Oh, The Irony!....Crash Bandicoot is All-Time Top Paid iPhone App

I can't help but feel sad about the fact that Apple is reporting, as part of the celebration of their 1bil Apps milestone, that Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D published by now defunct Vivendi Games Mobile, is their all-time top paid App. Vivendi Games Mobile (VGM) was a publisher with a great team (led by mobile games vet Paul Maglione) and great potential (with innovative studios like Centerscore)...that was just beginning to hit stride when corporate parent Vivendi decided to merge their interactive games business (including trophy studio Blizzard) with Activision, to create ~$3bil 2008 Rev gaming giant Activision Blizzard (ATVI). The merger put Activision leadership in top company positions and it became clear pretty quickly that they weren't very interested in mobile games development and publishing...and, rather, looked at it as a licensing opportunity with VGM's competitor Glu Mobile. Activision Blizzard began dismantling the mobile businesses in US and Europe at the end of last Summer. This always felt like a short-sighted move to me...but, then again, short-sightedness is more contagious than Swine Flu in the mobile entertainment space these days. The good news is that the core US team has re-emerged at NY-based Sonic Boom...from which we are bound to see great things. In the meantime, the Crash/Apple announcement will serve as a reminder of what might have been... Congratulations?

Vive la iPhone! Gameloft Posts Solid Q1 2009

PocketGamer.biz is reporting today that French mobile games publisher Gameloft saw 22% revenue growth in Q1 2009 vs Q1 2008 to $40.2mil. During that same time period they saw 57% growth in North America, making it the company's biggest region by revenue...surpassing its traditional stronghold of Europe (which was flat to down). Despite a lot of posturing about good Java & BREW performance we all know that these numbers mean that iPhone is driving growth in their business. Frankly, they should be proud of their performance on that platform...of all the established mobile games publishers Gameloft embraced the iPhone most aggressively and I think it is paying off handsomely. As a result, I predict that 2009 is the year that Gameloft surpasses EA Mobile as the top mobile game publisher by revenue.

Hard Times: Airborne Sells A Board Seat For Pocketchange...and it's News

Wow!, you know times suck when MocoNews and several other trade blogs picked up a story about how venerable veteran publisher Airborne Mobile received $500k from private investor Skuli Mogensen (never heard of him) in exchange for seat on the Canadian company's board of directors. I'm not sure why the company is telegraphing this information...because to me it reeks of desperation and seems a sad turn for a former North American personalization powerhouse, legendary for it's irreverent style and outlandish parties (as well as outlandish style and irreverent parties). The company, founded during the mobile content paleolithic (1999), was built upon a slew of high profile (expensive) licenses like Family Guy, Maxim, NHL, etc., as, well as solid carrier distribution. Peak revenue was probably in the $30mil range. In 2005 founders Andy Nulman & Garner Bornstein sold to Japanese hotshot du jour Cybird Holdings for ~$90mil...in an era where Japanese firms (like Index & ForSide) were snapping up Euro/US publishers willy-nilly, ultimately with disastrous results (but that's a whole separate story). Nulman/Bornstein, who continued to run the company during the unremarkable Cybird era, bought it back last summer (for a song, I'm sure) and raised $2mil in January from iNovia Capital...to fund the elusive "next big mobile product." The ultimate plan, presumably, is to package Airborne up for sale 2.0...a non-trivial task now that all the dumb money has dried up and in light of the decreasing relevance/value of their existing products and relationships. But, I get ahead of myself...based on today's news I think their short term goal must be to keep the lights on at their Montreal offices.

UK Nokias Don't 'Come With Music' Very Often...Perhaps It's A Blessing

The Register has a story today about how Nokia's "Comes With Music" bundle has been a dud so far with UK consumers...with only 23k takers since last October. The service, which allows consumers with certain handsets to download unlimited DRM-protected tracks over a 12 or 18 month period (depending on package) for use in perpetuity, has been a major (and much-hyped) component of Nokia's music content strategy. The story attributes lackluster interest to the fact the service initially rolled out with an older 2G 5310 handset (what were they thinking?), and to a retail channel that can't sell the proposition to the consumer. Things should improve as Nokia has now made the offer available on the much sexier N95 8GB..and hopefully soon on the XpressMusic 5800. That said, they may not want the service to get too successful, as they have to pay the music labels ~$1 per song (after some pre-negotiated threshold), which means that high volume users could quite easily transform this reverse razorblade model into an expensive handset manufacturer handset subsidy (i.e. Nokia would be paying consumers to buy their handsets and give them free music). If this scenario does play out they should probably re-brand the initiative "Comes With Madness".

