Social Networking Apps Surpassing Games' Usage and Revenue

Quite amazingly, the games are being surpassed by social networking apps both in terms of revenue and daily time spent. This is the first time Flurry reports such figures. Of course, only apps monitored by Flurry are included here, but it is still meaningful data given the number of apps monitored:

Flurry increases the size and value of mobile application audiences, already helping more than 60,000 companies in over 150,000 applications across iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, JavaME and HTML5 platforms. Flurry has built the world's leading mobile application analytics and data-powered advertising platform, with more ground breaking services in development.

European Mobile Gaming Gets Social: Rise in Smartphone Adoption Drives Increase in Mobile Gaming and Social Play - comScore, Inc

According to comScore, nearly half of EU5 (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain) smartphone users play games at least once a month, which translates into 46.4 million smartphone gamers.

European Mobile Gaming Gets Social: Rise in Smartphone Adoption Drives Increase in Mobile Gaming and Social Play - comScore, Inc

John Walker's Opinion On Video Games' Pricing

There is an excellent piece on Games Industry International written by journalist John Walker.
I can't agree more with the author. I've always thought that the only reason I purchased second-hand games as a kid was because the price of new games was too high. Simple as that.
And the reason why I buy quite many new games now here in South Korea is because 1) I have a regular source of revenues and 2) new games are comparatively cheaper here in Korea (roughly $35 to $45 including all taxes) than in my French hometown.

One of the highlighted quotes of the article:

"You can take hardware to your local GameStation or CEX, and the manufacturers aren't showing up demanding their tithe, so why should this be any different for software?"

And my personal favorite quote:

"The attempt to control - or even entirely obliterate - the pre-owned market is an attempt to prevent people from selling their own goods, to interfere with the free market, and to artificially induce massive depreciation of your own products. And when a game costs quite so much money in the first place - £45/$60 - it is no wonder that most people cannot afford to buy all they want at full price. And that is the point. This is a matter of how publishers behave, not what retailers and consumers do with the results."

Read the whole article HERE.

North Korea's Three Mobile Phones

According to StatCounter, it would seem that North Korea has roughly... 3 mobile phones.
Disclaimer: this is no April's fool prank. These are the real reported stats.

Of course, it doesn't reflect the actual number of cell phones in North Korea, but at any rate it seems that not much is filtering through their firewall.

Source: StatCounter.com