Hyderabad: In the next two years, the Indian smartphone market is set to overtake the US to become the world’s largest smartphone maker if it grows at the same pace it did in Q2 2015. The second quarter sales was up by 44 per cent. Although, that might be good news for the mobile market, it might spell doom for the security of the mobile — which has seen an0 increase in the number of malwares.
“Over the years, the type of malware affecting our systems especially PCs, laptops and most importantly mobiles is becoming silent yet powerful. The android platform, which is an open platform, is the most risky in comparison to any other OS. Nowadays, 90 per cent of desktop users have an anti-virus installed but that’s not the case with mobile users.
Maybe only 20-30 per cent of them have an anti-virus in their phones, that too because it has been pre-installed in their hardware,” said Altaf Halde, managing director, South Asia, Kaspersky Lab.
With the Android being an open platform, the malware will get downloaded via some application and sit in a corner of the mobile. Slowly and steadily it will start taking information from the mobile and transfer it to the developer, without the user being aware of it. Thus, it is important for all smartphone users to be aware of these threats and protect their phone with an anti-virus, he added.
In addition, there is a lot of education and business transactions happening via this device, which makes it more suspectible to virus and ultimately threats as well. The paid market for anti-virus in India is about $40 million and Kaspersky has a market share of 18 per cent. But according to Mr Halde, if the untapped mobile market also becomes aware of the growing security threats, then this market is poised to double and may even hit $80 million.
