Dubai taxi passenger figures released for Q117

Source: RTA. A taxi on Dubai roads.

Taxi drivers in Dubai, UAE served 44,883,737 passengers on 25,795,251 trips in Q117. Taxi franchises in Dubai have a total of 10,038 vehicles in operation. Specifically:

• Dubai Taxi served 21,050,701 riders in 12,981,104 trips.
• Arabia Taxi lifted 4,413,867 in 2,536,705 trips. 
• Cars Taxi hosted 9,241,253 riders in 5,311,065 trips.
• Metro Taxi ferried 3,471,457 riders in 1,995,090 trips. 
• National Taxi transported 6,534,339 riders in 3,755,367 trips, and 
• City Taxi offered services to 172,121 riders in 98,920 trips.

The CEO of Public Transport Agency at the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) Abdullah Yousef Al Ali reported: “Lifting 44,883,737 riders during the first quarter of this year is indicative of the huge demand for the service. It is a result of improvements we regularly introduce to taxis such as the offering of multiple means of fare payment (cash or credit cards), or training cab drivers to improve their attitudes and practices.

“The RTA leadership accords considerable attention to the taxi service run by Public Transport Agency as the service offers privacy sought by a large number of users. Efforts made in this field and other mass transit services aim at realising RTA’s third strategic objective (People Happiness) and vision (Safe & Smooth Transport for All)."

Smaato charts effectiveness of mobile video ads in Q116

Source: Smaato website.

Smaato, the global real-time advertising platform for mobile publishers and app developers, has released its Q1 2016 Global Trends in Mobile Advertising report. To identify the trends, Smaato analysed data from billions of mobile ad impressions served on its exchange during the first quarter of 2016.

The report shows strong growth for mobile video advertisements, delivering 11 times higher eCPMs (effective cost per thousand impressions) for publishers – a 1,042% uplift compared to any other ad format. Mobile video ads drive higher revenue when shown in-app versus in the mobile web, with iOS apps delivering almost 3x higher eCPMs over the mobile web.

In terms of app categories that deliver highest eCPMs: music saw a 54% eCPM uplift, followed by video and computer games (+38%), society (+29%) and then real estate (+15%). This makes intuitive sense, as people using apps in the arts and entertainment category are already being exposed to rich media (including sound), and mobile video ads may seem less invasive.

Additional findings:

• Mobile ad spend grew 89% in Q1 year-over-year
• Larger ad formats like interstitials (320x480 pixels in size) delivered triple the eCPM for publishers versus traditional banner ads (320x50).
• As the world’s second largest advertising market, China saw a +1,198% rise in ad spending.
• Countries that celebrated Chinese New Year - Greater China, Singapore, and places where there is a sizeable Chinese population - saw a 33% bump in pre-holiday mobile ad spending on average over their Asia Pacific neighbors who did not celebrate the holiday.

“Mobile video advertising is showing enormous growth potential, helping publishers to boost their monetisation efforts and advertisers to engage their target audiences better,” said Ragnar Kruse, CEO and co-founder of Smaato. “It’s very encouraging to see the continued overall strength of quarterly mobile ad spend growth, which is up 89% globally. I’m also impressed by the immunity of mobile ad spend to downward macroeconomic factors."


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Internet of Things to overtake mobile phones by 2018: Ericsson

• Sixteen billion connected devices forecast to join the Internet of Things (IoT) by the end of 2021
• Smartphone subscriptions to surpass those for basic phones in Q3 this year
• Teenage use of cellular data for smartphone video grew 127% in 15 months

The latest edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report* reveals that the Internet of Things (IoT) is set to overtake mobile phones as the largest connected device category by 2018.

Between 2015 and 2021, the number of IoT connected devices is expected to grow 23% annually, of which cellular IoT is forecast to have the highest growth rate. Of the 28 billion total devices that will be connected by 2021, close to 16 billion will be IoT devices.

Rima Qureshi, Senior Vice President & Chief Strategy Officer, Ericsson, says: “IoT is now accelerating as device costs fall and innovative applications emerge. From 2020, commercial deployment of 5G networks will provide additional capabilities that are critical for IoT, such as network slicing and the capacity to connect exponentially more devices than is possible today.”

Source: Ericsson. New mobile subscriptions in India
equalled the number of new mobile subscriptions in
Asia Pacific excluding China and India. China rated
a negative number after China Unicom removed
inactive subscriptions.

Smartphone subscriptions continue to increase and are forecast to surpass those for basic phones in Q3 this year. By 2021, smartphone subscriptions will almost double from 3.4 billion to 6.3 billion. Also revealed in the report, there are now 5 billion mobile subscribers – unique users – in the world today.

Detailed in the report is a dramatic shift in teen viewing habits: use of cellular data for smartphone video grew 127% in just 15 months (2014 to 2015). Over a period of four years (2011 to 2015) there has been a 50% drop in the time teens spend watching TV/video on a TV screen, and in contrast an 85% increase in those viewing TV/video on a smartphone. This, and the fact that the upcoming generation of mobile users are the heaviest consumers of data for smartphone video streaming (Wi-Fi and cellular combined), makes them the most important group for cellular operators to monitor.

