ksteineman | Mobile Minute

Posted by ksteineman on Jan 30, 2013 in Mobile | 0 comments

Gameloft sales up 27% – $275 Million in 2012

This compares to the $260 million in sales announced in September. Gameloft saw the majority of its growth during Q2 and Q3 periods, with year-over-years sales during these periods up 35 and 37%. Smartphones and Tablets currently represent 56% of sales for Gameloft whose also been able to sell Java games into emerging markets to continue to generate strong sales. Sales of smartphone and tablets alone grew by 66% YOY in Q4. This supported overall Q4 sales to rise by 23% YOY to $7.7 million from $63M in 2011. Gameloft went on to say, “The dynamism of the smartphone and tablet market and the strong line-up of new high quality games to be released in 2013 by Gameloft should continue sustaining its growth in the coming quarters.” The company attributes its success to newly released titles including Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour, My Little Pony, and Playmobile Pirates, but older releases such as The Amazing Spider-Man also performed...

Posted by ksteineman on Jan 30, 2013 in Mobile, Startups | 0 comments

OpenTable Acquires Foodspotting for $10 Million

In 2009 there was an epidemic growing at an extrodinary rate, this epidemic most observed as ‘people taking pictures of their food’ would later be coined ‘Foodspotting’. Foodspotting stepped into the startup world after raising $3.75 million in a series A round. For those who already use OpenTable, or FoodSpotting you can expect some robust integration between the two apps over the next few months. Especially for OpenTable whose website looks like it was made in the 90’s. I’m sure a revamped visual update will be rolling out soon enough as Foodspotting CEO Alex Andrezejewski is joining OpenTable as the ‘Chief Design Officer’. OpenTable CEO Matt Roberts said, By adding more visually compelling content to help people decide where to dine and discover dishes they’ll love, we hope to make it even easier to find the perfect table for any occasion,” ...

Posted by ksteineman on Jan 30, 2013 in Apps, Mobile | 0 comments

FourSquare for Businesses hits Apple App Store and Google Play

Foursquare, the four year old company with 30 million users has officially released Foursquare for Businesses. It’s a new companion app for its existing merchant dashboard. The app (that is currently only available on the Apple App store and Google play) allows business owners to monitor Foursquare check-in activity, check out top customers, and monitor analytics data, all from the comfort of their own phone. The app can also be used to activiate and deactivate specials which historically was only avaialble via the computer. This app is only a few weeks after Foursquare started giving more ‘check-in’ data on...

Posted by ksteineman on Jan 29, 2013 in Mobile | 0 comments

77% of UK have no interest in Blackberry 10

The New device hasn’t even been launched yet, but smartphone owners already claim to have no interest in moving towards Blackberry vs Samsung and iPhone. Despite RIM being crowned UK’s number one smartphone OEM this time last year, with more than 8.5M BlackBerry users and a 27.7% market share the firm has been through tough times. With the BlackBerry 10 launch event taking place tomorrow, Blackberry announced yesterday that BlackBerry World app store will come loaded with films, music, and TV shows. VoucherCodes.co.uk found that 77% of British smartphone users wouldn’t consider switching to a BB10 device, while only 40% of existing BlackBerry users would stick with the brand. To make matters worse.. 90% think the new operating system won’t have enough appeal to grab their attention 43% said BlackBerry doesn’t make user-friendly phones 31% said the device does not justify the cost 26 % said BlackBerry was no longer a desirable brand. 44% of BlackBerry users said they were planning to move over to an iPhone 38% plan...

Posted by ksteineman on Jan 29, 2013 in Apps, Mobile | 0 comments

Kabam starts 2013 with more than $200M in Gross Revenue

Having ended 2012 with gross revenue of $180 million, (revenue doesn’t account for the 30% platform cut that Apple, Google or Facebook take but is up 70% from last year). The mobile gaming company Kabam is boasting its expected revenues for the coming year. While Kabam hasn’t disclosed their marginal profits, they are a pioneer in midcore freemium gaming on Facebook. Unlike Zynga, they didn’t focus on reaching the largest audience possible or the stereotypical 35-year-old female casual gamer. Instead, focusing on a smaller player base (usually more male) that spent more on average to play. As Facebook became a more challenging environment, they transitioned to mobile as many other game developers did. That mobile transition, which includes extensions of their Kingdoms of Camelot franchise, is now a more-than $100 million business. The companies lastest valuation from back in May of 2011 was $500 million during a round of funding that raised $75 million for the company. It also said the recent strategic investment from Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and...

Posted by ksteineman on Jan 29, 2013 in Apps, Mobile, Startups | 0 comments

Watch out TestFlight – Kickfolio rolls out embedding feature

Having touched on Kickfolio in December the service got some major updates today; including the ability to embed app demos on any webpage using an iframe. These features while great for developers and users are also going to heat things up with competition like Testflight or PreApp. It will be interesting to see how these 3 companies evolve and innovate as the industry progresses. If you go to their website and scroll down a little you’ll see these features and be able to test them. They also now support iPad apps, and are making the service much more affordable for all. Needless to say, this is a powerful tool for developers promoting their apps online, and no reason people should’t take advantage of when providing free demos to potential users and have on their website. After receiving some feedback from their users regarding their plans that start at $50 a month Kickfolio has slashed the cheapest plan to $9 a month (which includes 500 embed sessions). Every plan now also includes...

Posted by ksteineman on Jan 29, 2013 in Apple, Mobile | 0 comments