing.

    "Because of the improving browser experiences on smartphones, mobile commerce and transaction execution are set to increase rapidly," said William Clark, research vice president at Gartner. "We estimate that by the end of 2013, 12.5 percent of all e-commerce transactions will be mobile."

    "Enterprise applications must detect fraud in these mobile environments, but fraud detection tools available today that work in fixed-line computing environments don’t work well or at all in the mobile world," Clark said.

    "There are a number of methods that can be implemented to help enterprises detect fraud in the mobile space, but they are still in their early stages of development, and it will take until at least 2012 for them to transform from embryonic applications to technically mature systems that work easily and transparently across disparate mobile networks," he added.

    According to Gartner, fraud prevention methods available today to mobile applications include:

    Mobile device identification — This is enabled through a JavaScript on the server that the user logs in to, which captures whatever information it can get from the user’s browser and phone, depending on whether the user is using a browser or native application. If the application is browser-based, then the JavaScript application captures whatever information it can get from the user’s browser to uniquely identify that particular user’s browser and mobile device. If the mobile application is native and residing on the mobile handset, native applications can additionally gather the phone’s serial number and network card number. This will require opt-in by the user.

    Location of device — This is based on the phone’s location information independent of the browser (IP address), so the user does not have to have his or her mobile browser application open for this to work; the phone only needs to be turned on. Enterprises may want to check and correlate the location of the device relative to anything else they know about the user’s location through other systems they may interact with at the enterprise. For mobile phones, there are two architectures that are used to obtain location information: One relies on device information (e.g., using the GPS-API applications that the user must opt into); the other employs APIs provided through mobile network operators that don’t require the users to opt in to releasing this information.

    Some online fraud detection vendors are starting to tune their risk scoring and/or rule-based models specifically for mobile applications — For example, some vendors are looking at the mobile device itself, the location of the phone, and the behavior of the user inside the host application while transacting from the phone. This area is very new to the fraud detection vendors, as there is little mobile transaction experience to draw on in order to build effective risk models and scores that significantly improve on risk models that have already been built for fixed-line computing. It tries to combine some of the methods listed above, including mobile device identification and examining the location of the mobile phone in relation to other information known about the user and his/her location.

    Gartner estimates that 70 percent of the largest 20 global card issuers (who authorize more than 50 percent of all payment card transactions) will gradually adopt mobile context information to help detect fraud on fixed-line transactions, and that by year-end 2015, more than 15 percent of all payment card transactions will be validated using context-aware profile information.

    Related news
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    Berg Insight: 894 Million Mobile Banking Users by 2015

  • Gartner: Android to Become No. 2 Worldwide Mobile OS in 2010

    The worldwide mobile operating system market will be dominated by Symbian and Android, as the two OSs will account for 59.8 percent of mobile OS sales by 2014, according to Gartner.

    The research firm predicts that Symbian will remain at the top of Gartner’s worldwide OS ranking due to Nokia‘s volume and the push into more mass market price points. However, by the end of the forecast period, the No. 1 spot will be contested with Android, which will be at a very similar share level.

    According to Gartner, communication service providers’ marketing and vendor support for Android-based smartphones will drive the platform to become the second-largest platform, following Symbian, by year-end 2010. This is almost two years earlier than Gartner predicted a year ago.

    "The worldwide mobile OS market is dominated by four players: Symbian, Android, Research In Motion and iOS," said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner.

    "Launches of updated operating systems — such as Apple iOS 4, BlackBerry OS 6, Symbian 3 and Symbian 4, and Windows Phone 7 — will help maintain strong growth in smartphones in 2H10 and 2011 and spur innovation. However, we believe that market share in the OS space will consolidate around a few key OS providers that have the most support from CSPs and developers and strong brand awareness with consumer and enterprise customers," she said.

    Gartner expects manufacturers such as Samsung to launch many new budget Android devices in 2H10 that will drive Android into mass market segments. Other players, such as Sony Ericsson, LG and Motorola, will follow a similar strategy. This trend should help Android become the top OS in North America by the end of 2010.

    "CSPs and mobile device manufacturers alike will need to revisit their platform strategies and balance the need to pursue platforms with the highest current demand against the need to maintain differentiation with unique devices," Cozza said. "CSPs will likely reduce the number of platforms they offer, to reduce their support costs and clarify their propositions to market."

    Gartner predicts that by 2014, open-source platforms will continue to dominate more than 60 percent of the market for smartphones. Single-source platforms, such as Apple’s iOS and Research In Motion’s OS, will increase in unit terms, but their growth rate will be below market average and not enough to sustain share increase. Windows Phone will be relegated to sixth place behind MeeGo in Gartner’s worldwide OS ranking by 2014.

