The global mobile games market is expected to double by 2016 and reach $23.9 billion, research company Newzoo and mobile games marketing company AppLift predicted Tuesday. The growth is due to an increase in the number of players, as well as a higher average amount spent per paying mobile gamer, the companies said. The tablet games market will grow 400 percent by 2016 to reach $10 billion, they projected in a jointly produced report. Other findings and projections in the report included: 78 percent of the 1.2 billion gamers globally play mobile games; 38 percent of all mobile gamers spend an average of $2.78 a month on mobile games and that will increase to $3.07 by 2016; the Asia-Pacific region is the largest market for mobile games, accounting for 48 percent of global revenue; average monthly spending per paying mobile gamer is highest in Western Europe, at $4.40, ahead of North America’s $3.87, but North America has the highest share of paying users among players globally, at 45 percent; and the cost of acquisition for loyal mobile gamers ranges from 74 cents on Android and $1.11 on iOS in smaller Latin American countries to $1.71 for Android and $3.70 for iOS in mature Asia-Pacific markets including Japan, South Korea and Australia.
Increasing mobile device use by young children heightens the need for an update to the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, said Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, in a joint statement Monday. “In the 21st century parents now have to plan for their children to crawl, walk, run and browse,” they said. The statement was in response to a new Common Sense Media survey (http://bit.ly/17nwr2t) about mobile device use among children up to 8 years old. The percentage of children under 8 who have used some type of mobile device has doubled in the past two years, from 38 percent to 72 percent, the survey found. In 2011, Markey and Barton introduced the Do Not Track Kids Act, which would forbid online stores from collecting children’s information without parental consent. And even if companies received consent, they would not be able to use any collected information for marketing purposes. In their statement, the two lawmakers called for the bill to be reconsidered. “Increasing use of mobile devices by very young children coupled with rapid change in technological development makes it more important than ever to put federal legislation on the books that provides parents with the tools to protect their children online,” they said. “The Do Not Track Kids legislation would update COPPA for this new Internet ecosystem, establish new protections for the personal information of children and teens and ensure that parents have the tools they need to protect their children’s privacy.”
The FCC started what is expected to be a long process of digging out Thursday, opening its doors for the first time since Oct. 1. The FCC put out a notice early in the day saying all filing deadlines were suspended, other than Network Outage Reporting System filings, through Monday (http://fcc.us/19THOiF). ECFS is back, but one lawyer told us he had been unable to make a filing. The commissioner offices have started to talk about such issues as rescheduling the October FCC meeting and other meetings as well as agency filings delayed by the closure, agency officials told us. Some communications lawyers said FCC staffers have been reaching out to ask about urgent issues for the FCC to address now that the agency is open.
Global average peak Web connection speeds rose 17 percent to 18.9 Mbps in Q2 from the year-ago quarter, said Akamai’s latest State of the Internet Report (http://bit.ly/19N20g5). Speeds rose for both global average peak connection speeds and average connection speeds, it said. Akamai also observed attack traffic across the Internet, with more than half of all attack traffic coming from Indonesia and China. For the first time in the company’s study of the Internet, more attack traffic came from Indonesia (38 percent) than China (33 percent). About 6.9 percent of attack traffic originated in the U.S., down from 8.3 percent in Q1. Also a first, port 445 wasn’t the most targeted port for attacks, it said of the port used for Microsoft functions. Port 443 was the target of 17 percent and 80 the target for 24 percent of attacks, while 445 was the target for 15 percent, it said. The report, which also studied mobile connectivity, said Android Webkit users accounted for about 38 percent of mobile requests to cell networks, compared with 34 percent from Apple Mobile Safari. Apple Mobile Safari accounted for about 54 percent of requests across all network types, while Android Webkit was responsible for 27.6 percent, said Akamai.
Nielsen’s address-based sampling is more effective to measure TV ratings than sampling of landline phone-based households, said a Council for Research Excellence study released Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1fgAWxX). In November 2008, Nielsen introduced address-based sampling to get more coverage of TV ratings in the U.S., said Michael Link, Nielsen chief methodologist, at an event hosted by CRE in New York. “If we did not introduce this sampling, half of the households in our ratings would have disappeared,” said Link. The three TV markets included in the study were Dallas-Fort Worth, Albuquerque-Santa Fe, and Paducah, Ky.-Cape Girardeau, Mo.-Harrisburg, Ill. Of the households surveyed, 38.2 percent did not have a landline phone and had at least one cellphone, said the study. The percentage of adult heads-of-households who use only a cellphone has increased from 46 percent in June 2009 to 62 percent in December 2012, said the study. Of 27 households that did not have a TV, 63 percent had a computer with high-speed Internet, 41 percent used the Internet on a cellphone, and 38 percent viewed TV on a computer or tablet, said the study. The random error in local broadcast and cable ratings is falling outside the traditional 10 percent benchmark error range used for advertising negotiations, said CRE in a separate study (http://bit.ly/1b8CHbx). The relative error for total-day in all diary-only household ratings for all TV stations falls in the 10 percent benchmark 11.3 percent of the time with primetime ratings in the benchmark 26 percent of the time, weekday evening (18.1 percent) and late newscasts (20.7 percent). The study encompassed six May “sweeps” periods dating back to 2001, and it includes relative error ranges for all stations, affiliates, households and demographics, homes using TV by daypart and demographics and relative error by daypart, demographics and effective sample size, said the study.
