As MMW previously reported, the MMA Mobile Application Privacy Policy was created by the MMA Privacy & Advocacy Committee in response to the rapid growth in mobile app popularity among smartphone users and mobile marketers.

“Mobile app developers asked for clear, transparent policy language that consumers can quickly and fully understand,” says MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart. “Today’s release, the first in a series of privacy policy guidelines that the MMA is creating with input from industry leaders, gives the app development community the meaningful support they need.”

The key issues addressed in the guidelines include:

• Annotated guidance on core privacy principles and consumer-friendly language for developers to consider using
• Ways to inform users on how data is obtained and used
• Guidance on security and confidentiality of information

“Privacy policies are a key consumer disclosure tool for app developers and important to establishing and maintaining consumer trust,” adds Alan Chapell, Co-chair of the MMA Privacy & Advocacy Committee. “Our guidelines offer developers the foundation from which to craft a document that reflects the privacy practices of each of their apps and helps them stay in compliance with applicable law and industry standards. We urge app developers to consult with their legal counsel when adapting these guidelines for their purposes.”

Launched this month, the MMRA was founded with the mission of uniting and serving the industry by developing professional standards and ethics to advance the use of mobile devices for marketing research.  According to its press release, the MMRA says it’s an “action-oriented organization designed to establish mobile research guidelines and best practices for sustainable growth, develop research and advocate for issues that grow the industry, provide quality education and evangelize the mobile marketing research channel for use by clients, researchers and participants.”

Why does the industry need a trade organization dedicated to mobile marketing research?  First a little background on where the MMRA got its start.  There was a conference held last year in both Berlin and Atlanta, GA called “Market Research in the Mobile World,” which was organized by the Merlin Institute.  The event turned out to be relatively successful, with over 170 attendees at the Atlanta event alone.  Following the conference, Jasper Lim, founder of the Merlien Institute and Mark Michelson, a veteran in the marketing research industry, discussed how this so-called  ”fast developing and complex industry” needs a unifying body, a single voice, and a place to exchange the best and most innovative of ideas.  In September 2011 they decided to work together to create the MMRA, which is making its formal debut this month.

As mobile marketing and advertising continues to gain unprecedented momentum, there’s a variety of issues stemming from what information and data is collected from mobile users, how it’s used and how the entire process should be regulated.  ”Consumer privacy is a concept that research participants seem willing to sacrifice, at least in part, to receive valuable offers that are tailored towards their likes and interests,” explained the MMRA.  ”Millions of consumers have already downloaded smartphone apps that use GPS to track their location so they can obtain discounts, coupons or cash incentives for answering a few questions about their experience when they are in specific stores. These apps are becoming more popular every day.”

Among other initiatives, the MMRA wants to design studies that take advantage of  new mobile technologies and changes in respondent behavior, explore ways to make sense of complex data and set guidelines for ethical use of personal information.  The MMRA said it will accomplish this through the “cooperative efforts of the best professionals in the industry who want to make research more meaningful for clients and enjoyable for participants.”

Launching just this month, the MMRA is putting a call out to relevant organizations to join its cause.  The first 300 member companies to join will have special certification recognizing their permanent status as a founding member.  “The business world recognizes innovators and leaders who get in on the ground floor; that kind of foresight is recognized, repeatedly and in so many ways,” said Michelson, who has founded and worked with other marketing research related trade associations in his career. “Founding Members stand out to their prospects, their peers and others key influencers in the business world.”

In case you’re unfamiliar, the Carrier IQ software is what’s known as a rootkit that is installed at a carrier’s request on mobile phones. Carrier IQ raises user privacy concerns because it runs in the background and monitors and logs user activity. Carrier IQ is known to be installed on well over 100 million devices around the world.

As of today, however, Sprint Nextel says Carrier IQ software is effectively erased from devices across its network. The move was achieved in part by Sprint’s partnership with HTC, which yielded a firmware update targeting Carrier IQ.

“HTC can confirm that we’re working with Sprint to provide maintenance releases that will remove Carrier IQ and provide security enhancements and bug fixes beginning in January,” HTC admits, according to The Verge.

Until now, carriers like Sprint and AT&T previously claimed that the Carrier IQ software and its collected data have only been used as a means to “improve service performance.”

Do you feel more confident about your mobile usage now that Carrier IQ has been dumped by Sprint?

On Thursday, state legislators in California voted in a somewhat controversial move to obligate handset makers to ship energy-efficient battery chargers.

But here’s the kicker. Unlike so many legislative acts that often take three to five years to go into effect, the new requirement takes effect next year.

According to the AP, “despite objections by consumer product makers, the California Energy Commission voted 3-0 on Thursday to regulate the power-sapping chargers that waste as much as 60 percent of the electricity they consume.”

This sweeping new requirement lumps together cellphones, tablets and a veritable electronic breadbasket of other mobile devices.

The standards target an estimated 170 million chargers described as “vampires” because they continuously draw power from the grid when plugged into the wall, even if no device is connected to the charger.

Published reports indicate that yesterday’s move was a first-of-its kind requirement targeting smartphones in legislative history.

Do you agree with the decision to mandate more energy efficiency from smartphone makers when it comes to their chargers? Please leave a thought or comment below.

On Wednesday, word surfaced that Apple has begun sending legal take-down notices to the servers hosting services that assist users in unlawfully obtaining software from the App Store.

