MEASURES FOR STIMULATING COMPETITION ON MOBILE SERVICES MARKET IN ROMANIA TO MAXIMIZE BENEFITS FOR END USERS

In the last years, the market of mobile services in Romania had a huge success; the number of users of this type of services is constantly growing. The interest of the investors who were encouraged by statistics and have recently appeared on the market shows that Romanians are leaders in mobile services and that people are very attached to their mobile devices. ANCOM – the National Authority for Administration and Regulation in Communications) is the institution governing the mobile services market in Romania which establishes the rules and ensures that the market players comply with these regulations. Its mission is to ensure arbitrage on the communications market and genuine competition for the benefit of users. The major objectives of this authority are: to promote competition, protect the interests of users, the use of the limited resources, encourage efficient investment in infrastructure, promote innovation. To achieve these objectives, the regulatory activity in the communications sector is based on the following principles: need, opportunity, proportionality, obligation, technological neutrality, transparency, predictability, stability and resource efficiency.stimulating competition, social welfare, regulation, mobile services market

Android Applications Security

The use of smartphones worldwide is growing very fast and also the malicious attacks have increased. The mobile security applications development keeps the pace with this trend. The paper presents the vulnerabilities of mobile applications. The Android applications and devices are analyzed through the security perspective. The usage of restricted API is also presented. The paper also focuses on how users can prevent these malicious attacks and propose some prevention measures, including the architecture of a mobile security system for Android devices.Mobile Application, Security, Malware, Android, Permissions

NEMESYS: Enhanced Network Security for Seamless Service Provisioning in the Smart Mobile Ecosystem

As a consequence of the growing popularity of smart mobile devices, mobile malware is clearly on the rise, with attackers targeting valuable user information and exploiting vulnerabilities of the mobile ecosystems. With the emergence of large-scale mobile botnets, smartphones can also be used to launch attacks on mobile networks. The NEMESYS project will develop novel security technologies for seamless service provisioning in the smart mobile ecosystem, and improve mobile network security through better understanding of the threat landscape. NEMESYS will gather and analyze information about the nature of cyber-attacks targeting mobile users and the mobile network so that appropriate counter-measures can be taken. We will develop a data collection infrastructure that incorporates virtualized mobile honeypots and a honeyclient, to gather, detect and provide early warning of mobile attacks and better understand the modus operandi of cyber-criminals that target mobile devices. By correlating the extracted information with the known patterns of attacks from wireline networks, we will reveal and identify trends in the way that cyber-criminals launch attacks against mobile devices.Comment: Accepted for publication in Proceedings of the 28th International Symposium on Computer and Information Sciences (ISCIS'13); 9 pages; 1 figur

Comprehensive Overview of Security Issues in the Internet and Mobile Applications

The popularity and advanced functionality of mobile devices have made them attractive targets for malicious and intrusive applications. Although strong internet security measures are in place for most mobile systems, the area where these systems often fail is the reliance on the user to make decisions that affect the security of a device. In our prime example, Android relies on users to understand the permissions requested by an application, on which depends its installation decision on the list of permissions. Previous research has shown that this reliance on users is ineffective, as most users do not understand or considerate permission information. Keywords: Internet Security, Mobile Applications, Mobile Security, Security Issue

Understanding Mobile Banking Success Through User Segmentation

Mobile banking (MB) which involves the use of mobile devices to access bank accounts for conducting financial transactions has grown rapidly but unevenly with users. Banks realizes the strategic role of user’s satisfaction and the importance of MB systems in their business models. Yet, the diversity of users and disparity of system usage behaviors make difficult to measure MB success. This study segments the MB users on system use behavior of 4,478 users with objective measures by analyzing the MB system log files on various system usage metrics. Then, a subjective measures study surveys the same users on the system success factors of the information systems (IS) success model by using 445 responses. Results indicate that the influence of success factors significantly varies among user segments for intention to use, which makes an important contribution to enhance interpretation of the IS success model

Mobile APPs and Global Markets

In this research, we examine the popularity of mobile applications across different categories by using the measures of monthly active users (MAUs) of each app. It is the authors’ intention to inspect the key characteristics of mobile apps and the relationship those characteristics have with market share and growth rate in global markets. The ease of use of mobile apps leads to a subsequent impact on the global users’ mobile behavior in daily life. Mobile apps have flooded the market, however, the acceptance and use of individual apps relies on a combination of the preference of users and the operational strategies employed by app developers. Based on secondary data collected from multiple sources including both publications and online data, the global market growth of mobile apps including China (the world’s largest market of mobile apps) has shown a correlation between apps’ market share and the users’ mobile behavior based on messaging, networking, shopping, video watching, and gaming. This research categorizes users’ mobile behavior in terms of age groups and time spent on certain mobile apps. The objective of this investigation is better understanding of the dominance of leading mobile apps and the future trend of mobile apps designed for the global market

Measuring Mobile User Experience Instruments for Research and Practice

User experience (UX) research focuses in large part on how users subjectively evaluate digital products, services, and software. In the mobile computing domain, however, UX researchers currently face limitations in the multifaceted measures that they can apply to assess specific mobile device and software combinations. Currently available measures can produce only single-score usability measures (e.g., the well-known system usability scale and its variants) or cover only a part of the mobile device-software user experience (e.g., the recently developed mobile application usability instrument). This paper adds two multifaceted survey instruments to the toolkit of UX researchers and practitioners: the mobile user experience (MUX) instrument, a 15-item instrument tailored toward scholarly research, and the short-form sMUX, a six-item instrument intended for use in practical settings or other situations where survey length is constrained