It’s that time again. Here’s our fortnightly update of news of, and insights into, all things mobile. As well as the latest Apple and Android news, we’ve packed into our roundup all the main insights, trends and forecasts relating to the mobile games market.
A few weeks ago we published a handy cheat sheet which featured the most important metrics to monitor for mobile game publishers in the fields of user acquisition, retention, engagement and monetization. However, we left out a hugely important part of most mobile publishers’ activity. Advertising. Today, even though the majority out of the overall app revenue comes from in-app purchases, monetizing through virtual items remains extremely hard and on average, only a very small fraction of the user base actually converts. For this reason, in-app advertising, when done right, remains an attractive monetization strategy for all mobile publishers.
What’s been going on in mobile the last two weeks? The short answer: a lot. Once again though, the slightly longer and more useful answer can be found below, in our five-piece summary of the hottest happenings, including some game-changing antics from Apple and some insights into the South Korean mobile gaming market from our blog!
A couple of days ago, in our summary of the WWDC14 keynote presentation, we wrongfully stated that we would have liked to see Apple announce more transparency and more advanced analytical features in iTunes Connect. This was without counting on the smaller developer sessions.It turns out, our wish came true as they did announce just that.
Welcome to our first episode of our Asian Beat series!In this first issue we investigate the current state of the South Korean mobile games market. In particular, we look at the history of messaging app Kakao Talk as well as the reasons behind its incredible success. We also dive into the game trends, which have been rapidly evolving over the past couple of years.To begin with, a few facts and figures:
Yesterday, Apple held the keynote presentation of its annual WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) in San Francisco. The company announced a myriad of new products and features, including iOS 8, the latest edition of the mobile operating system, which will be available to the public later this fall.Overall, Apple’s announcements are quite strong, especially for app developers; for app marketers, Business of Apps nicely summed up the main improvements included in the release.Here, we would like to focus on just a few which we believe will directly impact the life of mobile marketers. Then, as it has also been noted that many of these new features effectively close gaps between iOS and Android (widgets and third-party keyboard integrations in particular), we would like cast a light on a few things that we would like Apple to catch up on in terms of app store marketing.