From Samsung
| Dear seller, This is the Seller Office team. Thank you for your continued support of the Samsung Apps Seller Office. |
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The selling of digital goods from inside your app with ‘in-app billing’ is a very good business model to aim for as all signs point to this ‘freemium’ type of model being the most successful strategy for selling content on the app stores, in particular for mobile games. The growth has been tremendous, and in fact Google just announced a 700% increase in the in-app billing volume since last year.
Virtual Goods (Source: MIT Enterprise Forum)Google actually offer developers a direct way to manage a catalogue of digital goods in this way using their own billing systems, and have tightly integrated this within Google Play and Google Wallet. This is likely capability that Google acquired when they bought the digital goods catalogue company Social Gold. The company never continued, but the technology, at least in part, seems to have been absorbed by Google Play.
The functionality is easy enough to use, and you will no doubt on the surface save a lot of coding by choosing this method, but in doing so, you basically create a 1:1 relationship between your app and Google Play. In order to grow your user base (and not be 1 in a million) and give your app the best chance of success though you need to go well beyond just Google Play for distribution.
If you have used this feature from Google, although it probably saved you some development time, you will not be able to easily transport your in-app billing to other stores, so to manage this you would need to then replace this billing setup with an alternative method of managing a shopping cart system to allow for purchases on any other stores.
Then you still need to manage the necessary steps of adding the varying billing APIs for each new store you want to be on (i.e. add the Samsung SDK to be on their store), so there is a lot of work for you as a developer to have an app that can support in-app purchases across multiple stores.
Our advice is to start looking for solutions that help you manage your digital catalogue billing across a wide range of stores from the very beginning. There are plenty of vendors around such as Playerscale and Live Gamer, all with different capabilities and associated costs. While you still need to resolve the multiple in-app billing SDK connections to your billing system, you can at least be sure then you have not limited your apps potential and have the ability to scale as you grow your distribution to new stores.
Simon Slee is an experienced veteran in the mobile games industry. Simon is currently VP of Publishing for Fei Hu Interactive, a Chinese based, cross platform, mobile & social developer of free2play games, including the upcoming title ‘Prisonhood’.
From Amazon:
You Can Now Distribute Apps in Nearly 200 Countries Worldwide on Amazon
Today we announced that the Amazon store is now available to millions of customers in nearly 200 countries around the world, giving them global access to Amazon’s broad selection of quality apps.
Customers will be able to access a large and growing catalog of apps and games from Amazon directly from their computers or Android phones and tablets, including Kindle Fire, and you will quickly have a much larger audience around the world to download and enjoy your apps and games. For a full list of countries offering our store visit the Amazon Mobile App Distribution Blog. We also announced that Kindle Fire is available for pre-order starting today, shipping to over 170 countries beginning on June 13.
This is a great opportunity for you to reach millions of new customers who can now discover apps and games online, from their Android mobile and Kindle Fire devices within our store. If you have country availability for your apps set to all countries where Amazon sells apps then you do not need to do anything to take advantage of this opportunity. Otherwise, you will need to make your apps available internationally by adding the countries you want your apps to be available in. Here is more information on how you can do that.
Get started today by submitting your app on the Amazon Mobile App Distribution Portal.
Stay connected via our Distribution Blog, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Best regards,
Amazon Mobile App Distribution Team
From Samsung
| Dear seller, This is the Seller Office team. Thank you for your continued support of the Samsung Apps Seller Office.We would like to announce that the Seller Office will now be providing paid services in more countries. |
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The market for mobile app development is expected to grow from $25.2bn in 2013 to $92bn in 2018 according to Ridgecrest Capital Partners latest research study (which includes an honorable mention of CodeNgo). Backed by data from among others Vision Mobile, Ridgecrest lists a number of companies that have received VC funding in the space, and they also list companies that are likely to be the consolidators in the industry.
Ridgcrest also points to the complexity of being a mobile app developer, a concept that readers of this post are likely to not be a stranger of:
So how big of a problem is the complexity? Well, where there is opportunity, there is talent, and talent deals well with complexity. Asymco points out in a recent article that “Apps are becoming the universal medium for entertainment and iTunes the universal distributor. Talent is catching on to this faster than those who manage and distribute their work. The inevitable result will be a mass migration of talent away from the established content industries.” While we disagree on iTunes being the universal distributor (surprise), especially given Asymco’s love affair with Apple, their main point on the rise of apps is quite compelling. Apps are consuming more and more of consumers time, and has taken over for where other content types, like music, has been faltering. Bring on the talent.
