APP STORE INSPIRATION

My name is Markus Viikki, currently Chief Content Officer at OnMobile’s subsidiary: Appland.

I joined Appland back in 2012, and at that time, I had no previous experience in either Android nor the gaming industries (except for being a great Counter Strike 1.6 gamer 😉).  During these 8 years with Appland, I have traveled across the world to an endless amount of conferences, and had even more online meetings (and a few beers).   But I must say that it was fruitful as it led to distribution rights for games from brands like Disney, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Square Enix, and Cartoon Networks.

Together with local VAS partners, Appland provides mobile games clubs with hundreds of the world’s most popular games, without any ads or in-app purchases, as a subscription service to more than 80 carriers in over 40 countries.

Think about how in the 90's teens were constantly engrossed in their flip phones. Their parents frequently asking them how they should be using small applications on their own phone. Obviously, the grumpy teen refused to help but now that the grumpy teens have kids of their own they're much more tech-savvy and they've finally taught their own parents about smartphones too. 

With knowledge comes power and this knowledge is translating into an ever increasing use of apps on smartphones. With gaming applications contributing over 70% of global app revenues it has become integral to understand the age based gaming demographics. 

In the current scenario, when most of us think of the quintessential mobile gamer we may think of an adolescent boy but, as I've previously written about, the reality may be diagrammatically opposite! 

Mobile Gaming has transformed in the past decade. Previously, when one thought of mobile gamers all you could imagine was a disinterested teen drowning out the adults around him/her with a mindless game like Tetris.

But now casual gamers are actually dedicated to the cause of gaming; with most clocking in almost an hour per day. We've written blogs about their dedication to gaming but what about loyalty to certain games? 

Do you think that the modern casual gamer with access to thousands of different games would be loyal to a handful? We certainly didn't think so! 

Have you found yourself playing an amazingly interesting game when you suddenly lose a life and you are peppered with a number of advertisements. A trivial waste of time that is just slightly irritating, right? 

That's what many parents thought too when they handed their smartphones to their kids for playing games! All they expected was that their kid would download a fun free game and spend hours engaged. Little did they know that their little ones would be viewing highly inappropriate ads that could have a lasting psychological impact.

Recently, a malware called Adult Swine has come to light which has scared most parents. Even "safe" and popular games like The McQueen Car Racing Game, and others with 3 Million downloads, have been deleted from the Play Store because of it. 

Social Media has been emerging as one of the best platforms for marketers to reach their target audience for almost a decade now. But there is no doubt that Facebook is a social media giant to be reckoned with. Let me pepper you with a few interesting facts!

Facebook has 2.07 billion monthly active users on its platform and that's more than a fourth of the world's total population. 

According to Facebook, 239 million of their monthly users are from North America, 364 million from Europe, 794 million from Asia-Pacific and 675 million from the rest of the world. A true melting pot of nationalities, is it not? 

Across more than 14 markets, more than one in four internet users are mobile only. 

On an average, users spend 35 minutes per day on just Facebook. 

Don't these statistics make you think that there is a real opportunity to engage with potential customers on Facebook? Appland partners sure seem to think so!

Recently, we've noticed that Appland partners have active and engaged Facebook audiences. With some of them having thousands of likes we felt that it was time to analyse their presence and performance to offer some value addition to the entire Appland Partner Network.