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Study: Average customer spends $14 in freemium games on iOS and Android
This is pretty crazy news from mobile analytics firm Flurry: The average customer in a freemium game on iOS and Android spends $14 in any given transaction, according to their latest data. The same study already revealed that in-app purchases have overtaken standard purchases when it comes to mobile apps, but this set of data shows that when customers do bite the bullet on in-app purchases, they're taking much bigger bites than a lot of people might expect. 13% of those who spend money on freemium games are spending over $20, which means that these players are extremely committed to the games they're actually shelling out money for. And when the standard purchase price of a console videogame at a retail store is around $60, it's not hard to see why very committed players are willing to spend $20, $40, or even a full $60 via an in-app purchase on a game they love and got for completely free. Those high numbers make the average that high value of $14. Keep in mind, however, that this is the average for in-app purchases only -- including players who don't spend any money in these apps would bring the average way down, as this is still only a small percentage of players spending money to begin with. In fact, Flurry found that half of all freemium revenue is actually generated by this 13% who spend high amounts of money on these games. That means that freemium developers are getting a large part of their revenue from a relatively few big spenders, customers who really love the games and are willing (or able -- it's unknown how many of these players are spending their parents' or someone else's money here) to shell out a lot of cash on the title. This is really interesting information, and it shows that freemium gaming, while still popular, is still dependent on just a few customers with lots of money to spend.
iPad 2, Verizon iPhone causing developer migration from Android platform
Flurry Analytics regularly studies new project starts among its clients, and its numbers for Q2 2011 show a decline in Android's developer support compared to the previous quarter. New project starts on the Android platform declined from 36 percent to 28 percent, which Flurry notes is the second quarter-over-quarter decline in Android developer support. Over 2010, support for the Android platform rose steadily enough that various pundits used it as evidence that iOS was "doomed" and would suffer the same low market share fate as the Mac. These new results from Flurry show that's not the case, and the firm cites two likely factors in the declining developer support for Android: the Verizon iPhone 4 and the iPad 2. Until earlier this year, the iPhone was available solely on AT&T, and many analysts suggested that was one of the major barriers to increasing the device's adoption rate in the U.S. Meanwhile, Android handsets took Verizon owners by storm, but analysts wondered whether that would last once the iPhone became available on the CDMA network. Flurry suggests the Verizon iPhone's debut, plus huge consumer demand for the iPad 2 (and apps that run on it), are likely behind the apparent developer migration from Android to iOS. Naturally, this is just one set of results, and as such it's both far too early and extremely misguided to start digging a cemetery plot for the Android platform. It's almost certain that Android and iOS will co-exist and compete for years to come, so any pronouncements of doom and gloom from either side aren't really worth the pixels they're displayed on.
Mobile apps leaving the web behind in usage
Mobile ad company Flurry has released a new analysis on its official blog stating that customers are making the transition lately from using the mobile web to spending more of their daily time in mobile apps. In the early days of smartphone prominence (and by "early days," we mean about three years ago), the main feature on mobile phones was the web. You could check email, look up web pages, or browse the web on your smartphone, and that's how most people used them. Since the rise of iOS, however, mobile apps are picking up that time spent. And as you can see from the chart above, customers are now putting more time into mobile apps (about 9 percent more, it turns out) than browsing the mobile web. It should be noted that both stats are still growing -- customers are spending more time on mobile phones than ever. But mobile app usage is growing even faster. It's not hard to see why this is, either. Mobile apps are maturing quickly, and it's easier to get information from many of them now than it was just browsing around the web. Mobile apps also offer features like offline access and other things that the web doesn't, so this shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone.
iOS and Android continue chipping away at mobile gaming market, consoles remain strong
Let's face it -- smartphones (namely, iOS and Android devices) are slowly chipping away at the portable gaming market. If you recall, Apple took a nice slice of the market-share pie -- and as you'll notice in the picture above, we're seeing the same trend this time around. According to data from Flurry and NPD Group, iOS and Android are earning a sizable chunk of the revenue in the portable gaming software sphere, with the Nintendo DS's dominant market share dropping from 70 percent in 2009 to just 57 percent in 2010 to accommodate the newcomers. We may be seeing the decrease in relative revenue because the PSP and DS are on the way out to make room for the NGP and 3DS -- however, this chart speaks only of the current-gen portables. But hey, it's easy for almost anyone to spend a single buck on a full-fledged game, right? Head past the break for some more videogame revenue stats, if you please.
