April 22, 2014 at 08:16Amazon will go to the smartphone market, Unity - to analytics, and Candy Crush Saga - to China - the main mobile news of the week
Amazon (rumored) will release its smartphone
We have repeatedly written that Amazon is making active attempts to claim the status of the “third store”. The company's activities in this direction are very diverse - from luring developers of popular Android applications and introducing their own currency to developing the in-house game studio and launching cross-platform statistics for applications.
In our opinion, the existence of our own “piece of iron” always plays an important role in creating an ecosystem. Until recently, Amazon had its entire business for the application market built around various modifications of the Kindle tablet. However, according to recent reports (so far at the rumor level), the company is seriously thinking about entering the smartphone market.
Moreover, the company's new product, whose photo has already “leaked” to the Web, is positioned as a 3D-smartphone. The announcement of the device is expected at the end of June. It will be interesting to observe its distribution - Amazon will actively use only its channels or, finally, make a breakthrough towards the “mass market”.
Unity bought Playnomics mobile analytics startup
Unity continues to be aggressive in the mobile development market. Following the takeover of the Applifter service, which offers a platform for recording and sharing video from mobile games, Unity acquired the startup Playnomics, which provides analytics for mobile developers.
The purchase price was not disclosed, and both parties did not comment on the transaction.
Playnomics won the VentureBeat - Who's Got Game contest at the GamesBeat 2010 conference. In February 2013, Playnomics raised $ 5 million from Vanedge Capital, and before that Accelerator Ventures, Metamorphic Ventures and TriplePoint Capital invested in the company. In total, Playnomics raised $ 8.2 million.
At the moment, Playnomics processes billions of game events per month, and games with millions of monthly active players use the services of the service.
This deal confirms Unity’s desire to be the only all-in-one platform for mobile developers. Looking forward to absorbing (or launching) something in the spirit of HockeyApp?
King comes out in China with Tencent
King will release one of the most successful mobile games in the world, Candy Crush Saga in China with the help of local internet giant Tencent. The Chinese version of the game will be available through Tencent's Mobile QQ and Weixin Game Centers.
King currently has 324 million active players per month, and launching in China will allow the company to receive hundreds of millions of new players!
With the support of Tencent, King is gaining ground in Asian markets: in 2013, Candy Crush Saga was launched in Japan and South Korea. China is a very important move for a company that can brighten up the frustrations of a not-so-successful IPO.
Twitter launched mobile app advertising
Twitter has announced the launch of its own advertising network Twitter Publisher Network. Like Facebook, Twitter will allow you to publish advertising tweets with links to mobile applications in the middle of a tweet feed.
This solution is technologically based on the MoPub network purchased last year. With its help, advertisers will be able to show ads not only to 241 million of their users, but also to the billion-dollar user base MoPub Marketplace.
Again, similar to Facebook, Twitter provides advertisers with a range of tools for conducting and measuring promotions. Now the solution works in closed beta mode. It is being tested by companies such as Spotify, Kabam and GREE.
AppAnnie published a report for the 1st quarter of 2014
AppAnnie released a new report on the mobile market for the first quarter of 2014. You can view the full version here (http://blog.appannie.com/app-annie-index-market-q1-2014/). And we, by tradition, will talk about the most interesting, in our opinion, moments.
In terms of application downloads worldwide, Google Play is 45% ahead of the App Store. This result is associated with countries where the market for Android devices is growing at a good pace: Russia, Brazil, Mexico and Turkey.
At the same time, the App Store still brings more money than Google Play. At the end of the first quarter of this year, the Apple app store brought 85% more money than Google Play.
The Chinese App Store has shown the largest growth in both downloads and revenue. In the first quarter, revenue grew by 70%. In February, 1 million new Phone users appeared in the country.
Games are the most popular and most earning category in both countries. Messengers continue to show growth and gain more and more top positions in the top categories of Communication on Google Play and Social Networking in the App Store.
