Mobile Games: Platform Standards!?

Mobile games blogger extraordinaire, Arjan Olsder, provided for a great guest post by Qualcomm games guru Mike Yuen, and it's well worth a read! Mike addresses this most horrible of issues to mobile game developers that is called fragmentation or, in his words, "[t]he lack of platform and hardware standards continues to be a major inhibitor to mobile game growth in the United States [and elsewhere; ed.]. This diversity in development platforms (Android, BREW, Flash Lite, iPhone, Java, Linux, Symbian, WAP, Windows Mobile) and hardware configurations (display resolutions, RAM/heap memory size, processing and graphics power, audio formats, keypad and other input modes."

Mike rightly points out that, "[i]n many cases, the costs associated with individualizing software builds to the particularities of each handset, operator and language account for more than half of the overall development budget for new game titles. It’s a simple, but important concept. If fewer resources were diverted to porting a title from handset to handset, operator to operator, more resources could be dedicated to advancing the development of new and innovative gaming concepts."

He goes on to draw an interesting comparison to the Korean and Japanese markets where there are not as many handsets (and platforms) around and where consumers are more than twice as likely to download mobile games. He then goes on to look at market disruptors like Apple (iPhone anyone?) and others only to conclude, sadly, that "[m]obile gaming is in a state of flux – platform and hardware fragmentation has clouded the once blue sky of gaming’s future and positive disruptive products such as Apple’s iPhone have changed industry perception and consumer expectations about the future of the mobile gaming device. I’m not expecting us to reach consensus anytime soon. Fragmentation is an inherent element of the mobile industry and perhaps always will be."

Now, is that really so? He is of course right in his analysis of the current environment. But does this really have to be like this? The mobile space suffers from too many very large companies with very large markets. And if this wasn't enough, there's two different groups of them, with diverging interests, namely operators (carriers) and handset manufacturers: the former want everyone to be on their network, the latter to be on their handsets. Both are more often than not big old molochs of companies with a lot of market power in their segments. However... the markets seem to gravitate (under consumer demand) towards a more open set-up: operators seem to be accepting the fact that they cannot reign their users into walled gardens forever (more and more resign to flat-rate data and open the mobile web to users) and OEMs seem to realize that they need awesome numbers of users to have a real impact and so most of them gravitate to more open platforms (or, in the case of Nokia, create them).

As most of the newer platforms appear to be based on C++ or siblings thereof (Symbian, UIQ, Linux, Android [yes, I know that they us a JVM], BREW, Win ME, etc), it would appear that a reduced complexity might be nigh. Not as easy as online, mind you, but light at the end of the tunnel nonetheless. And it makes sense as the current fragmentation isn't really helping anyone: consumers grow frustrated with ever-changing platforms. They want cool content, not a proprietary operator-variant of cool content. Hope, my friends, there is hope!

Ticking off Idle Screens

Ever heard of response-based segmentation? Super-cool, isn't it? You can group your customers depending on their actions... Israeli firm Celltick has now published the results of its first trial, an unnamed Brazilian operator. According to the press release, "the results demonstrate a 60% increase in the number of users responding to teasers on the idle screen, and an incredible 80% increase in the overall number of clicks-per-day since the service enhancement."

So... this means that 60% more users respond to things happening on their idle screens than normal. What happens normally? Nothing. So 60% more than what? Now, don't get me wrong: I find the concept pretty intriguing but the context is somewhat unfulfilling ("you're not doing anything. So I, the infamous MS paper clip, think you might want to play a game..."; not very likely).

The Celltick platform seems to have it all: "[it] is designed to provide mobile operators, content providers and advertisers with a mobile marketing media channel [...] that maximize response rates, customer retention and enhanced revenue opportunities. User profiling through RBS compliments LiveScreen Media’s existing segmentation capabilities which include location based broadcasting, handset segmentation and time-sensitive campaigns." How cool is that? Alas, no details are given... I would really, really, REALLY like to learn more substantative things about this but this turns out to being a relatively meaningless PR blurp. The fact that the "Brazilian operator" prefers to be unnamed doesn't really instil more confidence, does it?

Celltick: please provide us with some meat. Then you'll get good coverage here, too. And: EVERYONE would love a success story such as yours. Bring it on, guys!

