Android and iPhones are at the centre of the tech boom but security has been low priority in the rush to market
Sitting in front of the telly while texting on the phone and using a laptop to post a status update on Facebook (whatever that means). Welcome to today's teenagers.
A survey 10 years ago found that eight to 18-year-olds on average consumed 7.5 hours of media a day. To a generation who grew up with just three TV channels, each of which played the test card for much of the day, even 7.5 hours a day seemed improbable – but if true, somewhat worrying.
Today those in the same age group are now consuming an average of 10.5 hours of media a day, according to analysis by Credit Suisse. That seems to leave little time for teenagers' other favourite pastime, sleeping – let alone eating, school, homework and playing Angry Birds.
There's a generation at ease simultaneously consuming a variety of media through television, laptop or iPad and smartphone (no mention, though, of books and newspapers). Facebook now has 750 million active users, half of whom log on to the site in any given day. The 250 million who access Facebook through what it calls "mobile products" – smartphones, iPads etc – are twice as active as non-mobile users.
The smartphone revolution is creeping up on us almost unawares. This week I was at a presentation held by a big hedge fund (Man Group's GLG Technology fund), which was keen to tell us who it thinks will be the winners and losers in the biggest tech boom since the dotcom bubble. Smartphones will be at the centre of it.
Apple's iPhone is highly unusual in the tech industry for having kept its selling price firm since it first went on sale in June 2007. It's one reason why the company this week chalked up another huge leap in profits, up 124% on the year before. Apple has shifted more than 100m iPhones in the past four years, but this is just the start. Growth in China is running at 600%, and GLG reckons Apple will soon introduce a low-price iPhone-lite for Asia Pacific to fend off competition from the Androids, led by Samsung. It sees total smartphone sales soaring to 600m-700m in just a couple of years' time.
But, as Guardian Money reports, security has been low on the agenda as manufacturers rush the latest product to market. Nobody has cared much so far, either. Not many eight to 18-year-olds have to worry about their bank accounts being hacked. "Fraping", where your Facebook page is hacked into, is about the worst threat they confront. Meanwhile, retailers and banks want to make the smartphone experience as "frictionless" and easy as possible. It means all the ingredients are there for fraudsters to jump in, grab your identity and steal your money. The banks promise you won't be left out of pocket … until the losses become too large and they start accusing you of being careless.
As a footnote, the chips running the smartphones will be from Arm. It's the company that grew out of Acorn Computers, makers of the BBC Micro in schools in the 1980s, and is still based in Cambridge. GLG thinks it not fanciful that Arm will replace Intel as the world's biggest chip company, in the same way that Microsoft toppled IBM in the 1980s. And it's British. No doubt the stock market will ensure it's sold to a foreign buyer as soon as possible.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/blog/2011/jul/22/smartphone-revolution-unprepared
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