Palm Pre vs iPhone...Batman style

Shout out to Russell K for finding this...

1 Billion Apps Served...

Sometime within the next few minutes the iTunes App store will serve up it's 1 billionth App since launching on July 10, 2008! Amazing...unbelievably amazing. Given that there are currently 21 mil iPhones & 16 mil iPod touch devices on the market that means that device owners have downloaded an average of 27 Apps per device! Apple has done nothing short of fundamentally transforming the entire mobile content business in just 9 months. They now dominate mindshare amongst consumers as well as the development and publishing community...and this doesn't look like it will be changing anytime soon given the recent, much less than earth-shattering, launches of the Android Market and BlackBerry AppWorld. Thank you Apple...now let's hope somebody figures out how to compete with you so you don't rest on your laurels.

B! Renames Stinko Blinko Poopingsound

...oops, I mean "peoplesound". Mobile personalization behemoth Buongiorno (2008 Revs=~$400mil) has decided to reimagine it's failed (~5k WW daily uniques) web-to-mobile portal, posing as a social networking site, Blinko as a pureplay mobile social network called peoplesound (all lowercase b/c that's cooler) according to a story yesterday in Mobile Entertainment. The service hopes to differentiate itself by limiting users to 20 friends...the thought being that this is the number of real friends people have, as opposed to the hundreds or thousands the may claim on Facebook or MySpace (hmm, seems like a great model to build scale). Is anyone out there jonesing for a service like this?...exactly, which is why it will be relegated to the dustbin of money losing, consumer non-event history along with similarly aspiring endeavors like Cellfish, ZaOza and Zannel. One (year) and done.

Your Mom & Analysts Don't Want You Hanging with that T-Mo Crowd

The mobile blogs are all covering a Dow Jones Newswires story today about analysts' concerns that T-Mobile USA is flirting with "troublemakers" (Fierce's characterization) with low credit scores in their interest to drive subscriber growth. Frankly the article is all over the place...and it's pretty unclear whether the alleged deterioration in credit standards is related to post-paid (contract) customers or their aggressive promotion of Flex Pay, which is their pre-paid solution. Btw, if it's the latter, why should anyone be concerned? But overall I love the fact that T-Mo is, or is perceived to be, courting a risky, younger, less financially stable crowd...aka the cool kids. In my experience these subscribers are avid consumers and evangelists of mobile entertainment content, substantially over-indexing in the acquisition of mobile games, tones and graphics. I say, you go T-Mo!...grab all the high schoolers, college kids, rebels, pierced & tattooed goths, gangstas, wangstas, bikers and disgraced ibankers you can with your cheap plans and cool devices, then offer them access to the web & apps and I wager you'll be well positioned to be a data ARPU baller. Oh yeah, and all those nerdy analyst-types, they'll be your...

Digital Something That Looks Like Chocolate

Moconews has a post today about Digital Chocolate's (and Trip Hawkins') iPhone epiphany that was detailed in a Venture Beat interview. According the story D'Choc was a late comer to the platform, but they have had amazing success with their titles since launching in December. According to Trip their first 4 games have had 10 mil downloads in the first 100 days in the App store, with a $3+ price point.

