Amazon Fire Failure, Mobile Advertising Growth, Game Market Forecast for Next Year - and Other Weekly News for Mobile Developers

Mobile games will overtake console games as early as next year

According to a new report by Newzoo, the mobile market will overtake the console in 2015. By the end of 2014, the market volume will reach $ 25 billion, and in 2015 - $ 30 billion.

Analysts predict further growth in the mobile market due to new emerging markets. Moreover, the greatest bet is placed on the countries of Asia and South America, where the penetration of smartphones is far from the saturation border (if we also take into account that China, India, Brazil are among these countries).

Outperforming the PC market and consoles are linked, among other things, to the fact that the mobile market aggregates a part of the audience that used to be an adherent of these platforms. Thus, Nintendo's revenues for 2013 amounted to $ 2.4 billion, and a decrease is forecasted this year, while revenues from games on the App Store and Google Play will be $ 4 and $ 3 billion, respectively.

Newzoo predicts that by 2017 the mobile market will grow to almost $ 41 billion, and among the “four screens” (PC, TV, Mobile, Tablet), mobile phones and tablets will receive more than half of all user revenue.

Amazon Fire almost officially recognized as a failure

Recall that the main feature of this device is the Dynamic Perspective function, which creates a 3D illusion of what is happening on the screen.

Amazon Fire Phone costs $ 1 to date. But, true, with the purchase condition along with a two-year contract with AT&T. When it was launched a few months ago, it cost $ 199. If the price of $ 1 were at the launch of the device in July, then perhaps such a failure would not have happened.

Although the Amazon did not publicly say anything, there is evidence that now Fire Phone in the amount of $ 83 million is stuck in warehouses and stores. And every day the chance to sell as many devices tends to zero. And the loss for the 3rd quarter is $ 170 million.

Amazon’s next attempt to take a solid position in the mobile market has failed. So when you think about whether to go to the Amazon Store, then consider your version costs and the amount of money and users that are there right now. Explosive growth of these indicators in the near future is not to be expected.

Opera reports on the mobile advertising market for the 3rd quarter of 2014

According to a new report from Opera, Android continues to slowly but surely push iOS into the mobile advertising market. IOS revenue share fell to 51.2%, while Android grew to 41.8%. Also note the weak, lower than more than two times, the activity of updating to iOS 8, compared with the 7th version.

Unconditional leaders remain social networks in terms of traffic volume, and “Music, Video and Media” take first place in revenue.



But in the ranking by impressions among countries there are changes. Asia is rapidly gaining momentum and displacing Europe in third place. Mexico stands out in terms of profitability, which unexpectedly rose in the ranking right up to 4th position.

The share of video advertising is growing: in 2014, it was 3.5 times higher than last year. Today, multimedia accounts for 15% of all mobile advertising, with 8.5% of the video. Countries such as France, Spain and Italy lead in video format ad impressions.



In terms of the share of video displays in the vertical of the advertising industry, such sectors as entertainment and consumer goods are leading. Mobile publishers also find mobile video profitable, as video is most effective in advertising their products.



As for the length of the video, the clips are less than 15 seconds or 21-30 seconds. To confirm the effectiveness of short videos, one can cite the geometric increase in investment in videos up to 20 seconds long.

Applications in the categories "Shopping", "Sports", "Social Services" and "Health and Fitness" gave the best rates for completing the viewing of mobile video ads.

King shares fall in price

With King stock prices, everything happens according to a rather familiar scenario . At the peak of popularity, King entered an IPO, hit a good jackpot, and now the price is moving smoothly to a fair one. Now King's shares are selling at $ 11.60, when compared with July figures, when the price exceeded $ 20, this is a very noticeable drop.

According to the results of the financial report published by the company in August, it is clear that DAU from 143 million in the first quarter fell to 138 million in the second. The daily audience for the same period increased from 481 million to 485 million, but the number of unique players in all games fell from 352 million to 345 million.

It can be concluded that King has occupied a niche and is competing with herself, offering several games to the same players. However, the influx of new players declined and even began to roll back, with which analysts attribute the decline in the value of the company's shares. A company should diversify its portfolio by including new titles.