Zeemote, the 3rd...

My dear friends at Zeemote, I've been giving you a hard time on this blog in the past (first here, then here). Now, in my second post on the device (which is, for the ignorant few, a bluetooth connected controller for mobile phones) I issued two concerns, namely

1. distribution (which I suggested would only work with bundling) and
2. usage (the keys, wallet, phone dilemma).

You will have seen that my mood is somewhat mellowing, and this is indeed connected to the fun one can have with this little thing.

So it came as no surprise that on the first point, the good folks at Zeemote have been impressively busy in the recent months. They managed to strike a number of rather noteworthy deals, the perhaps most impressive one (to date) being with Nokia. At the Games Convention, they announced that they would bundle (see? I told you!) the Zeemote controller with some N-Gage-enabled devices. Here's the clou though: it will be tied in through a dedicated little application in a way that allows users to control every game available on N-Gage via their Zeemote, even if the games and applications themselves do not have the precious lines of code in them. And that it is pretty cool indeed as it circumnavigates the dilemma of having a device that no software supports and which is therefore not being used. I played it, it works. Awesome!

A couple of weeks before, Sony Ericsson launched a bundle in a test market (see here), so they seem to be gaining traction indeed. I hear there's more to come soon but I'll wait till the news is out...

Now, as to the other question, namely if people would take it with them? Well, we'll have to wait as only time (and hopefully many users) will tell. What is undeniable though is that the Zeemote lowers the threshold to play as it greatly facilitates access and controls when playing a game on mobile. If users get the device together with their new phone, I am rather sure that they'll give it a try. The device will be best shown off (initially) with games and apps that are hard to control and where users are more likely to be put off playing them with the fiddly controls of a phone. If this is being put to work (which I trust the Zeemote folks are smart enough to embark on), there is a good chance, they'll convince people enough to make them use it more and more. And once they're hooked? The sky is the limit.

And then, there are also uses for it at home: you don't have a Wii but 2 Zeemotes, a TV and a phone? Go on and play! Works! True! Check here.

I'm back!

It's been a while, 3 1/2 months to be exact, since I last found the spare moment to post to my blog. The main reason for the busy, busy time that forced me into blogging silence can be found here. I hope you will not expect me to comment further on this: I had made it an unwritten rule not to cover things directly involving my day job, and this must remain so in particular in this specific instance, which I trust you appreciate.

However, since this deal is done now, I am looking forward to sharing my thoughts with you again. Stay put and thanks for being so patient!

Mobile Social Networks

Here's a really good piece of analysis of the landscape of mobile social networks. I will not recount the findings in detail here but they reckon that the Internet biggies Facebook and MySpace rule the mobile social networking world already. MySpace is said to have had 1.4bn visits last month alone. Facebook also is beyond the 1bn mark. Impressive numbers! The largest pure mobile-play, Mocospace, a predominantly US-focussed company, recorded 1bn visits.

The article does mention GoFresh (with their ItsMy service) and Peperonity but fails to point out UK company Yospace who power the combined O2/3UK community.

Whilst the mobile-only players all point out that they're not worried because their offering was better ("he would say that, wouldn't he, your Honour?"), but advertising muscle may well be an issue: MySpace recently said that they would expect about half of their total traffic coming from mobile within 5 years, and reaffirmed that mobile is one of the most important strategic initiatives for MySpace. I am sure there will be loads of niches in the sector but the bulk of 1.5bn visits (probably steeply rising) is a tough proposition to beat when it comes to ad revenues!

Playphone's Pitch: start of D2C shake-up in Europe?!

US D2C mobile content distributor Playphone announced it would acquire (well, they call it merge) UK counterpart Pitch Entertainment. No details disclosed (yawn). Playphone operates its own content storefront as well as the mobile portals for the likes of ABC, Wal-Mart, Cartoon Network and RealNetworks. Pitch does similar things but predominantly in Europe and a few South-East Asian countries.

The move likely signifies the begin of the assault of the US D2C players onto Europe. This may have been a bit of a surprise a couple of years ago but it demonstrates the change the US market has undergone, which lets companies emerge that have a huge home market in their backs giving them the muscle to try out expansion into other markets. The advantage of US-groomed companies in this space is that they have been growing up in an environment that centers more around the web than it does/did in Europe. And they have become very, very good at that. Numbers are, as always, hard to come by but by the looks of it the likes of Thumbplay have slammed even D2C giants Jamba/Jamster pretty heavily over there.