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  • Number of Worldwide Mobile Payment Users to Reach 108.6 Million in 2010

    The number of mobile payment users worldwide will exceed 108.6 million in 2010, a 54.5 percent increase from 2009, when there were 70.2 million users, according to Gartner. Mobile payment users will represent 2.1 percent of all mobile users in 2010.

    Gartner report "Market Insight: The Outlook on Mobile Payment" finds that Asia/Pacific is the leading region with mobile payment users. In Asia/Pacific, mobile payment users will surpass 62.8 million in 2010, and represent 2.6 percent of all mobile users.

    In Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), mobile payment users will total 27.1 million and represent 2.1 percent of all mobile users in the region. In North America, mobile payment users will number 3.5 million and represent 1.1 percent of all mobile users in the region.

    "We continue to see strong growth in developing markets in Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa for mobile payment, while adoption in North America and Western Europe lags behind due to the plentiful choices of payment instruments that consumers have," said Sandy Shen, research director at Gartner. "Developing markets have found the right formula for mobile money services — functions that users want and an ecosystem that can sustain the service."

    Shen said that the strong demand for mobile payment in developing markets is being driven by the unbanked and underbanked populations that do not have ready access to the banking infrastructure or PC, positioning mobile as the natural choice of access platform. “At the same time, regulators in early-adopter markets are tightening up policies to provide better user protection and fight against unlawful financial activities relating to money transfer,” she said.

    The report also shows that Short Message Service (SMS) remains the dominant mobile payment technology. Its ubiquity and ease of use makes it the technology of choice, not only for consumers in developing markets, but also for those in developed markets. Wireless Application Protocol/Web can support either downloadable clients or mobile browsers. It is more frequently used by consumers in developed markets due to the higher penetration of data-capable phones and active data plans.

    According to Gartner, many financial institutions have failed to see the business case of Near Field Communication (NFC) payment, in particular, which offers similar functionality to contactless cards but with the added complexity of dealing with mobile carriers and other ecosystem partners.

    Shen urged service providers in developing markets to investigate service interoperability to speed market uptake and foster healthy competition. She said that solution providers should ensure platform flexibility so that platforms can work with both the bank’s and mobile carrier’s systems, and so that it can be readily customized for local deployments.

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  • Gartner: Worldwide Smarpthone Sales Grew 49% in Q1 2010

    Worldwide smarpthone sales to end users reached 54.3 million units in the first quarter of 2010, an increase of 48.7% from the first quarter of 2009, according to Gartner. Mobile phone sales totalled 314.7 million units, a 17% increase from the same period in 2009.

    Gartner report "Competitive Landscape: Mobile Devices, Worldwide, 1Q10" shows that among the most successful vendors were those that controlled an integrated set of operating system, hardware and services.

    "In the first quarter of 2010, smartphone sales to end users saw their strongest year-on-year increase since 2006," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner.

    Q1 2010 saw RIM, “a pure smartphone player”, make its debut in the top five mobile devices manufacturers, and saw Apple increase its market share by 1.2 percentage points. Android’s momentum continued into the first quarter of 2010, particularly in North America, where sales of Android-based phones increased 707% year-on-year.

    According to the report, growth in the mobile devices market was driven by double-digit growth of smartphone sales in mature markets, helped by wider product availability as well as mass market price tags.

    “Increasing sales of white-box products in some emerging regions, in particular India, also drove sales of mobile phones upward. We expect sales of white-box products to remain very healthy for the remainder of 2010, especially outside of China,” said Milanesi.

    The first quarter also saw some movement outside the top five mobile handset vendor rankings: Hong Kong-based manufacturer G-Five made its debut into the top 10, grabbing 1.4% of market share

    The rise of white-box manufacturers from Asia has also helped the "others" section, as a proportion of overall sales, increase its market share to 19.20%, up 2.7 percentage points.

    “This is having a profound effect on the top five mobile handset manufacturers’ combined share that dropped from 73.3 in the first quarter of 2009 to 70.7% in the first quarter of 2010,” said Milanesi.

    In Q1 2010, Nokia‘s mobile phone sales to end users reached 110.1 million units, a 1.2% decline in market share year-on-year. Although Nokia’s midtier products sold well, Nokia lacks a high-volume driver in the high-end, according to the analysts.

