Zynga plots its mobile stategy
Zynga wants to get into your pocket. As the publisher of games like, “Word with Friends,” a Scrabble-clone popular on Apple devices and since February, on Android platforms, Zynga, known as the top games publisher on Facebook, is likely trying to reduce its reliance of Mark Zuckerberg and co’s platform.
“You should play and you should pay,” says David Ko, the former Yahoo executive who moved to Zynga in November to spearhead its mobile push.
In a recent interview, Ko told Reuters that Zynga’s mobile strategy has two parts: Creating mobile versions of existing Web titles like ”FarmVille” and “Mafia Wars” and, having users play games on their mobile devices before anywhere else, like on “Words with Friends.”
In the U.S, Ko says, mobile games are growing at a “high clip,” but that the faster growth is in markets like South East Asia where people are turning to games first on their smartphones since PCs are less prevalent.
“In markets like South East Asia, mobile-first experiences are going to lead the way,” Ko says.
Next year, users should expect a lot of different types of Zynga mobile games, Ko says. A franchise it could certainly tap is CityVille, which grew to 101 million users in no time but that has no current mobile version.
Motorola Atrix: works well on Wi-Fi
Motorola Atrix is an Android phone that runs on AT&T’s network. The phone itself is a powerful device, the first U.S. smartphone to run on a dual-core processor. It can also be paired with an unusual accessory called a laptop dock – it’s like a laptop in appearance but doesn’t work unless the Atrix is attached.
Once the phone is attached then the dock works like a netbook, a scaled down laptop intended mostly for websurfing. The dock’s 11.6 inch screen was designed for easier websurfing than on the Atrix phone’s smaller 4 inch screen and it sports a Qwerty keyboard that is aimed at making tasks like emailing much easier than on the phone’s touchscreen.
So how well does it work?
With barely a day to play with both devices, our tests were pretty limited but they lasted long enough for us to form a strong first impression: The phone and lapdoc worked very well when connected to a network but, that was the stumbling block.
Put simply, there really was no way to tell if and when the AT&T cellular network was going to give a strong enough signal for us to get a stable Web connection. Yes, it’s not very original to whine about AT&T’s network performance — which is often lambasted by iPhone customers — but it definitely colored our first impression of the devices.
First we tried the Atrix in a mid-town Manhattan high-rise office building where the initial connection was good enough for web surfing – I found the location of the local post office and Macy’s in short order. So far so good.
from Breakingviews:
Put BlackBerry on hold – but not for long
BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion is a victim of its own success. Having dominated the market for corporate e-mail devices for years, it is being forced to seek out growth in consumer markets, where, so far, it has had trouble differentiating its products.
Going mainstream has helped vastly expand its consumer base -- which now represents half of all BlackBerry subscribers. Fully 80 percent of its new subscribers now come from outside its traditional corporate base.
But that success is coming at a growing cost to the once lofty average selling price of its phones, the latest quarterly results show. Profits for its second fiscal quarter dipped 3.5 percent, amid weak subscriber growth. Product prices appear under pressure at both ends of its business, both among corporate users and with consumers.
Fixing these issues will take time, several quarters at least, something which investors who have bid the stock up more than 100 percent in the past year were not prepared to hear: they sent RIM stock tumbling 17 percent, to below $70, on Friday.
The trouble is that RIM must develop and introduce new products that can recapture customer attention in increasingly crowded markets. Phone companies must be convinced to sell the new BlackBerrys in their stores. Consumers must get the message. Rivals have to be kept at bay.
And RIM no longer has the luxury of retreating to its corporate base. There has been a proliferation of rival devices from the Apple iPhone to newer phones from HTC and Motorola based on Google's Android operating system, all of which now offer customers secure access to Microsoft Exchange e-mail and contacts.
The company is desperate for a hot new product to replace its three-year-old Pearl phone, its first device to make a splash in consumer markets. Its standout keyboard for text input is less special than it once was. Rival mobile phone makers offer better cameras, more memory and a wider selection of zippy software for their devices.
from Commentaries:
Tech Links: Phones, more phones and communion wafers
Better luck next year for Android Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC has warned of a revenue shortfall, saying it has too many new phone models chasing too little revenue. Revenue growth will turn negative in 2009, instead of growing 10 percent, as the company had previously forecast.
Chief Executive Peter Chou says: "Momentum on both the Windows Mobile and Android platforms are also turning out to be weaker than expected."
HTC said it is boosting its marketing spending to more than 15 percent of revenue from 13.5 percent to fend off market leader Nokia and the Apple iPhone juggernaut.
My favorite line: "Investors have been relatively bearish on the company this year, with HTC's shares having risen about 36 percent so far, far lagging the 54 percent advance on the TAIEX share index."
Bharti looks ready to raise price for MTN Bharti Airtel and MTN have agreed to a month-long extension to merger talks to seal a deal that would create the world's third largest mobile phone company in subscriber terms.
This looks like the prelude to Bharti raising its bid for MTN, answering resistance to the deal by investors in the South African company. It all follows weeks of jockeying by Bharti to line up funding with banks and key shareholders.
The merger appears to be moving ahead despite signs of growing worker unrest in MTN's homeland. Over the weekend, South Africa's Communication Workers Union said workers at the fixed-line operations of Telkom SA will hold a two-day strike this week.
What I wish these phone maker companies would start working on is an Internet Cell Phone. One that uses the internet to communicate voice thru. They will compete against Cell Based Systems and this will force the Cell Companies to Lower their Prices to Decent Levels.. This current Contract/subscriber system is old and Monopolistic. If Google or Sony or or Somebody could develop this phone that worked as tranparently as the current cell system then the next wave of Telecommunications could begin and Give these Cell Companies LOTS of Competition. Thus Lower Prices to the end user. Right now My next phone will be an Internet Based Phone NOT a Cell Phone.
Android co-founder in Google Ventures?
Is Android co-founder Rich Miner Google’s new in-house venture capitalist?
To judge by one intriguing clue, it appears so.
Miner’s name was recently spotted on a nametag at a Silicon Valley event for start-up firms to present their ideas and pitch VCs for funding. The tag identified Miner as belonging to Google Ventures.
Of course, there is no such thing as Google Ventures, at least not yet. A company spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday that Google Ventures is “a project we’re working on. But we’re not able to discuss details right now.”
Miner would be an interesting choice for a Google in-house venture fund, which has been rumoured for months.
According to his profile on LinkedIn, Miner has spent the last two decades at start-ups and wireless firms. When one of his companies was acquired by French telecommunications company Orange, he became Orange’s head of technology. He also served as a consulting partner at Orange Ventures, according to the profile.
Miner came to Google through the search giant’s 2005 acquisition of Android, the company Miner co-founded with Andy Rubin, and which now forms the basis of Google’s smartphone efforts.
