In-App Purchases Will Dominate the Smartphone App Business - Media Market Research at iSuppli. What’s the best way to make money in the smartphone apps market?
Surprisingly, the answer is to give away apps for free—and to generate revenue on subsequent sales of in-app purchases. In-app purchases will rise to account for 64 percent of total market revenue in 2015, up from 39 percent in 2011, as shown in the figure below. Revenue from in-app purchases will increase to $5.6 billion in 2015, up from $970 million in 2011, according to the IHS Screen Digest Mobile Media Intelligence Service at information and analysis provider IHS (NYSE: IHS).
“Smartphone users overwhelmingly prefer free apps to paid apps, as we estimate 96 percent of all smartphone apps were downloaded for free in 2011,” noted Jack Kent, senior analyst, mobile media for IHS. “In 2012, it will become increasingly difficult for app stores and developers to justify charging an upfront fee for their products when faced with competition from a plethora of free content.
Business model. BRIC. Mary Meeker: Mobile Internet Will Soon Overtake Fixed Internet. Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley isn’t just any Internet analyst.
She was covering the sector when the brokerage firm was the lead underwriter for Netscape Communications’ initial public offering in 1995, was dubbed the “Queen of the Net” by Barron’s magazine in 1998 and was covering the space in 2004, when Morgan Stanley helped launch the Google IPO. Now a managing director at Morgan Stanley and head of the global technology research team, she has released her latest massively detailed “State of the Internet” report, which she has been putting out periodically since 1995. She presented the report during an event this afternoon at Google, which was streamed live as part of the Events@Google series (the presentation is embedded below).
And what does Meeker see in her crystal ball this year? Two overwhelming trends that will affect consumers, the hardware/infrastructure industry and the commercial potential of the web: mobile and social networking. Mary Meeker’s presentation: Apple, cette fois le jeu est sur grand écran ! - GamingElectronLibre. Android Market hits 6 billion downloads. The Android Market has reached 6 billion app downloads, according to a report from analytics firm research2guidance.
Google's mobile OS has grown its market share significantly this year, with recent NPD data suggesting that 52 per cent of all phones sold in America in the last quarter were based on Android. Despite its increasing popularity with consumers, developers have struggled to make money on the platform, particularly when compared to iOS and the App Store. However, research2guidance's August report suggests that the ecosystem for distributing and monetising apps is showing strong signs of improvement. As of the end of August, the Android Market contained 277,252 apps, 35 per cent of which cost money to download.
The average app currently generates almost $2500 in its lifetime, and sells at $3.13. The report estimates that developers can improve the profit potential of an app by 900 per cent simply based of which category it occupies. New Reports Show Significant Games Spending In Emerging Markets. A collection of new reports from market research firm Newzoo shows significant spending on games in the developing markets of Russia, Brazil and Mexico, which combine to represent a $4.7 billion gaming market.
Brazil leads the trio of emerging countries, generating an estimated $2 billion of gaming revenue from 35 million individual players in 2011. The majority of that Brazilian spending comes from online or mobile games, with free-to-play games representing a large chunk of that total. The $300 million spent on game downloads in the country also outpaces spending on boxed PC or Mac games. Paypal: 12 million per month pay for Facebook games. Online payment service PayPal has released data that shows more than 12 million of its users pay for Facebook games every month.
In a report on VentureBeat, Paypal also revealed that its users favoured World of WarCraft, Final Fantasy, Bejeweled, and FarmVille. "In massively multiplayer online games, the number of paying gamers keeps going up," said Carey Kolaja, Paypal's senior director of emerging opportunities. "The perception about digital goods is that they lead to micro transactions, which are small. But the average purchase for a paying user is in the mid-20s (in dollars). It is on a positive trajectory. " Most MMO players, 54 per cent, spend between $10 to $50 on virtual currency. 27 per cent spend more than that, while just 19 per cent stick to smaller purchases of under $10. In social games just 9 per cent spend more than $50, while 22 per cent of "casual web site games" players send over the $50 mark.