The marketplace is rocked by the shocking news that a major player has dropped out.

The CEO of VeriFone, Doug Bergeron, has stunned the direct-to-micromerchant mobile payments world with the announcement that it is stepping out of that marketplace following unprofitable results from its Sail service.

The point-of sale provider’s mcommerce news came as a surprise to the majority of the industry.

As VeriFone had dedicated a great deal of last year and much of this year on the promotion of the growth of mobile payments services, the decision that the company has now made to remove itself from that direct-to-micromerchant space has caused many heads to spin. The announcement was made during the most recent quarterly conference call.

The CEO released the mobile payments news that the company is stepping down.

During the call, Bergeron stated that Sail, its own mobile payments service, has been unprofitable. This program had been giving small businesses the ability to use smartphones and tablets to accept transactions through debit and credit cards. He said that “Customer acquisition costs, either through search engines or TV advertising, cannot and will never justify the razor thin margins produced by merchants with infrequent volumes and extremely high attrition.”

The NFC technology community has also been left blinking in surprise, as it had been looking toward that company to propel forward its adoption, particularly after the iPhone 5 was released without its capabilities.

Bergeron described the mobile payments program at VeriFone as a failure and is now causing many of the other players in the industry to take a second look at their own potential for profitability. This is particularly the case after the CEO questioned the ability of the environment to be profitable at all. The company has announced that all of its assets from that space will now be sold off.

He explained that he felt it is possible to see similar thoughts among the competition as their businesses models are shifted toward wallets services. It is his belief that the only mobile payments players who will be able to survive “this fundamentally challenging business model” will be those who are capable of offering micro merchants other services, as well.

Mobile games generate significant profits

Mobile applications represent a huge and massively lucrative market. According to Flurry, a leading analytic firm operating in the mobile space, mobile applications accounted for $10 billion in revenue during 2012. The firm has released a report concerning the lucrative mobile applications business, which highlights the impact of free mobile games. The report shows that though free mobile games do not cost anything to play, that account for the majority of the revenue seen in the mobile applications market.

80% of revenue generated through free mobile games

Mobile games are among the most popular applications that are available to consumers with smart phones and tablets. These games often provide hours of entertainment and are typically designed to be very addicting. For many, mobile games are valuable assets because most of these games are free-to-play. Most of these games are filled with advertisements, however, which is part of the reason why they are generating so much money. According to the Flurry report, free mobile games accounted for 80% of the $10 billion in revenue the app market saw t his year.

In-app advertisements help generate revenue

In-app advertisements are not the only thing generating income for mobile games. Many games come equipped with a “cash shop,” which offers bonuses, new equipment, and exclusive features to gamers that want to spend money on the game itself. These cash shop marketplaces are very common in free-to-play games and account for the majority of the revenue they manage to generate. The report also shows that consumers spend large amounts of time on free-to-play games, thus increasing the likelihood that they will purchase something from the cash shop.

Free-to-play games are a lucrative business

The free-to-play model has become very lucrative for developers of mobile games. The report suggests that most developers have yet to identify the ideal niche in which these types of games flourish. Companies like Electronic Arts and Zynga have managed to find a way to make free-to-play games highly appealing to consumers with some cash to spend. Though the latter has been experiencing financial problems of late, Electronic Arts may serve as a powerful example of how to develop games that emphasis participation in a cash shop.