The links are back! From now on we will select the main stories, facts, figures and charts of the two weeks that were.Welcome to Mobile News of the Fortnight!
The Main Piece of News of the Fortnight (PocketGamer)
Developers on the App Store are now able to provide promo codes for in-app purchases. This new feature is good news for developers as promo codes were previously limited to initial app downloads only. The ability to give away in-app purchases using promo codes will facilitate the process of testing and promoting freemium games and other apps with content that can be purchased within an app.
The App of the Fortnight (Forbes)
Tencent’s flagship mobile app WeChat is acknowledged as the most powerful mobile app in China. Based on reported growth of WeChat MAUs, the app is on its way to become one of the most powerful apps worldwide too. Currently the number of WeChat MAUs reaches 396 million, twice its size since the beginning of 2013 (195 MAUs). Such growth can be threatening to the strongest WeChat competitors such as Whatsapp, whose global user base consists of 465 million MAUs.The Finding of the Fortnight (MarketWatch)
In their online behaviors, phablet users are found to be distinct enough from smartphone and tablet users. Social networking on phablets constitutes around 54% of impressions, strongly surpassing the Q1 global average of all mobile devices (around 27%). Also, phablet users’ engagement level with the ads during the evening hours (8pm – 10pm) is very high, outperforming the ones of tablet users’.The Evidence of the Fortnight (AListDaily)
While the F2P business model dominates the mobile games market (with 90% of all mobile games), there is evidence proving that paid mobile games still have good opportunities too. Recent examples of Fingerproof Games’ franchise The Room sales of more than 5.4 million copies at a price of $4.99 and Minecraft’s sales with over 15 million copies at $6.99 suggest that paid mobile games can prosper in the premium games niche.The Impact of the Fortnight (VentureBeat)
A few months ago the Google Play Store changed the way it categorizes the game category. The number of categories increased from 6 to 18. This change facilitated the game discovery process. In turn, positive impact on games revenues and downloads can be observed on the recent reports.