Tag: candy crush saga

The company behind the wildly popular and addictive mobile apps is seeking to raise $500 million.

The mobile app development company behind Candy Crush Saga, King, has made technology news headlines as it is to raise at least $500 million in an initial public offering.

The British computer games company has said that its most popular mobile app generated 78 percent of its Q4 revenues.

This, and a number of other statistics were also released in this latest mobile technology news, including that approximately 93 million people play the Candy Crush Saga app every day. This, according to the documents that King filed with the United States SEC. That application is, by far, its biggest hit and its popularity continues to grow.

The technology news continued as the company revealed that the game brought in $1.9 billion last year.

According to King, this is a massive increase over the tremendous earnings it was already generating through the Candy Crush Saga in 2011, which were “only” $64 million. All of these figures were included in the pre-IPO documents submitted by the company.

At the same time, though, King still found itself in a pre-tax loss of $698,000 in 2011. The company managed to turn that around quite dramatically in 2013, showing a $714.3 million profit. The company is registered in Ireland and has its headquarters in London, but has filed to float under the ticker “King”, on the Nasdaq stock exchange in the United States.

Now the company must face its next challenge, which will be to win over investors and build their confidence after the mobile gaming sector has performed quite poorly and unexpectedly in the past. Many will surely be worried that they will only find themselves burned once again by the hype of this technology news and the opportunity that King appears to be presenting.

The first case that typically comes to mind was that of Farmville on Facebook. It was created by the mobile app development company, Zynga, a major competitor of King. It drew a tremendous user base and created a great deal of excitement before its 2011 floatation, after which it rapidly plummeted to about one third of its IPO price, as the company scrambled to try to come up with another equivalent success.

Mobile games are coming to WeChat

Tencent, China’s largest Internet company, has been making aggressive moves in the mobile field recently. The company has been looking to boost the revenue generated from WeChat, China’s most popular social messaging application. WeChat is used by over half of the smartphone and tablet owners in China and the application is making its way to other markets beyond the country’s borders. Tencent believes that it can boost the revenue of WeChat by making various updates to the application and adding new features, such as mobile games.

WeChat brings social elements to mobile games

The company has noticed that mobile games are quite addictive to consumers throughout China. Tencent believes that this creates an ideal environment for consumers to compete with one another on mobile games through the WeChat application, adding a social element to these games. Users of WeChat will not be charged to play the mobile games associated with the application. There are various features that are included in these games that do come at a price, however. These in-game purchases can unlock additional content for those interested in spending money on the games they are interested in.

Consumers may make in-game purchases due to competition with friends

Tencent expects that competition will be the main reason consumers spend money on mobile games. WeChat is a social platform, allowing more than 300 million users throughout China to connect with one another in real-time. Tencent believes that the allure of “one-upping” friends could be a driving force behind in-game purchases. Those that do purchase additional content or advantages in mobile games establish a slight lead over their friends and this may encourage others to follow suit so as not to be left behind.

Consumers are notoriously fickle when it comes to mobile games

While mobile games have proven to be a lucrative sector for the game industry as a whole, consumers are notoriously fickle when it comes to this type of gaming. Few mobile games have the ability to hold a consumer’s attention for prolonged periods of time. While games like “Candy Crush Saga” manage to generate a great deal of revenue, consumers tend to move quickly from game to game in order to find a better experience. WeChat may need to support a wide variety of mobile games if it wants to generate revenue  in this way.