In 2016, a long anticipated milestone was reached: commercial LTE networks were measured supporting downlink peak data speeds of 1 Gbps. Devices that support 1 Gbps are expected in the second half of 2016, initially in markets such as Japan, US, South Korea and China, but rapidly spreading to other regions.

Mobile users will enjoy extremely fast time to content thanks to this enhanced technology, which will enable up to two thirds faster download speeds compared with the fastest technology available today.

Further highlights from the Ericsson Mobility Report include:

• Mobile broadband subscriptions will grow fourfold in the Middle East and Africa between 2015 and 2021; and mobile data traffic in India will grow fifteen times by 2021.
• Global mobile data traffic grew 60% between Q115 and Q116 due to rising numbers of smartphone subscriptions and increasing data consumption per subscriber. By the end of 2021, around 90% of mobile data traffic will be from smartphones.
• LTE subscriptions grew quickly during Q116: there were 150 million new subscriptions during the quarter, driven by demand for improved user experience and faster networks for a total of 1.2 billion worldwide.
• LTE peak data speeds of 1 Gbps are anticipated to be commercially available in 2016.
• 5G is expected to start more quickly than anticipated, but additional spectrum harmonisation is needed between countries planning early 5G deployment: This is in addition to the current process for WRC-19, which focuses on spectrum for commercial 5G deployments beyond 2020.

• Singapore leads Southeast Asia in both smartphone and mobile broadband subscriptions penetration, at more than 100% and more than 140% respectively.
• The Asia Pacific region is set to fuel growth with 1.7 billion new smartphone subscriptions recorded, exceeding the total combined subscriptions from the rest of the world.
• IoT to overtake mobile phones as the largest category of connected devices by 2018

The Ericsson Mobility Report also highlights Singapore and Asia Pacific’s leadership position in the adoption of smartphones, mobile broadband and IoT growth.

Singapore continues to lead in Southeast Asia in both smartphone and mobile broadband subscriptions population penetration, with more than 100% and more than 140% respectively, ahead of the Southeast Asia penetration levels of around 40% and around 60% respectively for 2015.

Source: Ericsson. India added the most number of
mobile subscriptions in the quarter, followed by
Indonesia and Myanmar.

Globally, mobile subscriptions are growing around 3% year-on-year and reached 7.4 billion in Q116. Indonesia and Myanmar are identified as among the key surge markets in Southeast Asia, with an additional 5 million subscribers in each country for Q116.

Across Asia Pacific smartphone subscriptions will reach 1.7 million by 2021. By the end of 2015, only Singapore had a smartphone subscription penetration above 100% percent in Southeast Asia. Singapore also has the top result overall in Southeast Asia for highest cell-edge downlink speed and lowest latency. By 2021, Singapore is expected to reach almost 130% smartphone subscription penetration.

This growth has, in turn, fuelled a huge demand for rich content from subscribers, with YouTube now the second most popular app in Singapore, behind WhatsApp, and the No. 1 app in Indonesia.

Before the smartphone revolution, most of the attention in mobile network operations was focused on managing voice coverage. Voice now constitutes less than 5% of mobile traffic. Users still expect good voice coverage, but they also expect a good user experience when they access the Internet through apps running on their smart devices.

The report also highlights the huge growth expected in IoT connected devices in Asia Pacific, which globally are expected to surpass mobile phone subscriptions by 2018. This will be driven by emerging applications and business models, and supported by falling device costs. Globally, IoT connected devices are expected to increase to close to 16 billion by 2021. Of this, Asia Pacific will be the region with the highest level of adoption, accounting for around five billion IoT connections.

IoT, which is a fundamental part of Singapore’s pioneering Smart Nation vision, will focus on two major segments - massive and critical connections. Massive IoT connections are characterised by high connection volumes, low cost, low energy requirements and small data traffic volumes - examples include smart buildings, transport logistics, smart meters and agriculture. Critical IoT connections are characterised by requirements for ultra-reliability and availability, with very low latency. These include traffic safety, autonomous cars, industrial applications, remote manufacturing and healthcare, including remote surgery.

Martin Wiktorin, Country Head for Singapore & Brunei, Ericsson, said: “This report highlights the exceptional growth of mobile broadband and smartphone technology in Singapore and across the region. It also demonstrates how IoT promises to change society in the next few years. A recent IDC study predicts that by 2019, we will see US$1.3 trillion worth of investment being poured into IoT technology globally which will empower the digital transformation of all our lives, accelerating our progress towards becoming a truly networked society."

Interested?

The Traffic Exploration Tool which accompanies the report can be used to create customised graphs and tables. The information can be filtered by region, subscription, technology, traffic and device type.