“We believe the mobile applications space has reached an inflection point and thus will gain increased interest on both the funding and M&A front.“
– Ridgecrest Capital Partners
Games are undoubtedly one of the most important category for mobile apps. And we strongly believe we have only seen the beginning of the explosion that is to become mobile gaming. As games permeate from entertainment to education, there are several indicators indicating the action is moving to a smaller screen.
The big guys struggle online
An excellent article in The Motley Fool blog discusses the fate of Zynga. Zynga has seen huge drop in revenue numbers as they struggle to stay relevant. Partly this may be lack of new titles, partly a drop in interest on Facebook – but mainly it is because they see all the action moving to mobile.
As referenced in the article: “Smart phones are the go-to market for literally any struggling software company, but more importantly Mark Pincus believes that social video gaming may be more successful in the mobile space” – we tend to agree with Pincus. The ultimate social device surely should be the most suitable for social gaming.
Mobile is also taking over from console
Mobile games industry veterans will arguably say that mobile games were never intended to take over from console games, rather mobile games are more about killing time rather than an immersive hard core experience. Yet new data shows that increasingly tablets and other devices are increasingly “stealing” audiences from consoles.
Moreover though, we expect not necessarily the battle of mobile vs console to be the main issue, rather we expect a multi-screen/multi-device experience, where all released titles whether online or on console will have a mobile component. The experience may be replicated in full or in part, but that depends on the type of game and the experience the developer is trying to create. Successful games companies in the future will become expert in cross device user engagement – and that engagement will vary depending on device and context.
The hindrance? Payments
Payments hold a key for revenue generation on mobile. Strict demands from app stores and/or mobile carriers to use their payment SDKs, means maintaining multiple SKUs and payment integrations, something most developers do not have resources to go after, other than the big guys. Luckily, a solution may be in the works — but more on this in a later post.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on this. What do you think the growth in mobile gaming will be? Take our poll:
From Samsung:
| [Seller Office] Notification regarding Improvements to the Accounting Service | ||||||||||||||||||
| Dear seller, This is the Seller Office Team. Thank you for your continued support of the Samsung Apps Seller Office.We would like to inform you of the following improvements to the accounting service: |
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From Samsung:
| [Seller Office] Service improvements in April | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dear seller, This is the Seller Office Team. Thank you for your continued support of the Samsung Apps Seller Office.In consideration of your valuable advice and opinions, we will further improve the Seller Office service for your convenience. Please note the following information when using Seller Office. |
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From Amazon
Dear Mobile App Developer,
Soon, Amazon will open distribution in nearly 200 additional countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, India, South Africa, South Korea, and even Papua New Guinea and Vatican City. Many new consumers will be able to access a large and growing catalog of apps and games from Amazon. This means that your apps and games will quickly be available to a much larger audience.
In addition to the new distribution, we’re also adding the ability to price your apps in CAD (Canadian Dollars) and BRL (Brazilian Reals) today. You can also submit localized descriptions for Brazil (Portuguese) today, and this feature will be available soon for Canada (French and English).
Recently, we announced new opportunities to monetize your apps on Amazon, including our new Mobile Ads API with competitive eCPM, and the fact that we will be distributing tens of millions of dollars worth of Amazon Coins to U.S. Amazon customers in May, to spend on apps, games, or in-app purchases; and developers will receive their standard revenue share for these purchases. We offer tools to make implementing our APIs simple, including the new, fasterKindle Fire emulators , and the Amazon Mobile App SDK Eclipse Plugin .
If you’re new to distributing apps on Amazon, get started at the Mobile App Distribution Portal . If you already have apps on Amazon, no actions are required. For the full list of countries we’re distributing apps in, click here .
From Amazon:
Submit for Approval by April 25th to Take Advantage
Amazon Coins is launching in May. Tens of millions of dollars worth of Amazon Coins will be given to U.S. customers for free to spend on Kindle Fire apps, games, and in-app items. If your apps are already available for sale to U.S. customers on Kindle Fire, then no action is required. If you have new apps or games ready, submit them by April 25th so they’ll have the best chance of being available for Amazon Coins purchases at the launch of the program.
For more information on Amazon Coins, click here. Stay tuned to the Distribution Blog for more updates and announcements regarding the launch of Amazon Coins.
New Kindle Fire Emulators
Wouldn’t it be nice if emulators weren’t so slow? The new Kindle Fire emulator startup and run time with the x86 system images is now close to that of an actual Kindle Fire. It also looks and acts the same–if you’ve used our standard ARM system images before, there’s no change in how you use the new x86 system images.
To learn more and download the new emulator, click here.
Amazon Mobile App Distribution Blog
Have you visited our blog recently? Here are some posts you may have missed:
