Report: 99 Percent of New Mobile Threats Target Android 269
MojoKid writes: "Google's open source Android platform has the distinction of being the most popular mobile operating system in the world. That's great in terms of dominating the market and reaping the rewards that come with it, but it's also for that very reason that Android finds itself the target of virtually every new mobile malware threat that emerges. According to data published in F-Secure's latest Mobile Threat Report (PDF), over 99 percent of the new mobile threats it discovered in the first quarter of 2014 targeted Android users. To be fair, we're not taking about hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands, or thousands of malware threats — F-Secure detected 277 new threat families, of which 275 honed in on Android."
Re:They are not much different (Score:5, Informative)
Try 78% and 15%, in favor of Android.
http://www.engadget.com/2014/0... [engadget.com]
Re:Market Share (Score:5, Informative)
I keep seeing this line trotted out, but it only serves to distract from the real issue.
What I've seen time and again from these reports over the last year is that it isn't about Android vs. iOS: it's about app stores. The Google Play store, for instance, has been the source of very few malware incidents (i.e. something like 2-3% of the total). Most of the malware hitting Android is coming from third-party stores that are of questionable trustworthiness. As always, users should be advised to only install software from sources they trust. If iOS allowed users to install from third-party stores without jailbreaking, we'd be seeing the same problems on iOS, regardless of their current marketshare or lack thereof (besides which, marketshare is a measure that shouldn't be used in isolation when assessing the worth of a platform's users to developers, including malware developers).
So, please, stop painting this as an iOS vs. Android thing. Regardless of platform, the users being affected by this stuff, in general, are those grabbing apps from untrustworthy sources. Focus your attention there.
Re:Market Share (Score:4, Informative)
Market Share /= Rewards (Score:3, Informative)
That's great in terms of dominating the market and reaping the rewards that come with it,
Hmm, I guess you've not seen the $ that Androids competitors bring in directly and for their developers.
Re:Market Share (Score:4, Informative)
In the smartphone market, the US still comprises a decently large slice of the pie
The US numbers show iOS at 42%, and Android at 51%. The worldwide numbers show iOS at 15.5%, and Android at 78.9%. So, there's your difference. Links stolen from above:
http://www.comscoredatamine.co... [comscoredatamine.com]
http://www.engadget.com/2014/0... [engadget.com]
Those worldwide numbers are from 2013 though, so I expect that iOS would have continued to shrink over the past 4 months, there's no reason it would have gone up.
particularly at the high end of the market where the more valuable users tend to reside.
News flash: there are more high-end smartphones [laptopmag.com] that run Android then there are that run iOS. Welcome to 2012.
Saying that more malware targets Android than does iOS is the same as saying more targets Windows than MacOS. It's a market share issue, again.