The news is a welcome revelation to app developers who claim to lose no shortage of revenue right along with Apple when their digital creations are stolen.

As Apple Insider reported this afternoon:

App Store piracy has been around for years, though there has not been much indication that Apple has been aggressive in shutting it down. The company has been engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with jailbreak developers who look for exploits in iOS to allow them to run unauthorized code.

Although it isn’t yet clear what the outcome of Apple’s renewed efforts will be, it’s evident that Apple is viewing the start of 2012 as a fresh opportunity to take down the pirates who continue to pillage and plunder their way through the iOS App Store.

The admission comes in response to calls from U.S. lawmakers to beef up safeguards of customer privacy.

According to a report from Bloomberg, approximately 450,000 T-Mobile customers “use nine devices containing the software that provides data including telephone numbers dialed and received.”

T-Mobile maintains that it doesn’t use the software to view texts, e-mails, photos, videos or monitor voice messages, log keystrokes or Internet activity.

“Motorola Mobility neither received nor had access to any data collected by the Carrier IQ software, with the exception of approximately 125 devices used for testing the Carrier IQ software implementation,” T-Mobile says.

The software is used only “to obtain data about the nearest cell phone tower,” the company added, while noting that “customers expect us to take pro-active steps, including the use of reasonable diagnostic tools, to ensure network reliability and enhance our customers’ device experience.”

The genesis of the probe dates backs to lingering suspicions about the appropriateness of Apple and its partners in publishing to limit discounting.

“We are also investigating the electronic book industry, along with the European Commission and the states attorneys general,” said Sharis Pozen, the Justice Department’s acting antitrust chief.

The Wall Street Journal first reported that the Justice Department has been supposedly investigating the controversial “price fixing” issue since last year.

Meanwhile, The European Union’s antitrust watchdog similarly revealed earlier this week that it was investigating Apple and “five major publishers” for the same issue – specifically, the way that e-books are priced and sold.

According to the WSJ, The EU will investigate whether Apple and the publishing groups “engaged in illegal agreements or practices.”

This latest report is part of Cellit’s ongoing series on best practices by industry vertical, covering Retail, Hospitality, Entertainment, QSR Dining, Bars & Nightclubs, Broadcast, Print and Small Businesses.

Among the countless pearls of wisdom in the new report, Cellit reveals that QSR clients surveyed used a range of tactics to acquire new mobile subscribers to the programs. “While diverse,” the report reads, “they are generally cost-effective and fall into one of four categories: on-premise, social media, advertising and refer-a-friend.”

According to Cellit, leveraging existing social media and email databases to convert customers into mobile was the most effective tactic, while the refer-a-friend consistently delivered program growth.

On average, 21 percent of subscribers participated in the refer-a-friend programs Cellit analyzed, while the average conversion rate for referred friends was six percent. The average increase in database size after one refer-a-friend program was 16 percent. Most subscriber growth for a new program takes place between days 31 and 90 after launch, which is when the marketing and social media efforts start to take effect.

To get the full report from Cellit, click here.

The Carrier IQ software is what’s known as a rootkit that is installed at a carrier’s request on mobile phones. The software raises user privacy concerns in light of the fact that it runs in the background and monitors and logs user activity.

Carrier IQ is believed to be installed on well over 100 million devices today.

The class action lawsuit was filed by Delaware-based Sianni & Straite LLP. The suit targets Apple, HTC, Samsung and Motorola. Wireless carriers AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile are also named in the lawsuit that alleges an “unprecedented breach in the digital privacy rights of 150 million cell phone users.”

AT&T and Sprint claim the Carrier IQ software is only used as a means to “improve service performance.”

In response to the Carrier IQ scandal, Apple announced that “stopped supporting Carrier IQ with iOS 5 in most of our products and will remove it completely in a future software update.”

The MMA says that the white paper explains in a concise, easy to understand fashion how marketers can leverage mobile barcodes to give their customers access to information, multi-media content, promotional opportunities, retail store locations, discounts and coupons, samples, and more.

And the timing of the white paper’s release couldn’t be more opportune.

According to a study by 3G Vision, the US is showing mobile barcode usage nearly doubling in the first quarter of 2011 alone. As marketers become more savvy and adopt best practices, growth is expected to continue at a rapid pace – especially as consumers become more “barcode knowledgeable.”

“Mobile barcodes offer unmatched opportunity to increase brand value by adding measurable interactive functionality and richer consumer engagement,” says Nicole Skogg, CEO of SpyderLynk and Co-chair of the MMA’s Mobile Barcode Task Force, which authored the document. “Mobile barcodes make static media – like packaging, print ads, broadcast TV and billboards – interactive, and our white paper explores the many possibilities of mobile activation functionality.”

“Mobile Barcodes: an Overview for Marketers” includes definitions, attributes and examples of Mobile Barcode services currently in use in the marketplace. The white paper gives an overview of marketing with mobile barcodes, with concentration on cross media engagement. It also delves into choosing the right mobile barcode for your campaign by outlining considerations and examining barcode types and formats.

“The MMA created this document to educate the industry on the exciting potential of mobile barcodes, and to encourage marketers to experiment,” adds Michael Becker, MMA Managing Director, North America. “We invite companies using mobile barcodes in their campaigns to share their experiences and best practices to influence and help direct future MMA guidance.”

To check out the white paper for yourself, click here.