I missed the last one due to travel and dodgy Internet connections whilst on the move, but this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is – as usual – unmissable and unmissed. It is being hosted by Abgail Adams on their Catalyst Code blog, and you will find it here. This week’s edition boasts lessons for toddlers to be learned on the iPhone, social networking going mobile, and a – daring – outlook on the (economic and social) aspects blogs in the year 2025. And now head over for some inspiration!
Author: Volker Page 41 of 73
At the European Mobile Media Conference earlier this week in Prague I gave this presentation on social mobile convergence in gaming, which I thought might contribute a little to de-mystifying this conundrum of buzzwords.
Have a look, tell me what you think…
Social Mobile Convergence in Gaming
View more presentations from hirsch30.
The Opinions in Mobile project asked this week about our thoughts on LTE. Having recently had the pleasure of speaking at Alcatel-Lucent’s 4G Symposium at CTIA, being members at their ngConnect programme and with general curiosity (and excitement), this is something I find quite interesting. Head over to read what some of the industry leaders are saying It’s here.
Image credit: http://www.watblog.com
Birds (sic!) do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it, and now even Oprah (have you been there before her? Check here)… so: what about mobile games companies tweeting? Now, there’s many of them already out there (see list below) but how much sense does it make (that it makes sense for your business I demonstrated recently)?
Looking at a few of them, you’ll find anything from very 20th-century in-your-face selling (probably not so efficient) to enlisting (or trying to) followers to help in everything from game design, logo colours to community components that should go into the next iteration of the website. And it is in the crowdsourcing where I see a bit of potential: most mobile games companies are fairly small, and money to spend on sophisticated research, focus groups and what not is scarce or AWOL. If one can draw on the opinions and insights of friendly followers to learn about their (the consumers’) preferences, this is surely all good. Since Oprah is on there now, too, there is even a chance that your followers will not only be fellow industry professionals…
Although, even to the industry, Twitter is as powerful a tool to the mobile games people as to anything else (maybe with the exception of the global car-wash industry – everyone who’s been to CTIA Wireless will understand the reference): it is a great channel to get the message out to people who matter to you (and who actually show that they care by following you), which puts trade marketing (even if not in the strict sense of the word) onto the list on why you should do it.
So here’s a (surely incomplete – please excuse and feel free to add!) list of mobile games companies who tweet:
EA: @eamobile
Gameloft: @gameloft
Connect 2 Media (yes, that’s us): @connect2media
Glu: @glumobile
Oasys Mobile: @oasysmobile
Hands-On Mobile: @handsonmobile
Digital Chocolate: @dchocgames
I-Play: @iplaymobile
Namco: @namconetworks
Tag Games: @taggames
Fishlabs: @fishlabs
Gamevil: @gamevil
Distinctive Developments: @distinctivegame
Lemonquest: @lemonquest
Kiloo: @jacob_kiloo
Oh, and I’m out there as @vhirsch…
123 Metro could be the name of the latest Major League Soccer franchise but it signifies a neat deal that 123Play, a service that wraps mobile games with ads free to end users, has just struck with the newspaper mavericks from Metro (they’re the guys with the free newspapers; see here for UK and here for the [seeming] inventors of the concept).
I like this deal a lot as it is so natural: Metro is a very successful advertising-driven medium and it ties in extremely well with 123Play’s model. Seamless, simple, very neat: anecdotally, a lot of people play games on their mobile when they have time to kill. Likewise, a lot of people read Metro when they have time to kill, namely when they commute on public transport. One challenge will of course be that there is no mobile reception in the London tube (or most other undergrounds for that matter) but the overall concept should work.
Disclosure: my company works with 123play.com (although I don’t think this post will bring me front-page coverage on Metro…).
I have mentioned this earlier: Next week, I will be headed to beautiful Prague in order to attend and contribute to the European Mobile Media Conference. If you can, make sure to head over (there is even some last-minute discount).
I will be speaking about the phenomenon that is “social games” (are there really that many non-social games?) and I am fairly excited to be able to meet and learn from a couple of rather remarkable people that promise to bring fresh views to the mobile entertainment table. Speakers include carriers (Telefonica/O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile will all be there) and distributors (the CEO of Aspiro, Gunnar Selleg, will be amongst the speakers), OEM and technology platform providers (Nokia, Nokia-Siemens, Ericsson) but also – and maybe most remarkably – a few luminaries from the classic agency world, namely Mark C Linder (WPP) and Jonathan MacDonald (Ogilvy) whose views will surely be tested by the godfather of mobile advertising, Russell Buckley.
Have a look at the full programme and ping me if you are coming!
The monthly numbers on best-selling phones from our accessory-maker friends over at Krusell are out. In March, it looked like this:
1. (1) Samsung SGH-i900/i910 Omnia2. (7) Nokia 31093. (3) Nokia 63004. (2) HTC Touch HD5. (8) Nokia E716. (4) Nokia E517. (10) Nokia 31208. (8) Nokia 58009. (5) Blackberry Storm10. (-) Samsung M8800() = Last month?s position.
Not too many changes as compared to last month. The trend to higher-end phones is maintained (or is it that owners of shiny touch-screen phones tend to spend a little more on that stylish holster?).
Be it as it may be (and my earlier comments on the holster-phone correlation probably stand true to an extent), the numbers are roughly in line with the previously noted growth of the smartphone sector, which continues to outperform the rest of the handset market.
Photo credit: http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/cellphone-holster01.jpg