So wait a minute...that would mean (if we say their avg price is $3.49) that they have made about $25mil from iPhone alone since December (10mil x $3.49 x 70%). Poppycock! That's gotta be substantially greater than D'Choc's entire revenue for 2008 (which Hoover's estimates at ~$6mil, ouch!). If this was true they would be on track to rival EA Mobile & Gameloft...which I'm sure is what they would like you to believe. Currently they have 7 titles live in the App store...and a bunch of free barker Apps. My guess is that they may have had 10mil downloads across all these Apps, but that the vast majority have been of the free ones. Btw - now that Trip has blessed the platform you're all free to embrace it as well.

iPhone Poseurs Pretend To Be Into Games...But Actually Like The Weather

Shout out to Nick Dale for sending me an interesting article from MediaPost that highlights the discrepancies between the iPhone Apps users download and actually use. According the article, an upcoming report from Compete will show that while games are consistently the most popular downloads, consumers actually don't play them very much. Rather they spend most of their time with information/utility Apps like Weather Channel & Shazam. Facebook also gets very high repeat usage (hmm, wouldn't know anything about that), but surprisingly MySpace does not...one contributor to the article suspects that this is due to a better alignment between the Facebook & iPhone demos. The article goes on to say that most iPhone users claim that they are discovering Apps on their own rather than relying on the recommendations of other users or what is most popular (big liars).

Does this mean that more consumers aspire to be gamers than actually are gamers? I think so. Does this mean over time that those same consumers will buy fewer game Apps and begin to consume those applications that they actually will use?...perhaps, and perhaps they'll start using that gym membership 3 days a week and using the Land Rover for off-road excursions.

3 Key Takeaways From CTIA Spring 2009

1) Buggy BlackBerry App World store.

RIM finally launched its highly anticipated BlackBerry App World store to kick-off CTIA last week. Many of us in the mobile content space downloaded the application within hours of it being available (I did it right before RIM Founder/Pres/Co-CEO, Mike Lazaridis' uninspired/ing keynote on April 1st). Overall the application has a nice UI, but that was offset by myriad glitches including seemingly random Search results, a Games folder that claimed 171 titles but only rendered 1 (to the benefit of MTV Networks) & connectivity problems. Things improved as the week wore on for me, but others must have had recurring issues because RIM has already rolled out 2 updates to the software (versions 1.0.0.27 & 1.0.0.28). My favorite App so far is the music recognition tool Shazam (available in UK 100 years ago , Apple months ago), which is available for a free trial period. But I must say, in digging through the catalog the current offering seems more similar to that of a carrier deck (or Magmic's Bplay site) than the iTunes App Store. Besides creating an exciting retail environment for consumers, and building consumer awareness, the biggest challenge BlackBerry App World will face will be on the billing front. RIM elected to use PayPal...which could prove super-klugy (and may be a deal breaker) for those consumers who don't have existing accounts.

2) Nokia N97 Widget Homescreen

Got a demo of the N97 at the Nokia booth on the showroom floor. Pretty damned impressive device. Really attractive form factor, rockstar specs and a nice tactile QWERTY keyboard...however the thing I liked the best was a very cool, customizable, widget-driven desktop/homescreen. Very, very slick looking. Unfortunately, once you leave the homescreen you're subject to Nokia's classically arcane UI and navigation. The device will be available in the US in Summer or Fall...but not with a carrier (or its subsidy) so expect a price somewhere between $500 - $1,000 (yikes!).

3) Content Providers Abandoned The Showroom Floor

It seemed that no one I knew from the mobile content side spent any meaningful time on the showroom floor of CTIA. Many didn't even get a pass to the show, instead opting to have meetings in hotel conference rooms, suites, bars or restaurants. Those who did venture to the convention center would find a small, somewhat pathetic cluster of content provider mini-booths stuck in a far corner of the South Hall (which you can only find by accident). Sad. Clearly CTIA has to do something drastic to re-energize the content component of the show or risk losing that constituency of exhibitors & attendees altogether. In the meantime I'm establishing a competing, content focused mobile show at the Parasol Up bar at The Wynn.

UPDATE: iShoot Guy Almost A Millionaire

Following up on my February 17th post, according to Silicon Alley Insider today, it looks like former Sun Microsystems programmer turned solo developer Ethan Nicholas has now banked $800k from his iShoot game for the iPhone. Apparently there are a handful of these micro-developers who have created Apps as diverse as iFart and Trism now claiming low six-figure bounties in a matter of months. While these incidences are obviously more the exception than the rule they likely will serve to motivate the beleaguered mobile development community...and push more talent to go out on their own. I predict many innovative Apps (and a few more body noise ones) in the near future.

btw - there is also a good post on this phenom in NYT yesterday.

