The Mobile Marketing Blog - TellMyCell

What Are iOS and Android Gamers Spending Money On?

Mobile analytics provider Flurry just published a study that examines the rapdily growing mobile gaming market. How fast?

Last month, we published two posts about iOS and Android freemium game revenue.  The first showed that, over the first half of 2011, game revenue in the App Store shifted dramatically from premium to freemium, with 65% of all revenue generated among the top 100 games now coming freemium games.  In fact, at the time of writing this blog post, all of the top 5 titles in the App Store top grossing category were freemium games, and 22 of the top grossing 25 were games.  The second post revealed that consumers spend an average of $14 per transaction when making in-app purchases in freemium games.

Today they're looking a bit deeper:

With in-app purchases in freemium games driving the bulk of revenue generation in the iOS and Android app economy, Flurry devotes this post to what consumers actually spend their real dollars on.  With over a year’s worth of data, Flurry categorized over 57 million purchase transactions across a set of freemium iOS and Android games that averaged over 2 million daily active users.

And the results:

The chart shows that over two-thirds of all items purchased in iOS and Android freemium games are consumable, goods that users deplete.  Measured another way, approximately half of all real dollars spent within all apps are for game items consumers don’t keep.  Based on our data, the most popular virtual purchase, consumable or otherwise, is for “premium” in-game currency

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Next, durable items represent 30% of all in-app purchases in freemium games.  From a game design standpoint, it's important to have a good selection of durable items in a game as it offers important variety to the consumer with respect to the core gameplay, such as erecting buildings in a city.

For the entire report, head over to Flurry's blog.

Horace Dediu On The fate Of Mobile Phone Brands

The always interesting ASYMCO blog has some great insights (with charts!) on the mobile phone industry. It's well known that Apple takes the lion's share of profits when it comes to mobile phones - but what about marketshare? More specifically, what can we learn by look at the past few years:

The violence with which new platforms have displaced incumbent mobile vendor fortunes continues to surprise.

• Nokia’s Symbian platform has gone from 47% share to 16% in three years
• Microsoft’s phone platforms have gone from 12% to 1%
• Other platforms have gone from 21% to zero
• Although far less dramatic, RIM’s decline from 17% to 12%  is causing acute pain and anxiety

This while entrants have grown share in spectacular fashion:

• Android from zero to 48% (A two year period)
• iOS from 2% to 19%
• Bada from zero to 4% (two quarters only)

Head over to ASYMCO for more charts and analysis.

Is Google Bringing A Digital Newsstand To Android?

As we we get ready for CES, 4G deployments, and perhaps the long awaited CDMA (Verizon/Sprint) iPhones, intomobile reports on an interesting development in the Android end of the mobile universe:

The Google newsstand will allow those using Android phones and tablets to purchase digital magazines and newspapers all from one place. People familiar with the matter said that Big G has approached publishers like Time Warner, Condé Nast and Hearst Corp for their upcoming service. It’s rumored that Google could be willing to take a smaller percentage of every purchase, and may give users’ behavioral data to the publishers to help with marketing campaigns.

Although its become conventional wisdom that iPad magazines haven't worked out as well as hoped, Mashable recently took a second look at the data:

When you compare digital sales to print newsstand sales, however, it becomes clear that digital sales numbers aren’t nearly as poor as they first appear. In fact, after an initial spike, the sales performance of issues on the iPad and iPhone roughly correlate their performance on the newsstand (note that except for Wired, sales data is relative):

Head over to Mashable for a thorough analysis.

300,000 Thousand iOS Apps And Counting (Infographic)

Who doesn't love a good infographic? Mobile App 'Discovery Engine' App Of The Day has put together a gigantic infographic reporting the state of the iOS app ecosystem as it stands at the end of 2010.

Don't Forget SMS - 75% Of Americans Still Don't Own A Smartphone!

The number of Americans with smartphones is growing - quickly - but don't confuse what the marketplace will look like in a couple of years with its current state. If you're thinking about launching a mobile marketing campaign only SMS can deliver 100% of consumers.

A whopping 60.7 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in October, up 14 percent from the preceding three month period, representing one out of every four mobile subscribers.

And if you're thinking about building an iPhone app, make sure to consider the data:

RIM was the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. with 35.8 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, followed by Apple with 24.6 percent share (up 0.8 percentage points).

Google Android saw another month of strong growth, rising 6.5 percentage points to capture 23.5 percent of smartphone subscribers.

Read more at Mobile Marketer.

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A New Meaning For HBO's "It’s Not TV, It’s HBO" Slogan

The Time Warner-owned TV powerhouse is expanding their “HBO Go” services for the iPad as well as other mobile devices with hopes to make is easier than ever to access popular HBO movies and shows. They want customers to be able to keep tabs on their favorite movies and television shows wherever they are.  According to Bloomberg, the service will be provided to already paying subscribers for no additional cost and should be available by early 2011. This could potentially attract more viewers to their iPad’s rather than to their televisions.

“There is value in exclusivity,” HBO co-president Eric Kessler, noting that viewers “are willing to pay a premium for high quality, exclusive content.”

To read the entire article, click here.

Get your iPad...at Wal-Mart!

Last week we noted that Apple had already sold 1 million iPads. Well, we can expect them to sell a lot more of them:

By the end of 2010, Wal-Mart will carry Apple’s revolutionary tablet computer. “We anticipate being able to have the iPad later this year,” says Gary Severson, senior VP of entertainment for Wal-Mart’s U.S. stores.

Having sold in excess of one million units since its launch last month, the iPad has been plagued by supply issues – a problem that could be exacerbated by Wal-Mart stocking the tablet nationwide. For now, Apple isn’t commenting on how it will deal with supply shortages. But industry analysts say that bulking up the inventory of iPads will likely prove Apple’s biggest priority this summer.

Estimates maintain that Apple could very well move between four and five million iPads by the end of this year – a remarkable feat, but one that would prove substantially easier to pull off with America’s mega retailer Wal-Mart bringing the tablet closer to the masses than it’s ever been.

Head over to Mobile Marketing Watch to read more.

Apple Sold 1 Million iPads In April

If you were wondering whether consumers were truly interested in the iPad, this should provide some clarity:

Between Friday, April 3rd, and Friday, April 30th – the release dates of Apple’s WiFi iPad and the iPad 3G, respectively – the Cupertino-based tech giant successfully logged better than one million units sold of the revolutionary tablet computer.

Note that - these are sales of the WiFi models only. Anyone who was waiting for the 3G equipped models had to wait a month. Don't be surprised to see big sales in May.

Are These The Features We'll See in iPhone OS 4.0?

Aside from the widely expected tablet, will Apple be dropping iPhone OS 4.0 at their big event on January 27th?

• Multi-touch gestures are being incorporated throughout the OS
• There will be a “few new ways” to run applications in the background.
• Plenty of UI changes were put in place to make using the OS more efficient.
• Sadly, the rumor indicates iPhone OS 4.0 will be iPhone 3G/3GS only. iPhone 1 owners, it’s time to retire your piece.
• “Brand new syncing” capabilities for the calendar/contacts system.

Head over to MobileCrunch for more.