Category: Apps

She will be following closely on the heels of the successes of Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry.

For more than ten years, Paris Hilton has hardly struggled to find her way into the spotlight, and to stay there, and now this “it girl” who has been “famous for being famous” is stepping into mobile games and into a trend that has been growing among celebrities.

Though she may not be in the headlines as much as she once was, she continually remains in the public eye.

There has been a massive business that has been constructed around her name, allowing it to be licensed to a tremendous range of different kinds of product, from Chihuahua clothing lines to fake lashes. Now, her name will also be applied to mobile games, as Animoca Brands (an ASX listed company) is betting on her ability to appeal to smartphone and tablet users who download gaming apps.

Paris Hilton is far from the first celebrity to take the leap into mobile games and other types of apps.

Kim Kardashian’s “Hollywood” game app, which was put out by Glu Mobile in 2014 saw considerable successes. That mobile app, says Adweek’s figures, has already received over 28 million downloads and its players have spent more than 11 billion minutes on it. This brought a hefty $74 million to Glu Mobile, last year (not including the 45 percent cut that belongs to Kardashian).

Glu Mobile’s success with celebrity themed mobile apps encouraged it to continue with the trend, last month announcing that it had signed a contract with Katy Perry that gave them the rights for featuring her “voice, likeness, and personality” within mobile gaming apps that are based on simulations of the music industry.

Kanye West also recently brought up the fact that he is working on a video game. This makes sense, considering that his wife has seen such success in doing it.

Animoca and Glu both use the same type of freemium mobile games strategy model for their products. While the download, itself, is free, they include advertising and opportunities to make various types of in-app purchases.

The retailer has decided to take its own direction instead of choosing to accept payments through Apple Pay.

Neiman Marcus, the luxury retailer, has now joined forces with Capital One in order to create its own mobile wallet so that its credit card customers will be able to use an app on their smartphones in order to pay for purchases while in store.

At first, the mobile app will be available only as an iOS application, so it will be for iPhone users.

This mobile wallet app will integrate with a number of different credit cards, including the Neiman Marcus card, in addition to Bergdorf Goodman, American Express, MasterCard, Visa, and Discover. Similar to Apple Pay, it will make it possible for customers to be able to buy items, in-store, without having to use their actual plastic credit cards. At the moment, the app won’t support the use of gift cards.

This helps to explain why Neiman Marcus chose not to sign on with the Apple Pay mobile wallet.

It is clear that the retailer preferred to create its own competing mobile payments platform. That said, what is quite interesting about this application, and what makes it very different from Apple Pay is that it is compatible with more versions of the smartphone. At the moment, Apple Pay can be used only with the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus. However, the mobile payments wallet from Neiman Marcus will be available to users of several different versions of that iOS based smartphone.

While Apple Pay may be the most well recognized and visible smartphone wallet, there isn’t a single app in this space that has reached the point that it can say that it can block out most other competing applications that are hoping to make their way into this space.

Neiman Marcus isn’t the only one to choose not to sign on with Apple and that has decided to create its own mobile wallet. Starbucks – the company that is typically considered to be the most successful mobile payments venture in the United States – has also done so, as have Walmart, Exxon Mobil, 7-Eleven, and Southwest Airlines.