Category mobile

The Video Game Industry is Dead – Long Live the Video Game Industry

The video game industry has enjoyed a multi-decade run of enormous economic success. It redefined the way consumers engage their televisions. It has given birth to a new breed of storytellers, ones that include programmers and designers who are capable of producing characters, narratives, and worlds on a par with the best Hollywood has to […]

Minding the Gender Gaps in Dating Services: Mobile and Web

With the smell of roses and the taste of chocolates exchanged on Valentine’s Day still lingering on the palate, I wanted to share an article on dating services I found this week that surprised me. According to analytics firm Flurry, men dominate usage of mobile dating apps. It’s not even close; 66 percent of users […]

Do I really need to build an app?

Intelligent people with lots of mobile industry experience still debate this topic aggressively, which is understandable given the stakes. All of us in the industry can see users surging toward mobile. The question is how best to serve those users: app or web (or both)? In this post, I’m not going to answer the question. […]

Quick hits: Yahoo and Facebook focus on mobile engagement, plus CES 2013 takeaways

Here are some quick hits on recent news from Facebook and Yahoo, as well as a post mortem on the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show. Google vs. Facebook, Yahoo: Diverging approaches to growing the mobile advertising business I recently wrote about Google’s latest earnings announcement – you can read it here – and mentioned both the […]

Google’s “glass half-full” view of the mobile economy

Google’s earnings announcement on Wednesday, Jan. 22, prompted a spike in its stock price despite delivering some news that at first glance looked bad. What’s going on here? Like many companies that have built their businesses on attracting a digital audience to serve largely digital content, Google is confronting and managing a massive shift in […]

Why 1,000 app developers just might propel the American car industry back to leadership

Last week, Ford unveiled its developer program at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. A developer program targets software developers and typically includes tools they can use to create apps, as well as get design advice, testing and technical support, and distribution opportunities. Ford reported that over 1,000 developers registered in the program’s […]

Making Money with Your Mobile App: Three Business Models, No Knockouts

I can’t stop thinking about ways the mobile app industry as a whole, and the companies that drive it, can make money. As I have written before, that’s primarily driven by an interest in self-preservation. I work in this industry, and it has to generate more money for more players. Today, the apps side of […]

Mobile predictions for 2013

I’m admittedly bowing to the tendency this time of year to offer predictions and resolutions for the New Year. In offering them, I adhere to Gregg Easterbrook’s standard of quality for such things, which he summarizes with the following guarantee: “All predictions wrong or your money back.” With that caveat out of the way, here […]