Safe and secure for success

This week we've see a proliferation of mobile commerce and retail stories, showing just how prevalent mobile now is in the retail sector. Indeed, there are high hopes that most people will be shopping on mobile within two years – quadruple what it is today – and that within 10 years half of us will be social shopping (which must come as a relief to all the schmucks who bought into Facebook shares without the inside track).

This interaction – with the ultimate end goal of people actually spending money – is the holy grail of all the vertical market industries that touch telemedia services and, as revealed repeatedly at Connected Summit 2012 earlier this month, m-retail and m-commerce (and its increasing adoption) is what is going to propel all these services along.

In many ways the debate about apps verses m-web is, as a result, dead. It is about the service, the interaction potential and the way you monetize it that is increasingly becoming the driver to get mobile consumers consuming.

Over the past two years what telemedia really means is now e-commerce, usually on mobile or mobile devices, and how to create interaction and then how to monetize it. Billing and payments are key to this, but they are just part of the puzzle.

Interestingly, this move is simultaneously being driven by both consumer-facing industries and the consumers that they face. Consumers are already seeing the value in interaction. Second screening is rife and online and mobile purchasing is nothing new. The people want to engage and, if what you have on offer is worth it, they will also pay.

Businesses – especially retailers, TV programme makers, broadcaster and media companies – are also starting to understand that, empowered by their smartphones, consumers want stuff to buy. And operators know it and, finally, are starting to get some decent on-bill payment tools together to enable it (and to take a slice of this potentially enormous pie).

But there is a growing problem with malware. While many people have shied away from both e- and m-commerce as they fear for the security of their bank accounts, personal data and identity, there is a real and growing problem with mobile malware that scams people.

Mostly confined to Android – but, iOS users, don’t get complacent – these malware scams are starting to rip people off with fake apps that unleash all manner of charges. Its like the bad old days of PRS all over again! Only this time its dodgy programmers who are behind the scams.

Many have been stamped on, but still they come. This week PPP brought one such scam to book, but the struggle to stay on top of this will only grow tougher. And while PPP must be applauded for having the vision to look out for these things and take action, once they start to reach a critical mass, the scams and malware will kill m-commerce dead in the water.

This is a sobering thought and given the proliferation of online viruses one that really needs to be tackled ASAP. But are operating systems and the processing power of portable devices up to the task of running firewalls and malware detection? Many PC users have given up on such things as they are so slow due to the processing power now needed to run them. What hope a phone?

While the industry gets more excited about features and functions, network speed and billing tools, no one is really tackling the malware issue. It may not be a problem today, but could become a huge one – one that could kill the m-commerce business.