Download the Ericsson Mobility Report, Traffic Exploration Tool and regional reports for South East Asia & Oceania, North East Asia, North America and India

*The Ericsson Mobility Report is one of the leading analyses of mobile data traffic available, providing in-depth measurements from live networks spread around the globe. The report uses these measurements and analysis, together with internal forecasts and other relevant studies, to provide insights into current traffic and market trends in the networked society. The report defines a connected device as a physical object that has an IP stack enabling two-way communication over a network interface.

posted from Bloggeroid

Singapore talent continues to be in demand: Robert Walters

Robert Walters, the recruitment consultancy, has released its Asia Job Index for Q1 2015, revealing that domestic talent acquisition remains a key priority in Singapore. The Asia Job Index tracks job advertising volumes for professional positions across the leading job boards and national newspapers in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore.

Toby Fowlston, Managing Director, Robert Walters Southeast Asia said, “Recruitment in Singapore is largely driven by competition in the candidate-short market, hence key challenges generally lie in attracting the best talent for the right positions. To address this, the employment market has evolved to focus heavily on talent development and retention. 

Click on the image to view a larger version.

"Companies prioritise Singaporean professionals when hiring and that emphasis will continue throughout the year. Only when all channels of recruiting domestic talent have been exhausted do hiring managers expand their search to foreign candidates. Despite offshoring within the foreign investment banking industry in the last six months, financial services still remain a major part of the Singapore economy and we look forward to a more buoyant sector in the year ahead.”

The key findings are:

· The legal and compliance space saw the largest jump in job advertising volumes, up 30% from 2014. Positions in anti-money laundering and financial crime are particularly in demand.

· IT job advertising rose by 18% from 2014 as companies strengthened their presence on social media and digital platforms.

· Increasing operating costs drove the offshoring of manufacturing plants to other more cost-efficient countries in Asia, leading to an annual 14% drop in advertisements for product and logistics operations jobs.

· The rising importance of the HR function to include business partnering and talent acquisition fuelled the demand for these positions, with advertising for HR roles increasing by 10% annually.

Download the complete Robert Walters Asia Job Index Q1 2015 here. 

Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit says B106 topped the cyber threat list in ASEAN for Q1 2015

The Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit has released its Malware Infection Index* for ASEAN for the first quarter of 2015.

Source: Microsoft. India remains the most infected country, while Indonesia is no. 5 globally, and China is 8th. 

Source: Microsoft.

The top threat in ASEAN, Bladabindi/Jenxcus (B106), is a malware family that can steal sensitive information and send it to a malicious hacker. It can also download other malware and give unauthorised access to your PC. This malware family can also be used to take control of your PC and steal your sensitive information. 

Some variants can use your PC camera to record you or send information about what keys you press to a malicious hacker. They can spread via infected removable drives, such as USB flash drives. They can also be downloaded by other malware, or spread though malicious links and hacked or compromised websites. Jenxcusthreat can get onto your PC from a drive-by download attack, that is as a by-product of a download that the user is tricked into starting, or through a download that occurs behind the scenes without the user knowing about it.

Ranked no. 2, Conficker is a family of worms that can disable several important OS services and security products. They can also download files and run malicious code on your PC if you have file sharing enabled. Some worms can also spread via removable drives and by using common passwords.

Ramnit, in no. 3 place, is a malware family that steals sensitive information, such as your bank user names and passwords. It can also give a malicious hacker access and control of your PC, and stop your security software from running. These threats can be installed on your PC through an infected removable drive, such as a USB flash drive.

Singapore shares the same no. 1 and no. 2 threats as ASEAN but has Sirefef (ZeroAccess) in no. 3 place. This trojan belongs to a family of malware that uses stealth to hide its presence on a computer. Trojans in this family can do all manner of unauthorised things, including downloading and running other files, contacting other computers, and disabling security features. Members of the family can also change search results, which can generate money for the attackers who use Sirefef.

Malaysia has the same malware profile as Singapore. Kuala Lumpur sees the most cyber threats, and then Ipoh.

Vietnam also shares the same no. 1 and no. 2 threats. In no. 3 place for Vietnam is Ramnit, a malware family that steals sensitive information such as bank user names and passwords. It can also give a malicious hacker access and control of a PC and stop your security software from running. These threats can be installed on your PC through an infected removable drive, such as a USB flash drive. The most dangerous cities for malware in Vietnam are Hanoi, followed by Ho Chi Minh City. Thailand has a very similar malware profile; its most dangerous cities for malware are Bangkok, and then Chiang Mai. 

The Philippines also has the same malware profile, but its top city for malware is not Manila as might be expected, but Quezon City. Manila faces the second-most number of threats.

Indonesia's most dangerous threat is Ramnit in no. 1 place, followed by B106 and then Conficker. Jakarta sees the most malware, followed by Bandung and then Medan.

Microsoft further offers three cyber security tips for organisations:

1. Exercise safe computing practices, such as running current, up-to-date and legitimate software products, plus always have antivirus/anti-malware protection.

2. Be comprehensive in reviewing due-diligence practices, which would include robust and regular inspection of business processes, suppliers, and organisational practices, not just the use of technology.

3. Consider cloud as one of the safest ways forward to protect data and privacy in future, but choose your cloud provider wisely on the basis of trust, commitment and credibility. For Microsoft, the principles of trust are cybersecurity, data protection, privacy, regulatory compliance and transparency.

*Source: Microsoft DCU Malware Operations Report