The mobile app development company is putting everything into resurrecting its social game.
Not too long ago, Zynga dominated the Facebook mobile gaming scene, with its hugely popular app called FarmVille, which was the social equivalent of what Candy Crush Saga has become, today.
That said, the flood of smartphone apps available to consumers has knocked the pins out from under the company.
The competition among mobile app development companies is tremendous, and leading hits has become a nearly impossible feat for the vast majority for firms. After having been king on Facebook, Zynga’s dominance has since eroded to a massive degree. Many would consider the company to be on the edge of altogether irrelevance. However, the company is now hoping to launch an effort that will send itself back up to the top of social and mobile gaming.
Mobile gaming enthusiasts will soon be able to find a second version of the game they loved, in FarmVille2.
Zynga is also hoping to reboot two of its old smartphone and tablet based apps, “Zynga Poker” and “Words With Friends”. Don Mattrick, the CEO of the mobile app development firm, has acknowledged that the last little while hasn’t been easy for the company, particularly due to the massive number of competitors in the race. However, he also feels that they are on their way to catching up, once more.
He explained that “You’ve got to keep innovating; you’ve got to give people things that cause them surprise and delight.” That said, he also went on to point out that “But the first thing you’ve got to do is get your content there.”
Mattrick is a veteran of Electronic Arts, having been an executive there. He had also previously run the Xbox division at Microsoft, before he left that osition in order to replace Zynga’s co-founder, Mark Pincus. Now, it is his intention to debut as Zynga’s CEO in San Francisco at an investor conference of Morgan Stanley. This new leadership will coincide with the company’s efforts to fulfill its promise to make a larger push into mobile gaming and, it hopes, to bring itself back to unquestionable relevancy.
Even among users of these smartphone based wallets, the services aren’t used for most purchases.
Although mobile payments, as a whole, have started to attract the interest of some consumers, they are not providing the true adoption rates that would be required to call this transaction method an actual mainstream success.
Mobile wallets are being used by only 16 percent of device owners.
Moreover, even among those who actually use them, only very few are using them all that often, says a Yankee Group report that has recently been published. It stated that over the three months before the report, only 16 percent of smartphone owners actually used those devices for making a purchase in store.
The report showed that despite this, two thirds of consumers are actually interested in mobile payments.
The report was titled “U.S. Mobile Wallet Roundup: Gauging the Future Potential of Today’s Solutions”. It explained that while there is widespread interest in these wallets, that is not translating into actual adoption, quite yet. That report also assigned PayPal the top spot within this particular space, as 15 percent of consumers had use the company’s app within the previous month for making a purchase in-store.
Within the report, a Yankee Group analyst named Jordan McKee pointed out that every day seems to produce another level of growth when it comes to mobile wallets. However, the actual success in that area is not quite as defined as the hype, itself. McKee added that despite the fact that there have been massive investments throughout this environment, which have been worth billions of dollars, the actual uptake and use of this technology has been far less than “illustrious”.
Among those who are actually using mobile payments, 73 percent are doing so less than five times per month. This indicates that this type of transaction still has a long way to go before it is the top choice among even those consumers who are actually using it – which are clearly in the minority. It is the opinion of the report that this will not see a drastic “change anytime soon”, though they do feel that there is great potential over time due to the massive consumer interest.
