Week 17Here are the 5 stories not to miss from the week that was in the mobile industry.
- How Chillingo plans to find the next Flappy Bird (Venture Beat)
- Apps featured by Apple or Google get 6 times the downloads and 9 times the revenue — or nothing (Venture Beat)Distimo’s latest report takes a deeper look at the effects of a feature by Apple or Google. In particular, the report shows that the category of the feature (eg. “if you like…”) is a strong determinant of much of a boost the app will get. Click here for the full report.
- Messaging Is A Winner-Take-Some Market (TechCrunch)Anamitra Banerji, partner at Foundation Capital and first product manager at Twitter, explains why he thinks that mobile messaging (dubbed “OTT”, or “over-the-top” messaging apps) is no winner-take-all market and why several competing apps can co-habit alongside.
- iTunes App Store Now Labels Apps With In-App Purchases (Übergizmo)In its latest update, Apple introduced a clear indication of which apps contain in-app purchases next to the price/download button (additionally to the mention under the app name in the app description, which was already the case since 2013). This feature seems to be currently only available in the Top Charts section of the App Store, but we can speculate that Apple will eventually roll it out to other areas such as search results.
- Tencent, the secretive, Chinese tech giant that can rival Facebook and Amazon(Fast Company)In this thoroughly-researched article, Fast Company offers an extremely comprehensive overview of the Chinese messaging giant. Below, we’ve reproduced an infographic of how Tencent stacks up against other competitors in the sector.
Venture Beat caught up with Chillingo’s general manager Ed Rumley to explain why, among other things, indie developers still need dedicated publishers to handle their distribution and marketing efforts.