PlayBook Android app support mentioned during demo at MWC, old BlackBerrys show up in ShopSavvy's Android logs
As far-fetched as it may seem, rumors that RIM is working on some sort of Android app support for its QNX-based PlayBook tablet have persisted in various forms for months now -- and they've turned up once again in a video posted by development community MobileMonday's Rio chapter taken at MWC earlier this month, where a RIM rep seemingly says "we will also support Android apps" after talking about Java-based offerings. Of course, this could've been staged by some rabble rousers or a rep could've simply been echoing back the rumors he's seen on the interwebs -- but regardless, it adds fuel to the fire. Follow the break to see the video of that. But it gets weirder. ShopSavvy -- which makes versions of its app for iOS and Android -- has started turning up a couple of older BlackBerry devices in its Android build's usage statistics on Flurry: the Curve 8300 and 8520, to be specific, along with an 8600 model that doesn't exist (at least, not yet). The 8300, in particular, is pretty ancient at this point and we're having a hard time wrapping our brain around RIM's game plan in porting Dalvik (or a Dalvik-like) VM and associated libraries over to it; if anything, Flurry could be confused. Then again, a next-generation full-touch BlackBerry that just happens to run a full suite of Android apps in a sandbox could be a pretty compelling product, indeed. [Thanks to everyone who sent these in]
Black Friday sees lots of new devices, record app downloads this year
Flurry's analytics blog has a new post up about the bump that the App Store got last weekend. As I said in last week's talkcast, app developers have noticed that the holiday shopping season not only brings a slew of new iPod touches and iPhones into the mix (and this year, the iPad as well), but a resultant flood of customers seeking to buy and try out new apps. According to Flurry, new devices jumped on Black Friday by 57%, and total growth over the entire weekend was 31%. App downloads were also big over the weekend, but surprisingly the biggest day of downloads was on Thursday, which would hint that most of the jump in downloads came from sales to already-owned devices, not the devices picked up on Black Friday. At any rate, there was a lot of money made on the App Store last weekend, and there's more to come: even more than the Black Friday weekend, app store developers have found that the few days after Christmas are even bigger for app sales, as everyone goes onto iTunes and spends gift cards and buys new apps for the devices found under their Christmas trees. So look for more sales to pop up then, and even higher revenue numbers to appear as well.
iOS social apps attracting more eyes than top TV shows
In the battle for viewer eyes, Apple appears to be making some huge strides. How huge? Well, ad group Flurry says that socially aware iOS apps now have a larger audience share than some of the top TV shows. Flurry estimated that 19 million iOS device owners are connecting for more than 22 minutes -- the length of an average prime-time TV show, minus ads. That puts iOS viewing on a par with such popular shows as ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" and NBC's Sunday Night Football. Researchers at Flurry say that their study is simply an extrapolation, since only about 50,000 of the total 250,000+ apps in the App Store contain Flurry components. There are other ad platforms used in some wildly popular iOS apps, so the total number of viewers / users could top even the highest-rated TV shows such as American Idol. The point of the Flurry research seems to be that advertisers should take heed of mobile apps and spend more of their advertising budgets in that market, since that is where the eyes are moving. When you consider that the App Store has only been around for a little over two years and iOS apps are already competing with the decades-old entrenched television ad market, it's a sign that some very big changes are in store for the advertising industry.
Flurry: In-app purchases generating lots more revenue per user
Analytics firm Flurry has announced that in-app purchases are generating $14.66 per user per year in June of 2010, which is a few times larger than it has been in the past. Previously to 2010, the games tracked were generating only a few bucks per user per year, but in January the total jumped to around $9, and it's now in the double digits. Flurry says that money doesn't include ad revenue -- it's strictly profit from in-app purchases, either unlocking features or selling virtual goods. Whenever you talk about making money on free games, you have to talk about Ngmoco -- that company famously choose "freemium" as its business plan, and business appears to be good. Exec Simon Jeffery confirmed exactly that at a conference earlier this week -- while he can't discuss actual revenue, he says things are going well. And of course other companies who already know how to make money from free games (like Zynga, whose Farmville recently released on the iPhone) will see this as a big green light for joining Apple's platform. The revenue per user isn't the only important stat here -- Apple also has plenty of users to offer up. Disney's free Toy Story 3 app released recently, and has already picked up 1.7 million users, a good number of which probably bought the 99 cent in-app game offered up. Lots and lots of users spending a surprising amount of money inside their apps means lots and lots of revenue for both iPhone developers and Apple.
