Category: Apps

Britney Spears: American Dream has launched worldwide.

After having massive success with other celebrity-casual mobile games, including “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood” and “Katy Perry Pop”, it should come as no surprise that Glu Mobile has added another celebrity –based game to its portfolio, this time focusing on long-time American pop icon Britney Spears. The New Britney Spears mobile game, called “Britney Spears: American Dream” was launched worldwide yesterday and is available for both iOS and Android.

The hope is that Spears’s game will follow in the same lucrative footsteps as Kardashian’s.

Glu’s Kim Kardashian mobile game has generated an incredible amount of money, including an estimated $80 million for the star herself, since 2014. The company hopes that the new Spears-focused game will be just as successful.

The mobile game developer based in San Francisco is careful to partner with celebrities who have over a billion social followers. While Glu pays these stars royalties, they benefit from the massive social following of these celebs, allowing Glu to avoid having to spend loads of money on advertising as the celebrities and social media will spread word about the game for them.

Glu’s partnership with Spears was first announced over a year ago and the agreement forged between the two parties is set to last until 2020, at least.

The Britney Spears mobile game won’t be the last celebrity title for Glu.

Like the other games that have come before it, Britney Spears: American Dream lets players transform into pop stars. Players will record hit singles, climb the music charts, and design their own single covers among many other features. The objective is to fight for fame and fortune in the music industry and get your own stage at Planet Hollywood, Las Vegas where the real Britney Spears presently performs.

“I’m so excited to share this project with my fans,” Spears said in a statement about the game.
“Mobile gaming is something completely new for me and I can’t wait to hear what my fans think of all the fun music, outfits, pets, and artwork. I hope they adore it as much as I do!”

Aside from the Britney Spears mobile game, Glu has also announced that it has several other partnerships with A-list celebrities and many other projects in the works. Some of these include mobile games featuring Taylor Swift, Niki Manaj, and even celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.

The world’s largest furniture retailer is trying out a new QR code pilot program.

IKEA is well known for being an innovative and forward-thinking company and its new quick response codes (QR codes) mobile checkout system, which it is currently piloting in France, is no exception. If all goes according to plan, the new system will make it much easier and faster for customers to checkout at physical stores.

Customers can use their smartphone cameras to help improve their shopping experience in-store.

The new system merges online shopping with brick-and-mortar shopping by requiring customers to use their smartphones while shopping in the store and at checkout.

How it works is quite simple. Using an IKEA app, customers scan the items they intend to purchase from the store with their mobile phone and place the items in their cart as they shop. Once they reach the checkout point, the app combines all the items they’ve scanned to obtain the total purchase. From there it generates a QR code. This unique quick response code is scanned at checkout, so the customer can pay for their purchase with quick ease.

With only one scan required, quick response codes make the checkout process at IKEA a breeze.

Such a system is highly convenient for a store like IKEA where it is not uncommon for customers to purchase several large items that can be awkward to scan individually at checkout. This is especially the case if the barcode of a large and heavy item that needs to be scanned has been placed upside down in the cart. The new mobile checkout system eliminates this hassle.

IKEA’s global head of mobile solutions, Victor Bayata, said that what IKEA is looking at is “giving the customer the power to decide what to do and where to take the next step.” Bayata added that “What we need to do, and this is again the formula that everyone tries and tests, is that we need to understand our customers’ needs and wants.”

He explained that understanding how to combine the online experience with how people act in the store is how the company will provide their customers with “services that make sense.”

If the pilot project proves successful in France, the quick response codes checkout feature at IKEA is likely to be tried at other store locations and could make shopping in physical stores more attractive to customers, improving their overall in-store shopping experience.