With the market moving away from expensive, low-margin off-the-page distribution, which also provides limited scalability and the increasing attraction of the mobile web, that medium is likely to gain in significance fast. This will also be boosted by the tumbling walled gardens and the aggressive introduction of data flat rates by carriers (see a piece here). The trio of European D2C giants, Jamba, Zed (see here and here) and Buongiorno are girding themselves for this but a market entry by Thumbplay, which has been going from strength to strength in the US can surely only be a question of when not if. The battle for D2C Europe should be an interesting one...

Vodafone UK Embraces Data Flatrates!

Vodafone UK announced that they will make flat-rate data part and parcel of every post-paid contract. Price plans start at GBP 25 (c. $50) per month and do away with the additional GBP 7.50 for a data plan previously required. It is subject to a rather low "fair use" policy of only 500 MB although - somewhat funny - a Vodafone spokesman apparently said that they would not charge users for excess anyway. So what then?

Anyway, let's not dwell on petty details on a good day: flat-rate data will remove the fear users often have had in the past that they might incur horrendous charges if they would browse the web from their phone. On an "unlimited" data plan, this will be removed. Users will find it easier to access so-called "off-deck" destinations as well. This opens the playing field for the content industry and pushes a number of doors wide open. Great stuff!

As an aside, Vodafone also revealed some stats on mobile Internet usage on their network. In case you care, their top 4 searches were for:

1. Facebook
2. Bebo
3. eBay
4. Windows live Hotmail

The top 10 mobile internet sites were:

1. Facebook
2. Google
3. BBC
4. MSN
5. Bebo
6. Sony Ericsson
7. Yahoo
8. MySpace
9. Windows live Hotmail
10. YouTube

Adobe Flash Opens Screens

Flash maker Adobe isn't tiring on bringing out news these days: this time it announced the "Open Screen Project", in which it is partnering with a plethora of mobile industry giants, namely ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG, Marvell, Motorola, Nokia (see also here re Microsoft's Flash competitor Silverlight), NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson (see also their initiative to marry J2ME and Flash here), Toshiba and Verizon Wireless as well as major media players such as the BBC, MTV Networks and NBC Universal.

It said "the project is dedicated to driving rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. Adobe said it would open access to Flash technology, accelerating the deployment of content and rich Internet applications (RIAs)." This will include:

• Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
• Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
• Publishing the Adobe Flash Cast protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
• Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

Adobe says its Flash Player reaches over 98% of Internet-enabled PCs and more than 500m mobile devices today. It now expects more than 1bn handsets to ship with Flash technology by the end of 2009 (this means a year faster than previously forecasted). Flash technology is used to deliver vector graphics, text, interactivity and application logic, video and sound over the Internet. Currently, more than 75% of broadcasters who stream video on the Web use Flash technology (YouTube will be a big contributor to that number).

Following my many posts on mobile Flash (see e.g. here and here), this now looks like a real assault on the medium. Given that Flash reduces developer cost (less porting because of vector-based graphics) means it is a likely boost to the content industry: more and richer content at lower cost. Could this be it?

Sony Ericsson marries J2ME with Flash

Sony Ericsson announced that it would release a new technology that would basically marry Flash Lite with J2ME. The new technology and tools, referred to as "Project Capuchin" make, it says, it possible to "combine the richness of Flash and J2ME technologies allowing developers to utilize the best attributes of both software stacks to create content-rich mobile applications". Sony Ericsson wants to launch this in H2/2008 and will demonstrate apps running under this at JavaOne in SF next week.

The concept is pretty cool: the thing is said to allow pure Flash Lite content to be encapsulated in J2ME applications, making content created in Flash appear as Java apps. It goes on to say that "more advanced capabilities will allow FlashLite technology to handle an entire presentation layer and make it possible to create Java ME applications where some or all UI components are defined in Flash."