Flurry agrees to stop device data collection
Steve Jobs said a lot of interesting things on stage at the D8 conference last night (I'm surprised I haven't seen a t-shirt with "My sex life is pretty good" on it yet), but he did put one issue to rest. Third-party agencies like Flurry Analytics and others who use iPhone applications to track device traffic were in a tizzy over a recent change to the iPhone SDK's terms of service which disallowed them from sending out device identifier information without the actual user's knowledge. They all figured that Apple was making this change because Jobs and company had their own analytics plan coming, and they were unhappy at being cut out of the action. But not so, says Jobs -- he just doesn't want information going out without users' knowledge. In his talk last night, he blamed Flurry specifically for logging data from devices inside Apple's campus, and said that wasn't kosher. Maybe Apple will let Flurry do something like that in the future, he admitted, with the user's knowledge and approval, but not right now. And now Flurry has agreed to comply, says AppleInsider. While the company has been working on strengthening its privacy stance, the CEO agrees that Flurry will back off of sharing the data that Apple doesn't want them to share. Of course, Jobs' statements don't preclude the idea that Apple is looking at implementing its own analytics (he's denied working on phones and tablets at past interviews, and we all know how that worked out), but for now, Flurry is backing down.
Is this proof of a Verizon iPhone? (updated)
According to a tip we've just received, Apple's long-rumored, hotly-desired Verizon iPhone could turn out to be more than mere fantasy, though we warn you, this is nothing to start placing bets on. If you believe the above graphic -- a snippet of data allegedly from the recently reliable Flurry Analytics -- then at least a handful of non-AT&T phones are currently in play. The numbers show a polling of carriers a particular app is being tested on, and there's no denying that Verizon is most certainly on that list... albeit in small numbers. Now obviously this is in no way conclusive evidence of anything, and you've got to allow for the possibility -- however pathetic and slim -- that someone is just Photoshopping this little infographic, but if it's accurate, well... that's something. Update: Proof? Probably not. We've been in touch with Flurry who thinks the data is from Verizon DSL or FiOS subscribers using their iPhone at home over WiFi.
Upcoming Flurry buff for enhancement shaman
Enhancement shaman have been having a hard time keeping up with the top DPS classes in Icecrown Citadel, and Blizzard has apparently taken notice. Ghostcrawler popped over to the official forums today with a note on a new buff for the enhancement tree: Ghostcrawler: Upcoming Enhancement buff We agree with some of the recent discussion about Enhancement dps. We are going to hotfix a change to the Flurry talent to increase it from 25% to 30% attack speed with 5 ranks. We also agree that Enhancement may have survivability problems and understand that players don't necessarily feel they can afford the bonus Stamina from the Toughness talent, at least in PvE. We don't have an immediate change to deploy here, but it's something we'd like to fix and a candidate for future patches. source Good news for enhancers everywhere. Hopefully the upcoming Cataclysm class changes preview will hold a lot more of it for you guys, and all types of shaman, for that matter.
Apple gains 19% share of portable gaming market, 5% of everything
Flurry's got lots of new data this week -- earlier, we heard that 44% of apps coming to the iPad are going to be games, and now they're saying that Apple is making huge headway into the gaming market overall. According to the latest numbers, the iPhone OS has nabbed 15% of the mobile game market away from bigger handhelds like the Nintendo DS and the PSP, and the iPhone itself has actually claimed 5% of the worldwide video game market. That's pretty astounding. In just a few years, the iPhone has picked up a sizeable amount of share in one of the biggest markets in the world, and Apple has done it all while actually selling the device as a smartphone. What's even more amazing is that Apple has done all of this without actually making a single game themselves (Update: Reader Sunny reminds me that they made one). Video game console manufacturers have long had to deal with the relationship between first-party and third-party games -- Nintendo, especially, has struggled with getting their third-party software up to snuff. For Apple, however, there is no first-party; they just open up the App Store and let the sales fly. Of course, that drum beating you hear in the distance is the iPad. While Apple has, again, focused on productivity and media rather than gaming, there's no question at all that a bigger touchscreen can, and will, create a whole new experience for gamers. The iPhone has come a long way in the past year and a half, but I'd expect the iPad to take an even bigger bite out of the game industry after all is said and done. [via iPhone Savior]
Flurry data: 44% of apps tested on the iPad are games