The average mobile data price dropped by 17.7 percent between Q3 2012 and Q3 2013, ABI Research said Monday. The report, based on a survey of the 20 cheapest markets, found that the price drop “was mainly driven by fierce competition and increased network capacity 4G roll-outs,” said Marina Lu, an ABI Research associate, in a news release. About 38 percent of the lowest-priced data plans globally in Q3 were 4G tariffs, compared with 21 percent at the same time last year, ABI Research said. At the same time, data revenue has grown substantially due to increased smartphone adoption -- total data revenue should reach $527 billion by 2018, a forecast 13.4 percent increase from the $400 billion in revenue expected through the end of this year, ABI Research said (http://bit.ly/GHZS2L).
Nielsen is starting the Twitter TV Ratings to measure the total activity and reach of TV-related conversation on Twitter, said Nielsen and its SocialGuide in a news release Monday (http://bit.ly/15RpHZD). The ratings will measure the number of the people tweeting about TV programs and the “audience” of people who view those tweets, said the companies. The Twitter viewing audience is about 50 times larger than the authors who are generating tweets, initial analysis of the Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings found. In the second quarter of 2013, 19 million people composed 264 million tweets about live TV, a 24 percent year-over-year increase in authors and a 38 percent increase in tweet volume, said SocialGuide. The ratings will be available for TV programming across more than 215 English-language U.S. broadcast and cable networks, said the companies. Twitter has worked to promote its partnerships with TV, including in the filing for an IPO the company released late last week (http://bit.ly/18KADWZ).
The first casualties of a federal government shutdown likely will be events, including hearings on Capitol Hill, slated for this week, unless the House and Senate work out a deal that would put off a shutdown that was slated to start at midnight Monday. Bigger problems loom, including potential delays in Senate action on the nominations of Tom Wheeler and Michael O'Rielly as members of the FCC, industry officials said. NTIA has already canceled one high-profile event slated for next week.
Two percent of the FCC’s staff and 21 percent of the FTC’s workforce could keep working during any government shutdown, according to updated contingency plans those agencies released Friday. That the FTC gets more of its funding from user fees and not congressional appropriations, even though both agencies are largely funded by such money, appears to be the reason that agency wouldn’t be hit as hard as the FCC, said several experts in interviews last week. As many as 38 of the FCC’s 1,754 employees could stay on the job, that agency said (http://bit.ly/15zE9A2), while 248 of the FTC’s 1,178 workers would be exempt from furloughs, it said (http://1.usa.gov/1946pki).
Sprint gained product buying leverage from its $22 billion sale to SoftBank, but won’t likely see the full impact until next year, said Sprint Chief Financial Officer Joe Euteneuer at a Goldman Sachs conference Thursday. While Sprint suffered shortages of iPhones in the past, getting enough inventory may no longer be an issue, Euteneuer said. “All the vendors are looking at us now and realize we are one company,” he told us. “As much as we are a standalone independent entity, from a purchasing standpoint they realize we are one buying company and we gained some leverage.” Sprint will start deploying so-called tri-band mobile phones late this year capable of delivering LTE services using the 1.9 MHz, 800 MHz and 2.5 GHz spectrum bands, he said. Sprint acquired the 2.5 GHz capability when it bought Clearwire earlier this year. “We plan on putting it out there and it’s something that we are going to hang our hat on because 2.5 GHz means a lot to us,” Euteneuer said. Sprint, which expects to have 200 million points of presence for its Network Vision LTE by year-end, expects to start deploying LTE across its 800 MHz band in early 2014, while Clearwire’s 2.5 GHz network of 5,000 towers will get it by year-end, Euteneuer said. Sprint will start installing 2.5 GHz on its 38,000 towers in first-half 2014, he said. Sprint expects to have LTE go network-wide by mid-2014, Euteneuer said. Sprint has 40 percent LTE coverage in some markets, including Chicago, Fort Wayne and Indianapolis, Euteneuer said. Sprint had LTE in 151 U.S. cities June 30, the company has said. Sprint’s push in 4G comes with the financial backing of SoftBank, which owns 78 percent of the carrier and supplied it with a $1.9 billion capital infusion before the closing in July, Sprint has said. The two companies won’t be fully integrated for about two years, Euteneuer said. Sprint had 56.1 million wireless customers June 30, down from 56.3 million a year earlier. The number of postpaid customers inched up to 32.8 million from 32.5 million a year earlier, while prepaid -- services sold under the Virgin and Boost brands -- slipped slightly to 15.21 million from 15.41 million.