Author: Rebecca

A growing number of shoppers are using smartphones to buy products they want during the holiday season.

According to Google, a rising number of consumers are choosing to skip the long Black Friday marathon shopping experiences for small bursts of mobile commerce purchasing through the use of their smartphones.

These m-commerce purchases occur in scattered moments over time instead of all at once as is the Black Friday tradition.

Google has labeled these little bursts of mobile commerce shopping as “micro-moments”. In its blog, the company predicted that “This holiday season, shopping ‘moments’ will replace shopping ‘marathons,’.”

Approximately 54 percent of shoppers who will be making purchases this holiday season have said that they plan to do some of their shopping on their smartphones during periods of free time, such as while they are eating breakfast in the morning or during their daily commute, said Google. This data was generated through an analysis conducted between that company and Ipsos MediaCT from a consumer survey on their holiday season shopping behaviors.

The research showed that people would rather use mobile commerce and are less likely to take marathon in-person trips.

Last year, Google observed a steady increase in mobile shopping throughout the length of the holiday season and noted a decrease in the number of spikes on the traditionally preferred shopping days such as Black Friday morning.

The company explained in its blog that “This type of shopping has lead to shorter, more purposeful mobile shopping sessions.” It also went on to say that “In fact, while shoppers now spend 7% less time in each mobile session, smartphone’s share of online shopping purchases has gone up 64% over the last year, and 30% of all online shopping purchases now happen on mobile phones.”

Ahead of the Thanksgiving weekend, approximately 61 percent of holiday shoppers will already begin researching the products that they are thinking about buying. That is an increase of 17 percent over last year, despite the fact that Thanksgiving fell very late in the season in 2014. That said, Google still pointed out that while shoppers may start researching early, most purchases will still happen later on in the holiday season.

The company has released an official statement explaining that it was sorry for the privacy threat it caused.

A mobile advertising company from China has now issued an apology for having disseminated code that made it possible for hundreds of iOS based apps to access the personal data of their users.

This dissemination of code was in direct violation of the policy of the Apple App Store.

Guangzhou Youmi Mobile Technology Co., the mobile advertising company in question, stated that they were offering their “sincere apologies” after Apple had expressed that the firm’s offerings would all be taken down from the App Store. They were taken down because they were discovered to have been collecting and extracting private user data such as device identification, email addresses and other information.

So far, there have been 256 apps that were taken down as they were in violation of the mobile advertising policy.

Researchers at SourceDNA, an American security company, stated that they had identified 256 different mobile apps that were involved in the practice of collecting personal data in a way that was against the policy of the App Store. Those applications were all created through the use of a software development kit (SDK) that was made by Guangzhou Youmi Mobile Technology.

A statement was released by Apple in which the company explained that the collection of personal data in that way is in direct violation of the privacy and security guidelines at Apple. It also said that any new apps that used Youmi’s SDK would be rejected from now onward if they are ever submitted to the App Store.

Youmi has also said that it is now working with Apple in order to be able to bring resolution to this situation. The mobile advertising company’s statement of apology explained that “For those products that have been temporarily taken down, we will provide reasonable compensation once this matter has been properly resolved.” This makes it look as though reimbursements may not be issued right away, but that when the circumstances are better under control, some compensation will occur for customers who paid for the products.