On Technology and the Future: Education, IoT, AI, Mobility, Games

Tag: mobile games Page 12 of 17

iPhone content is recession-proof, too!

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On 08/12/2008

In Apple, OEM

Is it becoming boring or is it becoming more and more exciting? However you view Apple‘s forays into mobile, it is very, very remarkable (and I do indeed think exciting) indeed: in ads in the NY Times and the Washington Post (see here), the company reports 300,000,000 downloads in 5 months (I leave the zeros in for mere impact…). That’s 2.1m downloads per day – on a single handset model, which isn’t even the single best-selling one (well, it probably is of recent, but not historically) and is normally only available through one carrier per country (which means that it could also have been, say, 10m downloads per day if extrapolated to the total user base). Woah! Is anyone still skeptical about the equation pretty hardware + pretty UI + hassle-free shop-front + single platform + single distribution outlet = success for content?

The iPhone’s fashion factor does, I think, not matter when it comes to the download numbers: If the above chain would not work, people might smile slightly embarrassed and continue fiddling around with the pinch-z
oom of pictures, etc but they would not come back time and again to get more content for the thing; I mean: just running around with it and placing it onto bistro, bar, cafe and probably even Starbucks tables will be enough to prove your membership in the circle of the hip and trendy media crowd.
There’s only anecdotal reports (or rather rumours) about how much money is being made by developers on the platform (we still suspect a lot of it will be in the “free” category but one rather reputable games publisher apparently said that they’re making more money on the AppStore than through all of Vodafone Global) but these numbers are – in any event – huge!
And it does show that content works if you let it work, i.e. if you make it easy to publish on a platform and if you don’t try to be your customer’s nanny and determine what’s good for them. If people would realize this, and that would be the only lasting impact of the iPhone, that would surely be a lot! Thank you, Mr Jobs!

Lower Handset Sales in 2009

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On 03/12/2008

In OEM

The financial crisis will – what a surprise – also catch the handset manufacturers. A report tells us that handset sales are bound to fall in 2009, by 5.6% or 1.215 billion units, to be precise. The backend of 2008 already sees the impact, too: growth predictions have been reduced from 10.4% year-on-year to 8.9%.

This is in line with reports from Blackberry maker RIM who reduced its forecasts today. Even mighty Nokia is expected to lower its forecasts.
It can probably be expected that this will also impact the mobile content market: it is widely accepted that consumers tend to spend on mobile content in the first 3 months after they got a new phone. So: no new phone, no new content… Moreover: the above reduction in growth does not actually show the whole picture. Mobile content uptake is much higher on high-end phones. However, these are normally bought by way of upgrades, and it is there that the most severe drops are being predicted.

“While new subscriber additions are continuing at a healthy pace and are poised to grow by 563.9 million in 2008 and by 506.5 million in 2009, an overwhelming majority of the new subscribers are coming from the rural areas of emerging regions,” Teng said. “These subscribers primarily are purchasers of low-cost, entry-level handsets. However, the pricier feature-phone and smart-phone market segments are driven by existing subscribers who are upgrading their mobile devices to take advantage of new features and advanced data services. As the economic climate deteriorates, these customers are delaying their purchases.”

All doom and gloom then? Well, maybe not: others predict that the recession (at least in the US) will actually drive the number of wireless-only households. And, after all, a mobile game at €/$/£ 5.00 a pop is not the world, is it?

Juniper to the Rescue…

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On 27/11/2008

In Apple, OEM

We can depend on the researchers from Juniper after all (or maybe they simply felt bad after reading my post on their last report). Whichever the reason, apparently the mobile content industry could be worth a hefty $167bn (!) if – yes, if – the operators would resolve to allowing a workable commercial environment, namely by limiting themselves to lower revenue shares. Whatever the caveats (which are, as usual, hidden in the expensive main report) this number is topping even the loftiest predictions to date; right on in times of the doom and gloom. The key apparently lies in whether operators would act as dumb pipes (no richness for anyone) or a smart pipe (lots of play money for all players on the value chain). In their own words:

“If MNOs are to benefit financially, they need to move away from their Dumb Pipe roots to the Smart Pipe model, though they will clash with the content providers which already dominate the Smart Pipe. A compromise needs to be found.”

A smart pipe is understood as one where operators would offer flexible, application-centric value configurations, allowing lean, efficient content offerings from third parties. A dumb pipe is one where content (and value) would merely rush through the pipe without any value being added by the operator. The prevailing model in the mobile games world, namely the on-portal approach where operators implement comprehensive vertically-integrated models (“walled gardens”) is suggested to be somewhat doomed as content providers would gain bargaining power (presumably through consolidation of the supply side plus entry of meatier traditional media players in music, video and TV).

