“There’s an app for that,” asserts the now-familiar catchphrase, but consumers aren’t always buying. Major brands and mobile marketers are finding that consumer enthusiasm has waned in the wake of hundreds of thousands of new apps, leading Marc Parrish, vice president of loyalty and retention at Barnes and Noble, to lament, “There’s only one Angry Birds out there.”

Indeed. While a panel of executives at this year’s Mobile Shopping Fall conference discussed the importance of mobile apps in mobile marketing strategy and customer experience, the executives also commented on the lack of app discoverability and the difficulty of garnering attention in an inundated marketplace. As Josh Martin of Fierce Developer described of app-release efforts, “The anointed few would drive massive volume, while other items collected cobwebs as they quickly became antiquated.”

Major carriers have tried to solve the problem by “bundling” similar apps or engaging at the point of sale, helping customers create app store accounts, then pointing them toward useful apps. Developers, on the other hand, have attempted to leverage social networks or incentivize downloads, even releasing apps such as “Best Apps Market” to help users discover other apps. This approach leaves developers with little or convoluted control when releasing an app, however, and carriers with unrealized potential for increased revenue.

At Ericsson’s Business Innovation Forum in Silicon Valley, Brian Higgins, executive director of LTE Ecosystem development at Verizon Wireless, spoke about lack of discoverability. “You have to make sure discoverability is exceptionally easy, both for what we have now [and] what’s coming out in the future,” he said, adding after the speech, “Ultimately some kind of solution that brings the most popular and useful apps to a customer’s attention will be necessary. . . .”

WMC Global has developed that solution. Alongside Sprint, the companies recently partnered to launch Place Your Ad, an auction platform allowing developers to bid for featured app placement. Powered by WMC Global’s Performance Placement System™ (PPS), Place Your Ad gives developers and carriers more options than ever before, allowing carriers to monetize their ability to generate major increases in mobile app download volume successfully for developers and brands. Because PPS’ ease of use and profitability allows for rapid scalability and simple relationship management, other major carriers and app stores are preparing to launch their own versions of the auction model.

To discuss or arrange a demonstration of PPS, please contact info@wmcglobal.com

The phones might be smart, but are their users equally so when making security decisions? Major security experts and advisors have added their voices to a veritable chorus recently, urging consumers to make safe—and smart—decisions when protecting their smartphones from phishing attacks, malware, and fraud.

Trusted devices capable of storing critical personal information, smartphones have become a tempting and potentially lucrative target for malicious app developers. Apps disguised as games or stripped-down versions of legitimate apps, commonly known as “Trojan apps,” can become a “nightmare” when downloaded by an unsuspecting consumer from a native or third-party app marketplace. The “seemingly innocuous app[s]”, once installed, can collect a plethora of personal information and deliver it to the app developer, in addition to hijacking Android users’ SMS clients and subscribing to PSMS programs.

Major carriers have tried to solve the problem by “bundling” similar apps or engaging at the point of sale, helping customers create app store accounts, then pointing them toward useful apps. Developers, on the other hand, have attempted to leverage social networks or incentivize downloads, even releasing apps such as “Best Apps Market” to help users discover other apps. This approach leaves developers with little or convoluted control when releasing an app, however, and carriers with unrealized potential for increased revenue.

John Sileo, author of The Smartphone Survival Guide: 10 Critical Tips in 10 Minutes, compares Trojan apps to “electronic wiretaps” and “data-hijacking machine[s].” Sileo warns that once developers have this private information, “They can act on your behalf; they can become you.” A Symantec Corporation spokesperson, describing a recently discovered Trojan app, explains: "Android.PJapps masquerades as a popular ‘Steamy Window’ app. . . . it is able to install applications, navigate to websites, add bookmarks to the user's browser, send text messages and block text message responses.” BBC News reports that smartphone malware is on the rise, with apps designed to “trick” users into downloading them, then sending text messages to PSMS numbers as frequently as one per minute, costing as much as £6 per message. And McAfee’s Gary Davis, director of Consumer Product Marketing, reports, “last year, 4.6 million Android smartphone users downloaded a suspicious wallpaper app that collected and transmitted user data to a site in China.”

This troubling situation might be only the beginning.

Building on this premise, app developers might easily do the same with API-based payment gateways, being released currently by major carriers worldwide. The same technology that will allow consumers to process financial transactions on their mobile phones will leave them vulnerable, as well, to cybercriminals who target their finances through their smartphones.

As the first to discover malware that uses premium billing gating “in the wild” in the U.S. market, WMC Global is particularly equipped to contain these threats. Thanks to WMC Global’s proactive monitoring and enforcement efforts, carriers have made significant progress in shutting down malware strains. Now, with their increased involvement in digital payments and commerce, carriers are realizing the need for proactive cyber-intelligence and are turning to WMC Global’s Threat Detection and Compliance Assurance solutions for help. As PC World’s Tony Bradley cautions, “Don’t assume that just because an app can be downloaded from the official Android Market that it must be safe. . . . No mobile platform is completely safe.”

To find out more about WMC Global’s Compliance Assurance and Threat Detection solutions for carriers and digital payment companies, contact info@wmcglobal.com

This year’s Mobile Shopping Fall conference reinforced the continued importance of SMS as the primary method of driving mobile interaction. While apps and mobile Websites are gaining popularity within the mobile marketing stratosphere, Tara Scarlett, Coca-Cola Company’s senior manager of CRM, Precision, and Mobile Marketing, did not mince words: ”For us to not be using SMS would be silly,” she said.

An SMS call-to-action can be placed easily within packaging, corporate Websites, social networking Websites, and advertisements and is short enough to be tweeted or made into a Facebook status by an enthusiastic consumer. The Coca-Cola Company has focused on a “marketing first, mobile second” strategy, arguing that all audiences can engage with an SMS marketing platform, while Eric Brandt, director of e-commerce operations at Express, New York, pointed to SMS opt-in offers and coupon codes as “key component[s]” of his company’s marketing strategy. Most phones are SMS capable, which makes an SMS marketing approach universally appealing.

With the hype surrounding mobile apps and HTML5 Websites, little doubt exists that the promise of the future is more interaction via app and mobile Internet platforms. Yet SMS remains a staple of mobile marketing in its ubiquity, cost effectiveness, and lack of fragmentation. As Scarlett noted, “The opportunity from our perspective is that everyone can download an app or mobile site, but the reality is that we’re not there yet.”

With this perspective in mind, WMC Global continues to offer Compliance Assurance solutions used by industry associations, carriers, and regulators in the most developed mobile data markets in the world today. WMC Global protects carriers from damage to their brands and businesses by ensuring mobile marketers conform to industry best practices while conducting campaigns, mitigating problems ranging from customer deception and fraud to spam. WMC Global’s market reports help carriers understand the nature of the SMS programs on their networks that drive traffic.

For more information on how WMC Global’s Compliance Assurance solutions can ensure a stable, long-term opportunity for B2C SMS and PSMS, contact info@wmcglobal.com