Samsung's Weird & Wrong Betty Boop Handset

Thanks to Engadget for finding this gem. Why, god, why does anybody under the age of 80 like Betty Boop? Can't we just send all the crappy old animated characters to Guantanamo Bay, or something?...I vote we send Betty along with Woody Woodpecker and Casper on the first boat. That said, special respect to the licensing guy or gal @ King Features who put this deal together...clearly a person who could sell ice to Eskimos. btw -if you want this hot mess you can pick it up from Bouygues Télécom in France. This handset makes it more clear to me than ever that Samsung knows nothing about entertainment...perhaps their recently announced movie service will fail faster than I predicted.

Do I Want My RIM TV?

According to NewTeeVee RIM (RIMM) is preparing to launch a mobile full-length TV episode service for its BlackBerry devices as early as CTIA next week. Word is that this is an over-the-air download service (via wifi only) with a monthly subscription fee. Content is allegedly coming from multiple networks...but no one seems to know who they are (GSN & Fine Living Network, perhaps). It is also unclear whether this service will integrate into the upcoming BlackBerry App World mobile content store.

Boy, I hate to damn this thing before it sees the light of day...but I'm pretty skeptical about its potential for success. My first concern is that it only works on wifi...which limits the # of addressable devices to Bold, Storm and future products AND is really cheating the "everywhere" promise of mobile TV. The next thing I don't like is that it's a download service as opposed to a streaming service. I'm really impatient & I gotta watch my stories now! How long is it going to take me to download an episode of Lost or The Office? What happens if I have to leave the wifi hotspot during the download process? Seems like a hassle to me and it kills the spontaneity factor. My third gripe is that this is apparently a device only product. One of the things that makes TV on iTunes work for me is that I can watch the episodes on my big-ass computer monitor if I like...and I do like. My last, and biggest concern, is that I am not convinced the RIM has any more of clue than a carrier, Nokia or Samsung about how to sell entertainment content to consumers. They've gotta make the process elegant and easy...they've gotta create a great retail experience like those guys in Cupertino. All that said, I would love to be pleasantly surprised by the final product. Stay tuned.

Dell: Stop Flirting With Smartphones & Turn to the Palm

Rollercoasters usually make me want to barf, but the undulating speculation associated with Dell's protracted flirtation with the smartphone space are having a curiously soporific effect on me...perhaps because Dell is a brand only corporate IT guys get excited about. Here's the chain of events:

• It all started in February 2007 with a theory in a Gizmodo post that Dell was going to jump into handsets after poaching Motorola device exec Ron Garriques.
• That April the rumor-mill started churning again with speculation in Engadget that Dell and Quanta Computer were working on a handset codenamed "Fly".
• Just before 3GSM 2008 bloggers were advancing a theory that Dell and Google were in cahoots on the project.
• But on a conference call in September 2008 Michael Dell dismissed rumors that the company was working on a smartphone, according to MacUser.
• Buzz was rekindled by an Engadget post this January reporting on industry chatter over a Dell Android or S60 handset.
• Then at 3GSM 2009 (aka MWC) gadget blog GearLog reported that during a panel discussion AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph De La Vega inadvertently blabbed that, "Dell announced they're entering the smart phone market." The rumorazzi went wild.
• Then last week Barron's reported on Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu's research note that claimed Dell had presented Windows Mobile & Android prototype devices to the US carriers and that they had been rejected for "lack of differentiation" (ouch!!)
• But, just yesterday Computerworld reported that in a Tokyo speech Michael Dell indicated that the company was still exploring a smartphone device.

OK, now wake up...there's more! In the note referenced in the Barron's story above Mr. Wu also mentioned that Dell is exploring acquisitions to help them with their differentiation problem. The author of the piece Eric Savitz ran with this idea, wondering aloud why Dell wasn't bidding for long-suffering Palm. Good idea! Palm knows the ropes with the carriers and that Pre is potential handset hotness.

Is Disney Ditching Mobile Games?

