NPD Research:
Among smartphone users, 82 percent have no security products installed on their phones; however, the percentage of users addressing this concern varies by platform, according to NPD’s “Emerging Technology Trends: Mobile Security” report. Although iPhone and Android smartphone owners share similar security concerns, 30 percent of Android smartphone owners have installed security products on their phones, compared to just 6 percent of iPhone owners.
“Even though iPhone users are less concerned than Android users about device security, they are still clearly worried,” said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis for NPD. “Their biggest concerns were much more likely to be fears that their iPhone would be stolen or damaged, than any unwanted or harmful activities.”
iPhone owners feel pretty safe downloading apps from Apple because of the approval process the company has in place. The Android market has been caught a couple of times with malware apps and other nastiness available for users to download.
The report basically says that users are fools for not installing additional security software on their smartphones. But they don’t recommend anything. Apart from 1Password, I can’t think of anything I’d install to make using my iPhone more secure. Can you?
It goes even further than that.
So far every major known security hole in iOS has been patched, sometimes faster, sometimes slower.
But all in all I feel safer doing online banking for example, on my iPad than I do on my Mac.
I have never had a virus or trojan on any of my computers, not Windows, not Linux, not Mac OS X, but the fact that no software can be installed on my iOS devices without my consent and without being tested by Apple gives me peace of mind.
For these kind of things and other everyday tasks I prefer using my iPad or my iPhone, because the technology get out of the way.
For other things I can’t accept the kind of constraints iOS imposes on the user, but that’s why I have a full blown PC in the form of a Mac mini sitting on my table.
I can’t. I do have 1Password installed, but nothing else.
I feel that NDP’s comments on this report are full of false dichotomy and manufactured controversy. Is this a marketing ploy trying to drum up interest?
For example, they point out that some (largish) percent feel that mobile security software is too expensive, but for those who purchased such software, the average price was three dollars. It is entirely within the realms of reason that mobile security software at that average price is still overpriced. Given the chance of bugs (even security related bugs), useless software is not worth installing at any price.
Are they providing information to us, or are they providing citation fodder for marketing material masquerading as white papers.
Amusing study, wonder what virus scanner company funded it? The architecture of the iOS prevents any virus scanning software from being used except in a super annoying manual way (like downloading all files into a virus scanner app before reading).
There’s no need for most traditional security software on iOS (and no hooks to build them anyways), so no wonder all us negligent crazy people aren’t running any.
I’d love to know what those 6% are running. Not only am I aware of no security “patch” software for the iPhone, I’m certain the SDK restrictions entirely preclude it.
Unless they’re talking about some password protected application, I have no idea what those 6% are using.
“Installing security software” is not the most important security action, regardless of platform. Why didn’t they ask if users have set any security settings, enabled locking pin/password, device encryption, encrypted backup, use https, limited personal information stored on the device, etc.? Besides, we’ve already installed security software–it’s called iOS.