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Study: Mobile gamers download five titles a month, mostly through word of mouth
A new study released by Applifier says that word of mouth is still the number one way mobile game players find the games they like. That doesn't necessarily mean in-person discussion about mobile games, however, though 36 percent of users did report that hearing from a friend or family member was a major source of games, and 25 percent of users said actually seeing a friend or family member play a game was one way they found out about their favorites. However, 43 percent of users say reading user reviews was the main way they found what they liked to play. Video is another big game pusher -- 70 percent of users polled by Applifier say that they watched online video about mobile games in the last week, and 45 percent of users said that watching the video had them downloading that same game right away. Most mobile game players, according to Applifier, download up to five mobile games a month, which is just a little more than one per week. Those games are played for about three hours per week, though obviously that's spread out across the entire week, so most likely little bits here and there rather than three hours at a time. And 20 percent of users, said Applifier, can be classified as "sharers," which means they are more likely to download more games, play more often and for longer and convert to paying users. All interesting stuff. For all of the infrastructure for app discovery built by Apple and others, odds are that you're still hearing about your favorite iOS downloads from the people that you know best anyway.
AppGratis CEO speaks out about app being pulled from App Store
One of the big stories yesterday was about the AppGratis app discovery and deals app being pulled from the App Store. As the story developed, there was confusion about what exactly caused Apple to yank the popular app (it has over 12 million users) -- was it something simple like instability and crashes that forced Apple's hand, or was Apple making a statement about apps that are violating certain guidelines? Today AppGratis CEO Simon Dawlat published a long statement on the company blog telling his side of the story. Dawlat started by relating how he first heard about the app being pulled when he got off of an airplane in São Paulo, Brazil and received notifications for "over 75 missed calls, and an seemingly infinite flow of unread text messages." Next, he reassured the millions of users of the app that even though the app is "momentarily unavailable," anyone who downloaded the app prior to last Friday will still receive continued information about free apps and "cool discounts." Some speculation came out yesterday that the company may have used questionable tactics to grab more than 5 percent of the US iOS marketshare. Several developers I talked with about the AppGratis situation were critical of the company's business model, in which app developers pay for placement to drive up the rank of their apps. A Forbes article from February highlights this practice, where Dawlat himself describes how AppGratis moves developers up the charts and then grabs the app revenue for a set amount of time as payment. In other words, it's more of an advertising service than an app-recommendation service. Dawlat's blog post then describes which clauses in the iOS Developer Guidelines were questioned by Apple. The latest version of the app was actually approved by Apple on April 4, 2013 -- the day before it was pulled from the App Store. As reported by AllThingsD yesterday, Clause 5.6 -- dealing with the use of push notifications to send advertising, promotions or direct marketing -- was to blame. Additionally, Clause 2.25 prohibits apps that display apps "other than your own" for purchase or promotion. Dawlat found the push notification complaint to be somewhat foolish, saying that "...we only send one 'system notification' a day to our users, coming in the form of a generic, opt-in only 'Today's deal is here!' message." That practice is based on Apple's own recommendation on how to use the push notification service. The AppGratis CEO recounted phone calls yesterday with Apple, noting that they "... basically couldn't go beyond repeating multiple times that our app had been pulled due to guideline 2.25 and 5.6." Dawlat finished his post by listing his email address and stating, "If someone in charge at Apple reads this and wants to discuss the matter more in-depth, I'm happy to jump over to Cupertino anytime to prove to you that we're on a mission for good." He also asks happy users of AppGratis -- both on the end-user side and developers -- to share his post. The AppGratis situation has far-reaching implications for other app discovery apps, and this story is far from being at an end.
Apple chomps Chomp to improve App Store search
If we were Tim Cook, we wouldn't be able to resist the temptation of wasting some of that $100 billion on something extravagant, like a crystal iPhone dock or private theme park. Instead the boys in Cupertino remain dogged in quietly acquiring start-ups and hoping no-one notices. Chomp is the latest technology company whose staff will find themselves with a pass for the Infinite Loop car park. It's an app discovery business with technology reportedly far in advance of the App Store's current keyword-based search and given that there are 500,000 apps, it's unsurprising that people aren't finding what they need. You may recall that Chomp powered Verizon's Android searches too, a situation we don't expect to last very long as soon as it's time to renegotiate that contract. The companies will be mixing their sauces together in the hope of making some good goulash, although as usual, we don't expect to get a taste for a while.
StumbleUpon launches App Discovery on Android, trips over clumsy interface
StumbleUpon's been serving up crowdsourced, personalized website recommendations since the turn of the century with the simple idea that like-minded surfers will enjoy the same stuff, and if that sounds like a fantastic formula for recommending apps, then you're in a spot of luck. StumbleUpon's bringing App recommendations to Android today as part of an update to its app, and we have to say, the program's got some potential if it catches on. As with all crowdsourced software, StumbleUpon's not terribly good at its job right off the bat and a moderately unresponsive UI (with tiny touchscreen buttons) doesn't really help, but the app presently pulls from a set of existing Android app databases that give it a nice head start. After you log in with your StumbleUpon ID, it asks you if it can (a la AppBrain) take a look at the existing apps on your phone, after which point it displays likely correlations one by one (complete with descriptions, screenshots and Android Market star ratings) for you to vote up or down. We got quite a few flashlights, soundboards and fart machines, mind you, but most everything we saw had plenty of ratings and at least four stars, and a good number of our favorites (and some probable soon-to-be-favorites) popped up as well, and voting up and down app concepts is an amusing diversion in and of itself. Sadly, it doesn't use your existing StumbleUpon topic preferences to recommend apps, but it will hopefully align them to your tastes soon, assuming that enough folks can look past the iffy UI long enough to help their fellows and give the free app a go. PR after the break. Update: It's on the Android Market right now -- find it at our source link, or use the handy-dandy QR code at right. %Gallery-106706%
