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"The number of samples—which represent unique, but mostly automatically generated variants of malicious programs—exceeded 5 million in the third quarter of 2014, according to security firm McAfee. Using a different counting method, security firm Symantec classified a similar magnitude—1 million of the 6.3 million mobile apps it discovered—as malware in 2014.
Yet, these data points tell only the darker side of the story. An increasing volume of data supports the idea that Apple’s and Google’s gated communities for mobile software have paid security dividends and kept most monstrous malware at bay.
Apple, Google app stores are most vigilant
Less than 0.5 percent of the 1 billion devices scanned by Google security software had a potentially harmful application (PHA) installed, according to Google’s 2014 Android Security Report, published in April. Potentially harmful applications include spyware, ransomware and fraudulent apps, which Google scans for using a security capability, known as Verify Apps, that runs in the background on modern Android systems."
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