As part of our new year resolutions, we will be posting 5 links to summarize the most important pieces of mobile and mobile gaming news on a weekly basis.
What happened during Week 3:
- Mobile gaming could drive entire video game industry to $100B in revenue by 2017 (VentureBeat)A new study by game investment bank Digi-Capital forecasts that the mobile gaming market could drive the whole game software industry to a nifty $100 billion by 2017, with Asia driving big part of the growth. Click here for the full report.
- Mobile use grows 115% in 2013, driven by messaging apps (Flurry)Overall app use posted 115% year-on-year growth in 2013, led by messaging and social apps, which grew by a staggering 203%. Flurry notes that the largest incumbents in the messaging category, such as Japanese-based LINE or Chinese Tencent’s WeChat, have developed beyond the app stage to become actual distribution platforms. Mobile gaming, in spite of fears of saturation, still managed to grow by 66% year-on-year.
- Revenue distribution is actually more skewed on Android than on iOS (Developer Economics)Although Android is generally catching up on iOS in terms of revenues and will probably overtake it in 2014, the distribution of revenues on Google’s platform is skewed, both geographically and across apps. The bulk of the increase on Android comes from top grossing free to-play mobile game publishers in Asia and especially Japan (including messaging app and gaming platform LINE). Bottom line: the uplift in Android revenues comes from the top rather than from the long tail, and if you don’t have the potential of ranking in the top charts, you’re still relatively better off developing for iOS first.
- App monetization is due to get tougher still, with Gartner predicting 94.5% of all downloads to be free by 2017 (TechCrunch)Gartner predicts that in 2018, because of the increasing competition on the app stores, less than 0.01% of consumer mobile apps will be considered a financial success by their developers. In the meantime, the paid model continues to weaken, with presently only 10% of paid apps being downloaded more than 500 times and earning more than $1,250 per day. Click here for Gartner’s complete press release.
- Asia Focus: Chinese Android app store Wandoujia gets $120 million in a funding round led by Japanese mobile telco Softbank (TechInAsia/TheNextWeb)Recent news shake up the somewhat complicated Chinese mobile landscape, which comprises hundreds of alternative Android app stores (but not Google Play). Wandoujia, China’s second Android stores with 300 million users and contender to other major players such as Baidu and Tencent, secured a $120 million funding round led by Softbank (who also bought a majority stake in Supercell last year). Wandoujia claims half a million new users a day, the equivalent of half of China’s daily Android activations. Click here for an overview of China’s top 10 android app stores.
If you come across interesting news that you think should make the list, do not hesitate to send us suggestions at blog@www.applift.com.Have a good weekend!