Tag: mobile technology

China Mobile sees major progress in mobile games

Mobile games continue to generate a great deal f attention in China. This week, China Mobile, one of the country’s largest  telecommunications companies, announced that 25% of the applications downloaded from its Mobile Market app store were games. Moreover, these mobile games account for the vast majority of the revenue generated from all of the applications found on the company’s Mobile Market. This makes the mobile games sector the most lucrative sector in the mobile space, at least in China.

Majority of revenue in app market comes from games

According to China Mobile, mobile games represent 87.5% of total revenue earned by the Mobile Market. These games are rampantly popular among Chinese consumers, many of whom use them for entertainment purposes or, quite simply, to pass the time. China Mobile notes that the number of people willing to pay for mobile games is significantly higher than those willing to pay for games on other platforms. Up to 30% of mobile consumers, for instance, have paid or are willing to pay for mobile games of some kind, whereas 1-2% of consumers are willing to pay for PC games.

In-app purchases are becoming more common

China Mobile also notes that consumers are willing to have the fees tied to their mobile games included in their regular phone bill, with approximately 70% of mobile gamers favoring this practice. In-app purchases have also become the stable of the mobile games sector in China, with 90% of all games in the Mobile Market offering some form of in-app purchase. China Mobile expects that in-app purchases will eventually replace the pay-to-download model that has long dominated the applications market, leading most, if not all, mobile games to be free.

China sees economic growth in games

Mobile games have become a strong force in the Chinese economy. For several years, China’s game industry has been somewhat isolated, largely restricted to the borders of its native country. Despite this, the industry has become very affluent in the economy by providing consumers with countless hours of entertainment.

Many IT executives around the world are struggling to meet the demands of a growing mobile market.

Based on the findings of the 2013 IT Priorities Survey from Protiviti, many of today’s IT professionals will find it difficult to meet the challenges of mobile commerce, as they are expected to deal with and manage various aspects of mobile technology without having the necessary expertise required.

The survey reveals that IT professionals have only average mobile technical knowledge.

Protiviti’s research results show that almost 200 survey participants, which included IT vice presidents, IT directors, chief security officers, chief information officers, and chief technology officers, scored only an average competent rating for mobile commerce and social media technical knowledge. More specifically, the participants achieved an average 2.8 rank out of 5 in terms of their tech knowledge for the following: m-commerce security, social media security, m-commerce integration, social media integration, and m-commerce policy.

There is a strong demand for mobile commerce, which is rapidly expanding throughout the globe.

Gary Anderson, Protiviti’s managing director for their Asia Pacific region, said that the fast and continued worldwide growth of mobile commerce shows that there is a powerful demand from both consumers and businesses who want to be able to access the information they want wherever they are, whenever they want it. However, with this demand also comes the potential for bigger technology risks.

Anderson went on to say that the result of this puts substantial pressure on businesses and IT departments, “as they are asked to deliver more mobile technology-enabled services. This pressure forces them to take on considerably more risk than they’re prepared for – especially in terms of policy, integration, data management, security and data privacy related to mobile commerce and social media proliferation and innovation.”

According to the survey results, of the 21 technical knowledge areas that were analyzed, the two chief areas that require the biggest improvements are mobile commerce security and social media security. Due to the need for greater security on these fronts, chief information officers (CIOs) and their IT staff will need to work on bettering security to meet the growing number of state and federal information security requirements, and to deal with other technology threats that will only increase as mobile commerce expands around the world.