Week 14What happened this week in the mobile industry?
- Apps still rule mobile (TechCrunch)A new report by mobile analytics firm Flurry indicates that native apps receive 86% of U.S. consumers’ mobile times, six times more than the mobile web does. The percentage of time spent in apps vs. mobile web rose from 80% to 86% from 2013 to 2014.
- Asia to fuel the mobile gaming industry (PocketGamer)According to games investment outfit Digi-Capital, the mobile and online gaming market will grow from $15 billion in 2011 to almost $60 billion in 2017, at an compound annual growth rate of 24%. Most of the growth will be fueled by the Japanese, Korean and Chinese mobile markets. The executive summary of the report is available on Digi-Capital’s website.
- Mobile gaming means growth for messaging app Line (TheNextWeb)Japanese messaging company Line announced that mobile gaming accounted for 60% of the $338 million revenue they made over the last quarter. Line’s 400 million registered users have now downloaded over 300 Line Game titles. Head here for the official company announcement.
- Tango vs. Viber vs. WhatsApp: a comparative study (Distimo)This slightly older blog post by app store analytics company Distimo compares global downloads for the three main over-the-top (OTT) mobile messaging apps. A very informative read on one of the hottest parts of the mobile market right now.
- Google further cracks down on shady app store tactics (VentureBeat)Google announced some modifications to the Google Play regulations aimed at further restricting shadowy app store techniques such as “making advertisements look like system dialog boxes or other aspects of an app’s user interface, tracking consumers’ usage or locations without proper permission, or making modifications to the browser on behalf of advertisers or third parties”.