This is all pretty speculative though, and without some background it is quite frankly impossible to analyse the numbers some more. Mobile content appears to include (as per their report from March) games, music, video, TV, social networking, adult content, gambling and so on, and so forth. However, the exact calculatory basis is again hidden in the depths of the report, so I don’t know (do they e.g. take the gross gambling revenue or on;y the rake, which is only a few percentage points of the former). Anyhow, due to these foggy conditions, commentators seem to either merely re-print the PR blurb or mock it (Stuart Dredge thinks that “only gas could do that kind of money”), which is a shame really; just think what you could with this much money…

China Mobile puts on turtleneck

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On 20/11/2008

In OEM

The theme starts becoming lame, I know (and I herewith promise to look for new semi-funny references to Steve Jobs). However: if the world’s largest operator by subscribers changes its dress culture, that is to say swaps from a tightly controlled walled garden to a free store concept, that surely merits this. So, without further ado: China Mobile plans to launch its very own AppStore. Its Chairman & CEO Wang Jianzhou (who was, I think, not sighted in Mr Job’s favourite garment) announced this at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress in Macau. Now, with a whopping 436.1m subscribers, this opens fairly interesting vistas for mobile content – if, yes if, one can hit Chinese taste, that is. They specifically cite Apple’s success with its iPhone as a trigger for them to do it. Truly impressive that a company so big would move so quickly.

This will surely hit the news wires some more in the coming days but I will now retire and brush up on my Mandarin…

Et tu, Juniper?

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On 19/11/2008

It must be truly bleak: even the best friend of every young telecoms entrepreneur on the fundraising trail whose reports rarely failed to feature as a footnote in an investment memorandum for the next big digital thing now sounds a word of caution. Juniper (whose reports I still cannot afford) issued its latest report on mobile gaming and it actually reduces (for the first time, I’m sure, even if I haven’t checked) its prior predictions on the growth and size of the sector in the next, erm, 20 years…

They see growth stifled by the restrictive operator business models. Dare I say it? May they be right? They refer to Apple‘s AppStore, which is the anti-christ to every operator’s walled garden: free for all, free price-setting, Darwinian survival of the fittest (or least-charging), thousands of applications, games, etc, etc, and relatively generous revenue shares on top (although 80% of $0.00 is not very much at all).

Juniper points however to 2 important and true factors: the tolls demanded by the operators to access their precious customer base are very high indeed considering that many do not provide a very compelling service in return. Secondly, marketing and marketing opportunities on-deck normally – well – suck. This was all well and good as long as their were no alternatives (other than the likes of Jamba, Thumbplay and few others). But with the ascent of the iPhone, everyone seems to erupt into a frenzy of trying to replicate the “beautifully simple and compelling UI” for which the purveyors of the Big Black Turtleneck are so famed for. This, Juniper fears, will lead to players exiting that business (I have heard unconfirmed rumours that SEGA decided to call it day on internal J2ME development following their huge success with Super Monkey Ball on the iPhone). 
Other than that though, not much new. And Juniper would not be Juniper if they would not predict “significant” growth in the next 5 years (conveniently long in order to be basically unpredictable): they see the market to roughly double in the next 5 years, which would be 20% growth per year (on today’s terms), which is not all that bad after all. 

Playfish fishes for big bucks

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On 28/10/2008

In Social

Playfish, the social network gaming company founded by wireless industry veteran Kristian Segerstrale, announced a series B round worth a very respectable $17m from Accel Partners and Index Ventures. Playfish boasts 10m monthly users and claims that 4 of its 5 games are in Facebook’s top 10. The company also said it recently joined Google’s in-game advertising solution and presumably banks on capitalizing on this success. No word on financials but they surely are getting their slice of it (just how thick that slice is, I’d like to know). No word either on any mobile activities (which might be coming given Kristian’s background as founder of Macromedia).

Playfish’s mantra is to enable people to play games with their real-world friends via the infrastructure provided by social networks, and I can confirm that this works: I am an avid player of their games, particularly “Who has the biggest brain?” (I am no. 5 amongst my friends so far; a list which is topped by Kristian and I cannot help but think that he might possess cheat codes…).
A round of this size by investors of this pedigree raised in these times deserves our unreserved respect. You rock, guys!

Tira in Tears?

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On 09/09/2008

Are they no more? I haven’t called or sneaked around their offices, so couldn’t tell. However, my much more investigative fellow blogger from the MobileGamesBlog seems to know more: according to him, Tira Wireless is no more.

Tira Wireless had a bit of a mixed following: there were the ones who didn’t believe in the black box (one build in, builds to support 500 handsets out), and there others who thought this was the best thing since sliced Siemens phones. Now, I admit I ranted mercilessly on a panel (ironically sponsored by Tira) at MEM back in 2005 or so against the black box approach, and the width of their endeavours might have killed it (if it did then; no one can confirm or deny as yet…). To use one build and port it across to handsets from the (in)famou
s T-610 to the N73 is hitting natural constraints, and this is arguably a reason why they never got their hands on the heavy hitters of the sector: their customer list doesn’t show a Gameloft, EA, Glu, Digital Chocolate, Hands-On, etc, etc…

A leaner (meaner?) and more focussed approach can get you there as is currently shown by mobile games veteran John Chasey‘s (of IOMO and Finblade fame) Metismo: not another black box, they don’t even claim to being able to do everything under the sun and then some more; theirs is a cross-compiler from J2ME to native C++, and this alone is worth quite something. Smart coding and development environments can and do ease the pains of handset fragmentation, and to have dedicated experts for this makes sense, considering the significant cost contribution of porting to the overall cost of producing a mobile game.
Anyone with more solid news on Tira’s fate, please call, e-mail or comment on this thread… Thank you!

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