Sunday night on the Talkcast, we pointed out that we didn't know exactly which developers were getting those test iPads to play with. However, we might know just which apps they're testing. According to Flurry Analytics, who have (somehow) been watching traffic from the iPhone OS 3.2, 44% of the apps being tested on the iPad right now are games. Entertainment apps (which seems like a broad category) falls into second place with 14%, and then the list evens out around there -- social networking claims 7% of the apps, sports 6%, travel 5%, and so on. It's not completely clear where this data comes from -- presumably, Flurry is finding web traffic somewhere that's marked as coming to or from an iPad. Of course, that doesn't guarantee that these numbers are legit. Some apps are more likely to send traffic than others, and all we see here are percentages, as Flurry hasn't released actual numbers. "Games," as we speculated last night, probably means that bigger companies like EA and Gameloft have test iPads to try out, and "social networking" probably means that Facebook and possibly Foursquare are testing their apps. "Sports" could mean that MLB is testing its app, and so on. It looks like gamers who have an iPad on day one will at least have plenty of game titles to choose from. The iPhone's App Store took a little while to get rolling with some hit apps, but developers and Apple seem to be doing everything they can to ensure that there are some popular downloads in the iPad's App Store right away. [via TheAppleBlog]
Apple increases gaming share at the expense of DS and PSP
Apple's intentions to dominate handheld gaming were already pretty clear back in March of 2008 as game studio after game studio lined up behind the iPhone (and iPod touch by extension). Now look at the graphics above. Yeah, based on the report from Flurry Analytics, Apple's casual gaming approach is carving out a nice slice of the US revenue pie related to gaming software. The PSP was hit especially hard dropping from a 20% share in 2008 to just 11% of US revenue last year. Numbers that highlight just how ridiculous John Koller's spin maneuver was after the iPad launch. Speaking of which, you have to wonder how these numbers might be affected once developers have a chance to spread out on the iPad, looming Nintendo 3DS or not. Especially with early data showing robust pre-sales and games accounting for almost half of the iPad apps being tested. See that chart after the break. Mmm, pie.
App development surges thanks to iPad announcement
According to statistics compiled by mobile industry analysis firm Flurry, new development projects for the iPhone "exploded" during the month of January. The number of new projects during the first month of 2010 more than tripled the total for December -- an upswing which Flurry's "Smartphone Industry Pulse" report chalks up to excitement over the announcement of the Big and Tall model of Apple's multitouch device, the iPad. In fact, that excitement was so palpable that it managed to reverse an upward trend for Android app development, as seen in this graph. Perhaps this trend could be re-reversed -- if only Motorola would introduce a mobile device that's roughly the size of a baking sheet. [Via IndustryGamers]
Analytics company: games among apps being tested on rumored Apple tablet
Mobile analytics company Flurry has released a report on what it claims to be tracking data on Apple's latest creation, which is heavily rumored to be a tablet device. Accompanied by "a fair level of confidence," the results were assembled by identifying approximately 50 devices, all of which "match the characteristics" of the unannounced device, and placing them geographically within Apple's Cupertino campus. Of course, with said characteristics mired within the realm of speculation and the campus no doubt home to many in-test projects, the report is also accompanied by a fair level of skepticism. It's interesting that games form the clear majority of tested applications -- especially if EA is on-board, as the Wall Street Journal suggested -- and may portend one of the device's strongest aspirations. In your snooty face, News & Books! Joystiq will be attending Apple's media event on Wednesday, January 27, so expect to hear more then. [Via Engadget]
Flurry sees fifty devices that look like tablets
Mobile analytics firm Flurry tracks usage of mobile apps and lo and behold, look at what popped up this week. There are 50 devices running iPhone OS 3.2 within the Apple Campus. Flurry also reports that they've been tracking 200 apps across 50 devices since October of last year, and that usage has really ramped up in the last few weeks. Internal testing typically increases sharply just prior to a release. Flurry's report doesn't give a lot of concrete evidence that these devices are tablets, but they do note that "...we have a fair level of confidence that we are observing a group of pre‐release tablets in testing." If only they had shared what raised their "level of confidence." As you can see from the chart above, the majority of these devices are running games, with the entertainment and news & books categories tied for 2nd place. Apps in the lifestyle category come in third. Flurry also reports that they've been tracking activity on these 50 devices since October of last year, and that usage has really ramped up in the last few weeks. It's interesting for developers to note that the devices seem to be running iPhone apps. If they are tablets, that means it'll be easy to move applications over (though we don't have any information on how they will scale or the final resolution for the device). At the end of the day, we have data collected by Flurry from apps installed on 50 or so devices placed inside Apple via geolocation that are running on iPhone OS 3.2. They could be tablets -- rumors have suggested that the tablet's release is delaying the next iPhone OS upgrade -- or they could be test unit iPhones running an unreleased version of the OS. Either way, two things are certain: There's cool stuff inside 1 Infinite Loop All of this conjecture will end on Wednesday OK, so number 2 is a "probably." [Via Engadget]
