market-growth
Latest
Perfect World Entertainment surpasses market expectations
Perhaps the belief that free-to-play games are bad and do not make money is unfounded. If you asked anyone with stock in Perfect World Entertainment, he would tell you that F2P is where it's at. The creator of the Perfect World International and Forsaken World has stunned the market as it reported a 15% revenue increase last quarter (January 2011 to March 2011) over last year (January 2010 to March 2010.) However, the biggest surprise is the amount of profit the company generated. The 110% growth over last year greatly surpassed the high-end expectations of the company itself. CEO Michael Chi attributed the stellar growth to the recent release of Forsaken World and Empire of the Immortals. But the profit is due to more than the entry of these two games into the market. "At the same time, we also experienced lower sales and marketing expenses as we did not have as many new launches as we did in the previous quarter. All of these factors contributed to our strong bottom-line growth in the first quarter," Chi explains in a Gamasutra article. Perfect World Entertainment hopes for continued growth as it continues to solidify its place in the F2P market with more games coming soon.
China approaches 900 million mobile phone users, India's market is the fastest-growing
Even if everyone and their dog in the US bought a cell phone, the total number of mobile users would still pale in comparison to China's. The country is on the verge of becoming the first with 900 million cell phone owners, according to stats collected by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The number of mobile subscribers reached 889 million at the end of March, up 30 million, or a modest 3.5 percent, from the previous quarter. That would put China on track to exceed 900 million sometime in May. Just to put that in context, the US is home to 303 million subscribers, and there's not a ton of room for growth. China's wireless subscribers, meanwhile, surpassed the total US population four years ago. But, notes PCWorld, India remains the fastest growing mobile market with 791 million users in late February -- a 15 percent boost over the 687 million reported just five months earlier. Which will hit one billion first? Place your bets!
New study shows higher resolution, interactive capabilities to drive future HDTV growth
For now, the HDTV market is doing just fine as-is. We've still got stragglers seeing the light on a daily basis, and the looming DTV transition is probably pushing sales somewhat as well. However, according to Calvin Hsieh, DisplaySearch's Director of Research, the market is set to peak between 2009 and 2011. In order to grow beyond then, he suggests that the sector will have to focus on "enhanced features for TVs, such as higher resolutions, expanded broadband infrastructure, internet connectivity, versatile applications and interactive capabilities to meet the needs of the connected digital home." Hard to argue with any of that, no?[Via The New York Times]