I have reported a little on Flash Lite and its moves into the markets in the past (see e.g. here and here). One obstacle always was the device footprint. If you can make a Flash app appear to be a Java one, this gap would appear to be immediately reduced to, yes, zilch, zero, naught, nothing at all. So this would bring us the slick UI and interfaces we all so love from the Flash world to all the Java-enabled phones immediately.

What I would really like to know though is what the porting would be: would one be able to address everything in one build, Flash graphics being vector-based and all and therefore automatically adaptable to all screen sizes? That would be a real killer. I'm thrilled...

Mobile Advertising works!

We seem to be having another successful showcase of mobile advertising: this time, mobile ad firm Greystripe and research firm Dynamic Logic have produced a report that confirms that mobile ads are uber-effective: they report about a case study for a mobile advertising campaign for The Golden Compass (which was broadcast during load times for certain mobile games). The campaign brought about a 19.3% increase in awareness of the film’s title a 9.5% increase in interest in seeing the film among all respondents. The ad apparently also outperformed a typical online advertising campaign by 52% in terms of brand awareness.

The case study also states that results showed that WAP sites were effective in influencing
a highly-engaged audience, particularly when advertising new movies:

• Among overall respondents, 35% say they use their mobile phones for “finding theater and movie times,” and 29% “watch movie trailers.”
• Frequent movie-goers — those who have seen at least two movies in the theatre in the past two months — use the mobile Internet more often than non-frequent moviegoers (79% for frequent movie-goers vs. 58% for non-movie goers).

It would have been interesting to know if the game was actually the mobile game for the Golden Compass (published by Glu, which was surprisingly absent from any mention) or if it was just more or less random games selected. There was also only little to read about the details of the survey, etc, etc. As Greystripe has somewhat of a vested interest in this, one might be querying...

The naked numbers from above are in themselves impressive. However, I am calling for more information here as this is per se not substantial enough to merit a whole big new world... I am inquiring for more details... Fingers crossed.

Ringtones, Wallpapers & SMS in the UK

English newspaper The Guardian published the results of a couple of recent surveys on mobile content, including the quarterly "Orange Digital Media Index" and a study carried out by TNS and, alas, no real surprises here:

• Ringtone and wallpaper downloads are slowing and are on the decline and, frankly, who in their right mind with a phone that plays MP3s, has a good camera as well as multiple connections to a computer, would spend money on such little gimmicks anymore? Ringtones were down more than 10%, whilst wallpapers still grew but at a meager 3%.
• Full-track downloads of songs though were on the rise -- 292,000 in January on Orange UK compared to only 100,000 ringtones.
  
• SMS are going strong (up 21% or 1.3bn for the month in the UK) according to Orange, a number to which I, through my 12-year-old son's phone bill, contribute no small share...
• TNS believes mobile IM is on the rise but this is not really the big thing. What IS the big thing is that, according to TNS, more than 1 in every 3 messages a user sends from either his/her mobile OR computer are SMS (38%), and that shows how ubiquitous the whole thing has become. Again, judging by my son's communication patterns, I believe that: his choice of messaging is - in order of relevance: 1) SMS, 2) IM, 3) (and I mean a very, very distant 3) e-mail.

So pretty much all as expected. Unfortunately, no news on mobile video, games or applications in this one although this is there might actually have been interesting things to report. I am actually wondering now why I even bothered recording this at all... Apologies...

Blyk now at 100k subs

Now, I will not claim that they ramped up their efforts as a result of my comments a few days ago, but Blyk announced today that they breezed past the 100,000 subscriber mark. So, well done them!

It does not however alleviate my concerns about the general business model, I have to say. They are not revealing ARPU or anything like that. The overall constraints of the ad-funded approach do, I think, remain. I stand to be corrected but would need to see a more robust business parameters to be convinced...

PS: Thanks to BitRabbit for the heads-up!

Alltop: new site for mobile news and everything else under the sun...

One of the ventures backed by Apple legend and Garage Technology Ventures founder (and of course blogger extraordinaire) Guy Kawasaki has just launched a wonderful site syndicating feeds from loads of mobile-related news from all over the web. You'll find it here. And, yes, I am greatly humbled to be part of it (and will therefore happily boast with it here... forgive me).

Alltop, which is the new venture, not only provides information on the mobile sector though: they syndicate a host of items grouped by topic; they call it "an "online magazine rack" that displays 'all the top' stories for popular topics". Great stuff and thanks for having me!