Apple tablet maybe starts showing up in app-tracking stats, kinda
It's sort of funny that this is the hardest evidence we have of an Apple tablet, but here we go: mobile app analytics company Flurry is saying that it's detected around 50 devices on Apple's Cupertino campus that have the "characteristics" of a tablet, running a new version of the iPhone OS numbered 3.2. How? Around 200 different apps with Flurry's tracking code were downloaded and used on these mystery devices -- mostly games, followed by entertainment and media apps -- and Flurry first noticed this new device in October, with numbers picking up in January. Unfortunately, Flurry hasn't said what these mysterious tablet characteristics are, so we don't have much to go on -- and without specifics like a bigger screen size or a faster processor we're skeptical. For all we know, this is just a new iPhone running a slightly tweaked build of OS 3.0 that supports a higher-resolution screen or something -- especially looking at that 3.2 version number, when everything else we've heard suggests the tablet will jump to 4.0. What's more, 200 apps in the grand scheme of things really isn't that many -- Flurry only tracks small percentage of the 100,000 apps in the App Store. We're not exactly willing to accept any detailed analysis based on a dataset that narrow, so let's just say that it's very likely that Apple's testing new devices running a new version of the iPhone OS and leave it at that until Wednesday, shall we?
Mobile app analytics firm guesstimates Nexus One hasn't sold like hotcakes
Maybe we're oversimplifying here, but we never really got the impression that Google was intending to blow out the launch of the Nexus One. Sure, you could argue that seeding the phones to employees ahead of the announcement was an effort to build buzz -- but it didn't really make any attempt to capitalize on the move, and last week's subdued press conference in Mountain View (sans the holy trinity of Eric, Larry, and Sergey) wasn't the wild, crazy event it could've been had Google wanted it to be. That's why we're not particularly surprised to see that the app analytics peeps over at Flurry are estimating (based on usage of the apps that it instruments) that just 20,000 Nexus Ones were sold in the first week of retail -- a far cry from its 250,000 figure for the Droid, much less the iPhone 3GS' staggering 1.6 million. As Flurry notes, Verizon pumped (and continues to pump) millions upon millions of dollars into advertising the Droid in print, television, and the web; that alone boosted broad consumer interest, something Google earned to a far lesser extent through media coverage alone. Furthermore, the Droid instantly relieved much of the "if only the iPhone were on Verizon" pressure that had been building over the prior year, whereas the Nexus One brought nothing fundamentally new to the table for T-Mobile -- and many folks on other networks either won't or simply can't switch to the number four carrier for business or coverage reasons. The bottom line is that we suspect Google isn't sweating the Nexus One's sales figures one bit, no matter how high or low they may be; whether that's a smart strategy for Android as a platform in the long term, though, remains to be seen.
The OverAchiever: Master of Eye of the Storm
It's time to head back into the Nether. This Eye of the Storm Call to Arms weekend, why don't you make your forays into that floating space rock a little more meaningful by completing the Achievements required for Master of Eye of the Storm? Out of all the Battleground masteries, this is considerably the easiest of them all, with only eight Achievements to finish. It should take a modest effort to complete, and is a good step towards the Battlemaster meta-Achievement.Eye of the Storm VeteranWin 100 times. You know the drill. This is easier than accumulating other victories because Eye of the Storm matches never last for very long because points tick for every second. The more towers a team controls, the more points per tick and the more each flag capture is worth. Even if you lose a game, it's never such an excruciating wait.Difficulty: EasyThe Perfect StormWin 2000-0. Anybody who has played Eye of the Storm enough times will know that this happens rather often, more so than Arathi Basin, at least. This is because unlike Arathi Basin, towers are controlled through numbers and proximity, so overloading a tower will lead to its conversion. As long as a team starts strong or in greater numbers, it will usually result in control of the towers nearest the opponents, which sometimes results in a 4-0 game. It's easier from there. Play enough games to reach 100 wins, and you'll pick this up along the way.Difficulty: Easy
