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Posts Tagged ‘Market Researcher’

40% of Blackberry users willing to trade in for an iPhone

BlackBerry users may be ready to move on to other smartphone platforms, suggesting that RIM isn’t keeping up with consumer demand in its efforts to combat growing encroachment from the likes of iPhone and Android. In fact, two in five BlackBerry owners plan to swap their current device for an iPhone when it’s time to upgrade, according to market researcher firm Crowd Science.

The iPhone has had a lasting effect on the smartphone market, changing the conception of what a smartphone should be almost overnight after the launch of the original iPhone in 2007. Despite RIM’s entrenchment among business users, however, the iPhone platform has grown at a faster rate than the BlackBerry over the last year.

Perhaps the trend can be explained by Crowd Science’s findings that many are using their smartphones for both personal and business use. Nearly a third of iPhone owners use their device for strictly personal use, versus just 16 percent for BlackBerry users. Just one percent of iPhone owners use their device for business only—no surprise there—so two-thirds are using an iPhone for business and personal use. And, while the BlackBerry has a reputation as the best enterprise mobile device, a scant seven percent of BlackBerrys users dedicate the device to business use only. That leaves over three-quarters of BlackBerry owners using their device for dual purposes.

The iPhone isn’t the only platform attracting the attention of BlackBerry users, though. Interest in Android-based devices has grown since the introduction of Google’s Nexus One, with 32 percent of BlackBerry users surveyed saying they would swap their current device for a Nexus One.

“These results show that the restlessness of BlackBerry users with their current brand hasn’t just been driven by the allure of iPhone,” John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science, said in a statement. “Rather, BlackBerry as a brand just isn’t garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems.”

About 90 percent of current iPhone and Android users plan to stick with their current platform for their next phone upgrade.

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Walmart won the Thanksgiving Day online shopping battle

For the fifth year in a row, Walmart saw the most online traffic on Thanksgiving day, according to market researcher Experian Hitwise.

Walmart had 14.97 percent of of the traffic among the top 500 most-visited retail web sites on Thursday, up 9 percent from 13.72 percent a year ago. Amazon.com was second with 12.41 percent, up 30 percent from 9.56 percent a year ago. And Best Buy had 6.22 percent of online traffic, up 3 percent from 6.05 percent a year ago.

U.S. visits to the top 500 retail web sites were down 15 percent on Thanksgiving day in 2009, compared to 2008. The U.S. traffic to Black Friday sites on Thanksgiving day was down 4 percent from 2008.

Among the top 20 sites visited on Thanksgiving Day 2009, Old Navy saw the largest increase in visits compared to 2008 with a 59 percent increase. Amazon saw a 30 percent increase and Target saw a 28 percent increase to 65.63 percent. Facebook received the largest increase in visits from a year ago, with traffic up 671 percent.

According to Akamai, global retail traffic peaked on Thanksgiving day in the U.S. at 5,732,966 visitors per minute at around 2 pm, Eastern standard time.

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Meez teen virtual playground integrated into MySpace

Meez has built a virtual playground for 13 million teens in the past couple of years. Now that playground is going to get a lot bigger and more crowded as Meez integrates its Meez Nation virtual world into MySpace.

Meez users will be able to log into their virtual world directly from within the MySpace social network, almost as if the virtual world is a widget on a MySpace page that lets you dive into another world. The partnership promises to help MySpace with user engagement, one of the closely watched metrics for how well a site hangs on to its users. Meez says it ranks No. 5 in engagement for online destination sites in the U.S. In June, Meez managed to hit No. 1 in engagement, at 36.4 minutes per user, according to market researcher MediaMetrix.

With Meez, users can create cartoon-like avatars, or virtual characters, and chat with their friends. They can express themselves by decorating rooms and buying virtual clothes. They can also wander around in the Meez Nation virtual world, which launched 14 months ago. That world has a variety of neighborhoods, public hangouts, and personal “Roomz.” The most popular thing that users do is dance to music in these rooms, said John Cahill, chief executive of the San Francisco-based company, in an interview. Business is good because of the growing popularity of virtual goods, Cahill said.

Since MySpace is loaded with web-savvy teens who love to share videos and music, the social network is likely to be a good match for Meez in co-marketing efforts, said Cahill. Meez users are watching a million videos per day, and they’re playing over 100,000 games. Each time they log in, they spend about an hour on the site. About 90 percent of users are in the U.S.

Traffic has hit three million unique visitors a month. The company makes money through ads, virtual goods, and paid subscriptions. One of the most popular things to do is send branded virtual gifts to friends. Advertisers include Nike, RocaWear, Clone Wars, NBA, NHL, and others.

Cahill said MySpace is the first of a number of sites that will integrate the Meez Nation virtual world into a branded site. Meez has been profitable since the second quarter on an operations basis, and it turned cash flow positive in July. The company made its Meez avatars available on mobile phones on the KDDI and Verizon Wireless networks.