MobileGamesBlog.com posted a story on Friday about (allegedly rampant) industry rumors that Disney (DIS) is in the process of either radically downsizing or eliminating its mobile games production initiatives. If true, this would represent a radical reversal in strategy considering their acquisitions of German dev/pub Living Mobile in 2005 and Chinese dev/pub Enorbus (for $20mil) 2 years ago. That being said, like all the major studios Disney is aggressively cutting costs and often those cuts are always felt most deeply in ancillary businesses like mobile, online and interactive. The mobile games unit, which is part of Disney Interactive Media Group, has focused on producing mobile games from Disney IP like the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, The Incredibles and Cars...but they've also licensed some 3rd party properties like Bomberman and Scarface (from Universal Pictures). They, along with Sony, have been the most consistently aggressive studios in the mobile games publishing space...all the others have made forays and ultimately resolved that licensing is the best approach. Personally I have always admired Disney's patience with and commitment to the mobile games space...I truly hope these rumors are false. Perhaps we'll all get more clarity on this situation out of GDC this week.

Clockwork Orange on a Tocco May Not Be Delicious

MocoNews, The Register & Reuters are all reporting today that Samsung and Swiss VOD company Acetrax have launched a mobile and PC movie download service in the UK with content from 3 major studios: Warner Bros., Paramount, and Universal. The service currently only works with the high-end Tocco Ultra Edition, which is Samsung's top selling UK handset...but Samsung obviously plans to expand addressable devices, eventually including their PMPs and connected TVs. Movies are available on an EST basis (~$10 -$24) and for 24hr Rental ($2.50 -$4.00) and must be sideloaded from the PC. The service will roll out across major territories in Europe during 2009, with Germany going live next. As many of you know I am highly skeptical about the ability of any hardware manufacturer, other than Apple, to pull off a service like this. Perhaps the relationship with Acetrax will help in this instance...but fundamentally Samsung needs to very quickly (or extremely patiently) become an adept direct-to-consumer content merchant. Bon chance!...I give this service a 25% chance of surviving more than a year.

Like How Trendy Are Mobile Games?

Boy, do I love Google Trends...I've wasted many geeky hours on this site trying to figure out what y'all are thinking about (and I'm a little frightened, frankly). Anyhoo...before GDC I thought it would be cool to post this graph that shows the relative hotness (used loosely) of "mobile games" as a search term. Here's what I'm gathering from these data:

1) Consumer interest in mobile games since 2004 has been tepid, but stable and (the good news) search volume has been growing incrementally.
2) As most publishers and every carrier know, consumers are most enthusiastic about mobile games in the time period just before and after the Holidays...when they presumably are getting or got a shiny new handset.
3) (This you can't see with me unless you click through the chart) Interest in mobile games is coming from some interesting places...particularly developing countries in Asia and some of the smaller economies in Europe. Top 5 in terms of search volume are Pakistan, India, Philippines, Greece and Croatia.

Buh-Bye MOSH, We Hardly Knew Ye

MocoNews is reporting that Nokia (NOK) is shutting down its MOSH WAP and online mobile content sharing portal. I'm always very suspicious when a company shuts down a service that it characterizes as "popular". My guess is that the site was a "popular" money pit for the handset manufacturer. Furthermore, as the site began to gain some traction amongst Nokia owners (mostly outside the US), as a destination for a bunch of free softcore and bootleg content, the more it threatened the fee for download business model of the upcoming (May) Ovi content service...AND the more it became a potential liability with the same IP owners it will rely upon for Ovi content.

#1 in Games on App Store = $7mil for Gameloft?

According to Mobile Entertainment Apple has revealed that its top mobile games publisher Gameloft (GFT) has had 2mil paid downloads of its titles through the iTunes App store (available for iPod touch and iPhone). Gameloft has 33 Apps in the store with an average price (loosely factoring in rank & recent price erosion) of about $4.99. My math (2mil x 4.99 x 70%) tells me that Gameloft has made about $7mil from iTunes App Store to date. I expected this number to be substantially higher...didn't you? This makes me believe more than ever that publishers shouldn't abandon legacy platforms... it also make me think that companies like poor Glu Mobile (GLUU) have been unfairly beaten-up for not being as aggressive on the platform. Another thing that surprised me about this is that if, as Apple reported yesterday, there have been 800mil downloads of Apps then Gameloft only has 0.25% share...which is astoundingly low considering they are the lead publisher in the lead category! This speaks volumes to the chaotic clutter of Apps and publisher/developers on the platform.