    “MeeGo based devices and other high-end products will not rejuvenate Nokia’s premium portfolio until the end of the third quarter of 2010 at the earliest, and Nokia will continue to feel pressure on its average selling price (ASP) from vendors such as HTC, RIM and Samsung,” said Milanesi.

    The reorganisation announced last week demonstrated that Nokia is trying to streamline the reporting process to deliver results quickly, which Gartner believes shows its recognition of the pressure it faces from investors.

    Samsung sold 64.9 million devices in Q1 2010, an increase of 26.3% year-on-year. Samsung was one of the five vendors in the top10 vendors ranking to grow its market share, which increased by 1.5 percentage points year-on-year.

    RIM’s mobile phone sales reached 10.6 million units, a 45.9% increase year-on-year. RIM is making its debut into the top five worldwide mobile handset manufacturers ranking. RIM’s focus this quarter was centred on its ecosystem strategy, its tightly integrated control of store, OS and device played to RIM’s strengths, according to the report.

    The reports also shows that the first quarter of 2010 was Apple’s strongest quarter yet, which placed the company in the No. 7 position with a 112.2% increase in mobile devices sales.

    “Growth came partly from new communication service providers in established markets, such as the UK, and stronger sales in new markets such as China and South Korea,” said Milanesi.

    She claims that the second quarter of 2010 will be a very important one for Apple. “We expect that Apple will present its new iPhone in June during its Worldwide Developer Conference, which will be the first to feature the latest release of the iPhone OS that includes welcome improvements for developers and users, such as multitasking,” she said.

    OS market
    In the smartphone OS market, Android and Apple were the winners in Q1 2010. Android moved to the No. 4 position displacing Microsoft Windows Mobile for the first time. Both Android and Apple were the only two OSs vendors among the top five to increase market share year-on-year.

    Symbian remained in the No. 1 position but continued to lose as Nokia remains weak in the high-end portfolio.

    Smartphones accounted for 17.3% of all mobile handset sales in the first quarter of 2010, up from 13.6% in the same period in 2009.

    “As seen with the iPad and web books based on Google’s Android platform, mobile OS ecosystems are developing and will move beyond smartphones to continue to deliver consumer value and a rich user experience,” said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner.

    Related articles
    NPD: Android Shakes Up U.S. Smartphone Market
    IDC: Mobile Phone Recovery Continues with Nearly 22% Growth in Q1
    Berg Insight: 894 Million Mobile Banking Users by 2015

  • 10 Mobile Technologies to Watch in 2010 and 2011

    Gartner has identified 10 mobile technologies that will evolve significantly through 2011 in ways that will impact short-term mobile strategies and policies.

    According to the research company, investments in mobile applications and technologies will increase through 2011 as organizations emerge from the recession and ramp up both business-to-employee and business-to-consumer mobile spending.

    The 10 mobile technologies to watch in 2010 and 2011 include:

    Bluetooth (3 and 4)
    Two new Bluetooth versions will emerge by 2011: Bluetooth 3 will introduce 802.11 as a bearer for faster data transmission, and Bluetooth 4 will introduce a new low-energy (LE) mode that will enable communication with external peripherals and sensors. Both versions will include other technical improvements to improve battery life and security.

    The Mobile Web
    By 2011, over 85 percent of handsets shipped globally will include some form of browser. In mature markets, such as Western Europe and Japan, approximately 60 percent of handsets shipped will be smartphones with sophisticated browsing capability and the ability to render conventional HTML sites in some manner. The mobile Web, along with associated Web adaptation tools, will be a leading technology for B2C mobile applications through 2012, and should be part of every organization’s B2C technology portfolio.

    Mobile Widgets
    Because widgets exploit well-understood tools and technologies, they have lower entry barriers than complex native applications, and thus can be a good first step to assess the demand for an application on a specific platform before undertaking expensive native development.

    Platform-Independent Mobile AD Tools
    Mobile platforms will become more diverse through 2012 although consolidation will not have started, and, in some markets, five or more platforms may have a significant presence. Therefore, tools that can reduce the burden of delivering installable applications to several platforms will be very attractive. Platform-independent application development (AD) tools cannot deliver a "write once, run anywhere" equivalent to native code; however, they can significantly reduce the cost of delivering and supporting multiplatform applications that provide a more sophisticated experience than the mobile Web and operate outside signal coverage.

    App Stores
    App stores provide a range of business support functions, such as payment processing, that assist smaller organizations. Gartner believes that app stores will play many roles in an organization’s B2C and B2E strategies. They will be a distribution channel for mobile applications and a commercial channel to sell applications and content (especially in international markets), and they will provide new options for application sourcing. Many applications will exploit ecosystem cloud services.

