Antivirus/spyware for mobile surfing

This might not be totally relevant to development for mobiles, but Im interested to hear your thoughts on this.
I’ve had a smartphone for the past few years. During this time I cannot recall having any virus or spyware problems even though I have used mobile web frequently.

So my question is is mobile anti-virus needed at all? and if so - why doesnt it seem to be taken as seriously as anti-virus for desk top PCs.

In my understanding, apps on mobile devices operate within their own “sandbox,” so what happens to one part of the device does not control the rest of the device.

This is unlike the desktop environment in which the virus specifically infiltrates resources to allow them to control the other portions of the desktop.

Thanks for your response.

So why can’t a desktop environment be made in the same way as a mobile environment, so they are less vulnerable to viruses and spyware?

Sorry if the question seems silly, I was just puzzled as to why mobile devices seem alot less vulnerable to viruses online than desktop PCs. Even though they are both connecting
to the same network (internet).

Cause people are morons. UAC on Windows Vista/7 does somewhat that. You’ve seen how people react to it I’m sure. They turn it off! So it doesn’t matter in the slightest. People are morons they make themselves vulverable to viruses and spyware. Plus that malware hasn’t really been made for mobile devices yet. However, spyware is prevalent on most devices from the carries themselves like AT&T…I forgot what it is called tho…

Now…for the record there is malware for iphone and android. The trouble is…you have ot install it yourself.

I would recommend searching for it at [noparse]http://soft32.com[/noparse] as here I got many software downloaded in addition to antivirus for my desktop.