DigiChoc brings its mobile games to the web...

Mobile games developer & publisher Digital Chocolate has started to port some of its games over to the PC format in order to allow players a flavour of it prior to committing to pay. Users can play the game as an online Java version for free. They can then choose to purchase it as a downloadable PC product ($9.99) or - directly from the website - on mobile (prices will probably vary per country/operator).

It is yet again a try to get word out to the gaming community by more than just placing the games on as many mobile operator portals as possible (which is still where the majority of games are being sold). Digital Chocolate have been on the forefront here: their Facebook adaptation of their hit title TowerBloxx has found a huge following on the social network. There is no information (or at least none available to me) to tell if this leveraged sales of the title on mobile, too, but it is a good way to bypass the very limited space that carriers' WAP portals can allow.

The online trial version is a sweet idea although one could say that some connected features and high-score tables (as available on said Facebook app) might add a little more flavour. I suppose any premium PC sales will add incremental revenue. From a mobile game developers' perspective, it is only one more port after all, a laugh compared to the hundreds and hundreds of handsets that need to be supported.

Well done, guys!

Blyk: ad-funded MVNO revisited

Ad-funded MVNO Blyk's business is something I had long wanted to comment upon but, alas, never got around to. But as it was now reported that they increased their advertiser base from 44 to 117, now here we go...

Blyk is an ad-funded MVNO stricly for the 16-24 year-olds. It launched in September 2007 in the UK (running via the Orange network) and, on its website, promises to roll out to go "pan-European" this year.

Does it catch on? Blyk recently reported that they reached 30,000 subscribers in the UK and would ad 3,000 per week. However, they had also said they'd hit 50,000 by March and I have yet to hear of that milestone; even a Google search doesn't reveal any progress report beyond the 30,000...

There has been some talk about issues in signing up to the full service but that may well be from rumour-land, so let's ignore it here.

As a Blyk subscriber, you get 43 minutes of voice and 217 texts a month for free as long as you opt in to receive up to six ads to your phone a day. After that, Blyk subscribers, all of whom are pre-paid users, pay 10p (US$0.20) per text and voice calls are charged at 15p (US$0.30) per minute. Applying these rates to the free voice and texts, you get services worth GBP 28.15 (c. US$ 56.30) per month for free. This is therefore the amount they need to make back from advertisers (who include Sony Ericsson, Coca Cola, SonyBMG, I-play, Ford, Adidas and Mastercard) in order to break even (let's assume the operating costs are absorbed in the margin on actual cost per voice minute and SMS, which should be somewhere around 40%). On 6 messages per day, this equals 15.6p (c. US$ 0.31) required ad revenue per message in order to make good for that (operating costs aside), the equivalent of a CPM of a hefty US$ 310 (compared to a market average of US$ 25-40). With the chronically cash-deprived user base that they are targeting, one can probably well assume that most users will in fact use their allowance in full.

So how do the economics work? And do they work at all? According to fellow blogger Jan-Michael Hess from Mobiliser.org the reason Blyk claims to justify this very high CPM is there apparently very high click-through rate (CTR) of 29% on average (anywhere between X and 43%). But can this be sustained? One cannot force users to click through. If each user gets 180 messages per month, how likely are they to act on an average of 2 per day? Not very, I'd say... This means that they are more likely to having to come down on their CPM. And this is where the fact that they apparently managed to nearly triple their advertiser-base is interesting: did they do so on their original CPM? Or did they have to drop it? Alas, the report doesn't reveal this crucial bit of information...

CPM is key to Blyk's business model and I would consider it highly unlikely that it will be able to command such a premium to the market, also as 30,000 users aren't the world. Youth may be the killer target market that can create or make or kill new brands and it is therefore very interesting to advertisers. But, as has been pointed out, this particular target market is also fickle: free offers are loved but connection via community and brand means that users want to get in touch any way possible. More often that not mobile youth have several mobile prepaid cards all with special offers and bundled rates. They are tech-savvy and will often know where and how to get the free or cheap voice calls they need when they need them (to which I, the father of a near-13-year-old boy, can already testify).

My preliminary verdict is therefore: not very likely to succeed.