    Enhanced Location Awareness
    By the end of 2011, over 75 percent of devices shipped in mature markets will include a GPS. Wi-Fi and cell ID systems will remain important in situations where GPS is unavailable or unreliable. The popularity of location-aware handsets will enable a wide range of B2E and B2C location-aware applications, and will serve as a foundation for more-sophisticated contextual applications in the future.

    Cellular Broadband
    During 2010 and 2011, the availability of multimegabit wireless broadband performance will continue to grow as mobile networks enhance their broadband performance. Embedded cellular networking will become a standard feature of many corporate laptops, and will enable new types of network-connected devices and business models, such as e-books and media players.

    Touchscreens
    Touchscreens are emerging as the dominant user interface for large-screen handsets, and will be included in over 60 percent of mobile devices shipped in Western Europe and North America in 2011. Touch-enabled devices will also make increasing use of techniques such as haptics to enhance user experience. Organizations developing native handset applications may need to exploit single and multitouch interfaces and haptics to give their applications a compelling and competitive user experience.

    M2M
    Although the machine to machine market is very fragmented, it’s growing at over 30 percent per year. Low-cost M2M modules will enable a wide range of new networked devices and business models. Key applications include smart grid, meter reading, security/surveillance, automotive systems, vending and point of sale, remote monitoring, and track and trace.

    Device-Independent Security
    This isn’t strictly a single technology, but refers to a collection of security technologies, application technologies and sourcing options that enable the provisioning of applications that are secure, but less tightly tied to specific devices and platforms, and that, in many cases, do not require security tools to be installed on the client.
    It includes thin-client architectures, applications as a service, platform-independent forms of network access control (NAC), portable personality, virtualization, and hosted security services, such as "in the cloud" virus scanning. Device-independent tools cannot provide the rigor of fully installed security, but a blend of several of these tools can enable CIOs to deliver applications that can run on a wider range of devices while reducing security risks.

  • Gartner: Consumers Will Spend $6.2 Billion in Mobile Application Stores in 2010

    Consumers will spend $6.2 billion in 2010 in mobile application stores while advertising revenue is expected to generate $0.6 billion worldwide, according to market research firm Gartner.

    Analysts said mobile application stores will exceed 4.5 billion downloads in 2010, eight out of ten of which will be free to end users.

    Gartner forecasts worldwide downloads in mobile application stores to surpass 21.6 billion by 2013. Free downloads will account for 82 per cent of all downloads in 2010, and will account for 87 per cent of downloads in 2013.

    “As smartphones grow in popularity and application stores become the focus for several players in the value chain, more consumers will experiment with application downloads,” said Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner.

    “Games remain the No. 1 application, and mobile shopping, social networking, utilities and productivity tools continue to grow and attract increasing amounts of money.”

    The research shows worldwide mobile application stores’ download revenue exceeded $4.2 billion in 2009 and will grow to $29.5 billion by the end of 2013.

    This revenue forecast includes end-user spending on paid-for applications and advertising-sponsored free applications. Advertising-sponsored mobile applications will generate almost 25 per cent of mobile application stores revenue by 2013.

    According to Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner, application stores will be a core focus throughout 2010 for the mobile industry and applications themselves will help determine the winner among mobile devices platforms.

    “Consumers will have a wide choice of stores and will seek the ones that make it easy for them to discover applications they are interested in and make it easy to pay for them when they have to. Developers will have to consider carefully not only which platform to support but also which store to promote their applications in,” she said.

    High-end smartphone users today tend to be early adopters of new mobile applications and more trustful of billing mechanisms, so they will pay for applications that can meet their needs, as Gartner claims.

    Analysts think average smartphone users will become less tech-savvy as smartphones come down in price to have a mass market appeal and these users will be more reluctant to pay for applications.

  • Virtualization Heads Gartner's Strategic Technology List


    Virtualization     is the technology with the potential for having the most “significant impact” on enterprises over the next three years, according to Gartner.

    Every year the analyst firm highlights the top 10 technologies and trends it predicts will be strategic for most organizations.

    Virtualization, which ranked fifth on Gartner’s list last year, has moved to the top slot for 2009.

    Gartner defines "significant impact" as including factors such as high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.

    David Cearley, vice president at Gartner, said strategic technologies affect, run, grow and transform the business initiatives of an organization.

    "Companies should look at these 10 opportunities and evaluate where these technologies can add value to their business services and solutions, as well as develop a process for detecting and evaluating the business value of new technologies as they enter the market," he said.

    Cloud computing ranked second in the list, while servers came third.