Meez is backed by Anthem Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, Draper & Associates and Transcosmos. The company has 30 employees and has raised $10.75 million in three rounds. Rivals include Gaia Online and IMVU. Cahill said the company isn’t raising money.

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Four million gamers celebrate: World of Warcraft back online in China

The paid version of World of Warcraft is now back online in China after more than three months of disrupted service. That should give the massively multiplayer online game’s four million Chinese fans a reason to celebrate. It should also prompt a sigh of relief at Activision Blizzard, which is heavily dependent on the game for its profits.

WoW was offline since June 7, when Activision Blizzard’s Blizzard Entertainment division began what should have been a routine shift from one Chinese operator, the9, to another, NetEase. But the transfer was held up by interference from the Chinese government, which took the opportunity to closely inspect the content of the fantasy role-playing game.

The delay was a big deal since China accounts for such a large part of WoW’s 11 million subscriber base worldwide, and because WoW is one of the most profitable game franchises in the video game industry. A spokesman for Blizzard confirmed today that the paid version of WoW is up. The game had been operational since July 31, but Blizzard was only operating the game for free while it awaited government approval.

A government agency,China’s General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP), was responsible for granting permits for online games before they can launch. When Blizzard Entertainment opted to license WoW to NetEase after the initial license for the9 expired in June, it rendered invalid the GAPP permit required to operate the game. Such permits were nontransferable, Lisa Cosmas Hanson, founder of market researcher Niko Partners, told us earlier. [Update: I'm told that China officially changed the regulator of games last week to the Ministry of Culture, once a game is already online; the GAPP is still responsible for pre-approval of online games that haven't launched yet.]

Getting a new permit should have been easy. But when NetEase applied for a new permit, it was denied based on the game’s “unhealthy content.” WoW’s content has not changed over the years, and neither have the GAPP standards for healthy content, so it’s dubious that this is the real cause of the delay.

While the letter of the GAPP law hadn’t changed, the ministry’s focus on detail did. Previously, the GAPP required Blizzard to change undead characters so they were fully fleshed (In Chinese culture, showing visible human bones is taboo). This time, GAPP also asked Blizzard to change icons that depicted severed heads or bones as well.

Getting a permit from the GAPP is a hurdle, but on top of that, any foreign game company in a legal dispute with a domestic game company will have the content approval of its games suspended until the dispute is resolved. Another policy states that a foreign company may not operate an online game on its own in China; it has to have a Chinese partner and share its revenues with that partner, Cosmas Hanson said. Chinese game companies that operate in the U.S. have no such restriction.

The Chinese online game market will hit revenues of $3.65 billion in 2009, according to market researcher Niko Partners.

Blizzard had planned the transition for some time. When NetEase and Blizzard formed a joint venture in 2008, their strategy included support and services, but the plans did not mean that Blizzard would directly control the online game operation of WoW or other future titles.

Cosmas Hanson said, “The public will probably never know the trigger that allowed NetEase to restart commercial operations of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft in China. Odds are there are political reasons and probably some technical reasons that all magically got fixed just in time for gamers to get back to their game ahead of the Chinese National holiday period in early October. Blizzard and NetEase have had to wait too long for the approval as it is, so at least they will get to generate revenue while gamers have extra time to spend during the holiday week.”

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The most popular digital goods are virtual money, weapons and gifts

People are paying real money for digital goods in all sorts of online applications ranging from Facebook apps to massively multiplayer online games. The No. 1 thing they buy is virtual money. Other top items include virtual weapons and gifts for social networking friends, according to a survey released today.

Free-to-play games, where you can start playing for free and then buy items in the game as you need them, now account for more than half of all virtual goods transactions, according to the July survey by market researcher VGMarket and virtual goods platform company PlaySpan. About 58 percent of gamers made purchases in free-to-play games in the past year. About 34 percent made purchases in MMO games (or virtual worlds such as Eve Online), and 23 percent made purcahse in social networking games.

It isn’t just geeks buying these things. Virtual goods and micro transactions have become a favorite business model for game companies this year, particularly as ad-based models sink in the recession and gamers shy away from buying $60 games in stores.

The survey is based on 2,425 people who responded to surveys on PlaySpan’s various properties: the PlaySpan Marketplace, Spare Change, and Ultimate Game Card. The median purchase was the highest in free-to-play games at $75, followed by MMOs ($60), and social networks ($50). The average player is currently playing three online games and 80 percent of the players report buying digital goods for their own use. About 20 percent spend money on digital goods as gifts for others.

About 71 percent of users bought virtual currency that can be used to buy things inside game worlds. Some 37 percent bought weapons. About 30 percent bought subscription codes. Some 26 percent bought clothing for their virtual characters. Twenty-five percent bought power-ups that made virtual characters stronger.

The good thing about digital goods is that game publishers can use the data to tweak the game, forecast their revenue, and make investments in the right areas, said Michael Gluck, president of VGMarket in Hollywood, Fla. San Jose, Calif.-based PlaySpan’s virtual goods and monetization platforms are used in more than 1,000 online games, virtual worlds and social networks.

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