A Study on the Perceived Value of Mobile Service Using the Contingent Valuation Method in Korea

Mobile service fee in Korea has become a concerning issue. Although numerous studies have investigated this issue, there is still a lack of studies about the factors related to the dissatisfaction of the mobile service fee. This paper investigates those issues through estimating the gap between perceived value of mobile service and the actual payment. To measure this value and identify the factors affecting it, this paper uses the contingent valuation method with double-bounded dichotomous choice approach. The empirical result shows that usage time of mobile device, the priority of handset subsidy when choosing mobile service plan, and the awareness of mobile service payment system are related to dissatisfaction of mobile service fee. Moreover, the result implies that the mobile service subscribers might be satisfied to their mobile service fee in average. This paper suggested that the regulation for curtailing the retail price of mobile service evenly might not be an effective way to relieve the dissatisfaction of the mobile service fee

The impact of patent litigation on shareholder value in the IT industry

In recent years, patent lawsuits in the IT industry have become a sensitive issue. While numerous studies have investigated the wealth effect of patent and corporate litigation, few studies have examined the current patent litigation in the IT industry. This paper investigates the wealth effect of patent lawsuits using an event study method. This paper hypothesizes that a firm which initiates a lawsuit experiences more of a positive return than a rival firm when the patent lawsuit filing is announced, as a firm will initiate a lawsuit when they are convinced that they have a vantage position in the patent lawsuit. The empirical results show that a firm which has a vantage position in a patent lawsuit experiences a positive stock price return when they sue a rival firm for patent infringement and that a firm which does not have a vantage position in a patent lawsuit experiences a negative stock price return when they are sued by a rival firm. The empirical results support that a vantage position in patent litigation is the one of the key factors to explain the wealth effect of patent litigation. This paper suggests that action to increase patent competency to reach a vantage position in a patent war is one of the ways to increase shareholder value

Binary Replacement Technique for Application Programming Interface Level Simulation

International audienceDesign of complex embedded software requires ingenious solutions to many architectural problems. One such solution that would be a crucial catalyst in designing scalable and customized embedded software, is developed by API (Application Programming Interface) level simulator. The use of API level simulator has been gaining wide acceptance due to its design and verification efficiency by enabling parallel development in multiple software layers. However, there are two major bottlenecks in realizing practical systems: source code modification and recompilation of the target software. The paper proposes a novel simulation technique to resolve these two critical issues. The proposed technique makes it possible to replace any part of the target binary without modifying its source code and recompiling it

Quantifying different psychological costs of user behavioral info for overcoming the 'take-it-or-leave-it' condition

Take-it-or-leave-it, in which users have to provide personal information as required by service providers, has been a dominant form of agreement between online service providers and users. The regulators recently began to prohibit dominant online platforms from collecting personal data based on the 'take-it-or-leave-it' basis because this clause is likely to harm consumer welfare without giving users choices for using the service. In order to improve regulatory efficiency, we need to devise more flexible alternative service provisions balancing privacy concerns and enhanced service based on personal preference. To accomplish this goal, we need to understand the users' attitudes related to personal behavioral data collection for both regulators and online platforms. In this context, we aim to estimate the psychological costs that users bear when they need to exchange personal data for service use. Quantifying the perceived cost of personal data collection with monetary reward was common. However, it is not easy to determine whether the perceived cost is high or not because the monetized value of personal data is not self-evident. To address this issue, we consider attention cost, one of the representative inconvenience costs of using free online services in the analysis. This study collects the data using a conjoint survey and estimates the psychological costs of personal data collection using the mixed logit model and latent-class logit model. Our results show that the respondents' perceived cost for overcoming the 'take-it-or-leave-it' condition is heterogeneous, and only one of four respondent segments (around 30% of respondents) perceived it as significant. Moreover, the results suggest that the perceived risks and benefits of personal data collection affect the psychological cost. It implies that privacy calculus theory can be a meaningful framework for understanding users' attitudes toward behavioral data collection on online platforms

The impact of the strengthened personal data protection regulation on users' privacy concerns

Considering that privacy concerns could affect users' privacy behavior as an antecedent, it is important to investigate the impact of strengthened personal data protection regulation on users' privacy concerns. However, there exists mixed views that the personal data protection regulation has a positive or negative effect on users' privacy concerns by increasing privacy awareness and trustworthiness, respectively. We propose the approach using smartphone platform-level privacy regulation as a proxy for national-level personal data protection regulation to overcome the difficulty of setting up treatment and control groups for implementing dynamic Difference-in-Difference analysis. The result showed that introducing personal data protection regulation has a positive effect on users' privacy concerns in the short term; however, the positive effect could be diluted over time

Optimization of a Cell Counting Algorithm for Mobile Point-of-Care Testing Platforms

In a point-of-care (POC) setting, it is critically important to reliably count the number of specific cells in a blood sample. Software-based cell counting, which is far faster than manual counting, while much cheaper than hardware-based counting, has emerged as an attractive solution potentially applicable to mobile POC testing. However, the existing software-based algorithm based on the normalized cross-correlation (NCC) method is too time- and, thus, energy-consuming to be deployed for battery-powered mobile POC testing platforms. In this paper, we identify inefficiencies in the NCC-based algorithm and propose two synergistic optimization techniques that can considerably reduce the runtime and, thus, energy consumption of the original algorithm with negligible impact on counting accuracy. We demonstrate that an AndroidTM smart phone running the optimized algorithm consumes 11.5× less runtime than the original algorithm

Analysis of the Aggregate Effect on the Compressive Strength of Concrete Using Dune Sand

In this study, the compressive strengths of concrete were investigated based on water content and aggregate volume fractions, comprising dune sand (DS), crushed sand (CS), and coarse aggregate (CA), for different ages. Experimental data were used to analyze the effects of the volume fraction changes of aggregates on the compressive strength. The compressive strength of concrete increases until the volumetric DS to fine aggregate (FA) ratio (DS/FA ratio) reaches 20%, after which it decreases. The relationship between changes in compressive strength and aggregate volume fractions was analyzed considering the effect factor of each aggregate on the compressive strength and at 2 conditions: (1) 0 < DS < CS < CA and (2) 0 < CA < CS < DS. For condition (1), when the effect factor of CA = 1, those of DS and CS were within 0.04–0.83 and 0.72–0.92, respectively, for all mixtures. For condition (2), when the effect factor of DS = 1, those of CS and CA were within 0.68–0.80 and 0.02–0.79, respectively

Binary Replacement Technique for Application Programming Interface Level Simulation

International audienceDesign of complex embedded software requires ingenious solutions to many architectural problems. One such solution that would be a crucial catalyst in designing scalable and customized embedded software, is developed by API (Application Programming Interface) level simulator. The use of API level simulator has been gaining wide acceptance due to its design and verification efficiency by enabling parallel development in multiple software layers. However, there are two major bottlenecks in realizing practical systems: source code modification and recompilation of the target software. The paper proposes a novel simulation technique to resolve these two critical issues. The proposed technique makes it possible to replace any part of the target binary without modifying its source code and recompiling it