Tag: mobile applications

Mobile games are behind profit boost at Tencent

| November 13, 2015

The company has reported that it has experienced a net profit increase of 32 percent during Q3.

Tencent Holdings Ltd has released its third quarter data and within it was a report that mobile games were a considerable driver of the 32 percent increase in net profits that occurred during that span of three months.

The reason these specific mobile apps received this credit is because of the growth and advertising they showed.

This underscored the resilience of Tencent despite the fact that the economy in its home country, China, has been slowing down. The powerful results played an integral role in assuaging some of the worries that had been expressed about the ever rising competition within the mobile games marketplace in the country. A spike in advertising revenue during that same quarter also looked promising to investors who were looking directly at mobile ads as an area in which Tencent had room for growth into the future.

More than half of the revenue that Tencent managed to bring in during Q3 was from mobile games.

Mobile Games Profit Tencent is the largest social network in China as well as its biggest online games company. From the three months that closed on September 30, the net profit increased by $1.17 billion from having increased by $888.89 million during the same quarter the year before. Revenue for that quarter increased by 34 percent to 4.18 billion.

That occurred even though economic growth as a whole has been slowing down. Earlier in November, Chinese President Xi Jinping cautioned that the economy in the country was facing both global and domestic uncertainty. The president indicated that Beijing was able to withstand growth that was as low as 6.5 percent.

According to analysts, the economic fluctuations don’t usually cause too much of an impact on the demand by online gamers. Since Tencent has placed a considerable focus on mobile games, it means that it has become a company that is not as vulnerable to the directions of the economy as its competition. Tencent explained that the smartphone game app revenue it earned was $832.34 million, which was 60 percent higher than it had been in 2014. It was also 11 percent higher than it was during the second quarter.

Canadian telco posts fake mobile app ratings, faces $1.25 million fine

| October 21, 2015

Bell Canada was caught rating applications fraudulently and is now required to pay a penalty.

After having been caught posting fraudulent mobile app reviews and ratings, Bell Canada has now agreed to pay the $1.25 million penalty that was laid down by the Competition Bureau in the country.

The telecommunications giant had been downloading its own free applications to give them top ratings.

That said, it was reviewing these mobile apps without identifying that they had a relationship to the source of the applications. Beyond having to pay the “administrative monetary penalty”, also known as an AMP, Bell Canada has now also agreed to “enhance and maintain its corporate compliance program, with a specific focus on prohibiting the rating, ranking or reviewing of apps in app stores by employees and contractors.”

The company will also be sponsoring a workshop that helps to overcome behaviors such as its false mobile app reviewing practices.

Mobile App - Canadian Company Faces FineThe workshop to be sponsored will look into the trust that Canadians have in the “digital economy, including the integrity of online reviews,” said the consent agreement that was registered with the Competition Tribunal and that was made public last week.

The Commissioner of Competition, John Pecman, explained that “I am pleased that Bell Canada demonstrated leadership to fully resolve the Competition Bureau’s concerns in this matter.” Pecman went on to say that he applauds the combined compliance that has been adopted by Bell in order to bring resolution to this issue, “which will benefit both consumers and the digital marketplace.”

The accusation against Bell, as per the Competition Bureau, is that last year in November, Bell’s own employees were encouraged to download two of the company’s free apps, “Virgin My Account” and “MyBell Mobile” from the Google Play store and from iTunes. The employees were encouraged to leave positive ratings and reviews for those mobile apps without also stating that they were working for the company. The Bureau explained that the false ratings were taken down as soon as it was notified that this had been occurring. They were eliminated as of December 2014. That said, the Bureau found that the false ratings and reviews had temporarily impacted the overall star rating for those applications with the potential of giving it an unfair advantage within those app stores.