A very brief comment to an article on Smartphone Security (http://www.connectitnews.com/usa/story.cfm?item=1787) just published.

Brief summary: bluetooth wireless internet appliances are wide-open to malware and id theft and 86% of users who know this have done nothing about it. The survey was conducted by an internet security ISV. The ISV survey also reported that:

"More than half of the respondents said they felt it was up to the individual user to ensure their phones were protected. About one-third said they expect security to be dealt with by their mobile phone carriers (the U.S. put even greater emphasis on the third-party responsibility)."

That sounds great news for the ISV. Huge market potential to tap into. Go get some investor funds to attack the market...... ...... ......?

Having only yesterday put the emphasis on knowing the right questions to ask in order to ascertain true customer values (see Fool's Gold Rush), perhaps the smartphone user's answer would have come back differently if expressed like this:

How would you rate the importance of your mobile Internet-enabled device coming with automatic security features built-in?
- Very important
- Somewhat important
- Not important
- Not aware of security problems on my mobile device.

Then, perhaps the ISV would have ammunition to go to wireless carriers and pitch a pre-loaded version of its software as a subscriber service for a couple of dollars per month, with access to 15 million or more customers.

Every customer wants to be secure. Their risk tolerance is only relative to the cost. If you give them the choice: to buy it themselves or have you buy it for them, they will more likely (as proven) say that they'll do it themselves, because you didn't demonstrate sharing this value by offering to take care of it. BUT, if you did share their value, to take the problem off their plate, wait for it, wait for it: They'd say YES.

So an ISV got a good story, and some PR, but it feels like everyone missed the point.