Google's Lollipop OS, new Nexus and a list of billions of companies in the mobile market - and other news of the week for a mobile developer

The most expensive companies in the mobile gaming market

Dii-Capital has published an interesting report . It deals with companies of the mobile market, the capitalization of which is more than $ 1 billion. Such companies are already 32. Of these, 12 are engaged in the development and publication of mobile games. Of course, the first places were left for such giants as Twitter, WhatsApp and Uber. But still the games are still the most profitable direction in the mobile industry.

Gungho (authors of Puzzle & Dragons), although it lost $ 2.5 billion compared to the second quarter of this year, still remains the most expensive of all gaming companies. Its capitalization is $ 4.9.
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But Mixi (+ $ 1.3 billion), Colopl (+ $ 0.4 billion), COM2US (+ $ 1 billion) and Kabam (+ $ 0.3 billion) showed positive dynamics over the same period and began to cost more.

It should also be noted that 9 out of 12 companies are from Asia, 2 (King and Supercell) are from Europe and only 1 from the USA. This once again confirms the position of the Asian game industry.

Lollipop or Android 5.0 - sweet and new version of the platform from Google

Recently, the premiere of the new OS from Google, and with it the new gadgets.

Let's start with Lollipop. Here we are waiting for a new bright design with an intuitive interface, notifications at a convenient time for the user, energy-saving mode, a new level of data security on your device, synchronization of all Android Lollipop devices through one account, new quick settings, as well as many other pleasant changes and improvements !

As for developers, then Google announced about 5000 new APIs, and among the main ones:

• New Android Runtime - ART (it was introduced in Android 4.4 as an option, now it is defaulted);
• Fully updated user interface is now built around a dynamic material design, which developers, according to ideas, should and can easily implement in their applications so that they look like part of an ecosystem;
• Changes in alerts (they can now be sorted and distributed into groups, and they can also be given priority and different types of behavior);
• One application can now leave multiple tasks in the Recents screen;
• Support for OpenGL ES 3.1 (plus no longer its framework - tessellation, geometric shaders, ASTC);
• Access to detailed information about battery use by users;
• Ability to block alerts in the application;
• Full support for 64-bit devices.

Android 5.0 SDK will be available from October 17th.

And now about the new gadgets! Nexus 6 from Motorola will delight with its design and practicality, but it is rather cumbersome (5.96-inch screen and a resolution of 1440 × 2560 pixels). The price for it will start at $ 649.

Nexus 9 from HTC with a screen of 8.9 inches is no longer pleased with its relatively small cost, as older brothers, and starts already from $ 399.

And the most interesting is a prefix to the TV from Google. To bring the image from the device to the TV, stream movies on the most popular services or download the game from the Play Store and play it using the gamepad from Asus, which is included in the package - this and much more will open a new console!

A promising and major update, new and interesting gadgets, and all this showed the day before the presentation of Apple - a good step and great news from Google, although there will probably again be difficulties.

An estimated filter appeared on Google Play

As everyone knows, finding the necessary and high-quality application in the Play Store is quite problematic, and sometimes it does not even save the search, which sometimes works not at all as the user expects. Surely many have stumbled upon a problem when they know the name of the game for sure, but on request in the list in front of it there are dozens of completely incomprehensible applications.

But Google is not looking for easy ways and offers us another type of filter, which is currently available only in the web version - an estimated filter that will filter out all applications with a rating of less than 4. Yes, the sample in this case will still not be small, but while an impressive part of the garbage will already be overboard. We hope that the estimated filter will appear in the mobile application soon and will help users to quickly find the applications they need.

64-bit support or Apple reject

From February 2015, any application or update in the App Store will need to support 64-bit code and be compiled on the iOS 8 SDK, otherwise the application will wait for a rejection. Yes, this does not apply to applications that will end up on February 1, although it will be quite problematic to update them.



As for the requirement itself, it is quite expected and implemented the iOS 7 SDK in the same way, but now developers will not have the opportunity to choose - to work on 32 bits or 64 bits. Be careful and get ready in advance, not setting aside everything for the New Year holidays;)

Supercell is preparing to enter the market merchandising

According to the new vacancy posted on the website of the Finnish company Supercell, she strongly wants to enter the merchandise market. The Finnish developer, better known for such titles as Clash of Clans and Boom Beach, intends to expand the ways of earning income, adding to the huge profits from the mobile market also merchandise income.

What is surprising is that it took so much time for this company, the popularization of the Clash of Clans universe already has an impressive scope - which is only worth the commercial that was shown during the Superbowl, and it is obvious that mobile market revenue is only part of the possible earnings from your titles The most striking example of a developed merchandise among mobile games is Rovio, where, in addition to plush toys, we can meet birds on t-shirts, products, bedding, accessories for everything and everything that brings the company a tangible part of income.

In the meantime, Supercell is preparing to conquer the plush universe, the Chinese comrades have long been engaged in earning company titles.

Kabam released a game under the release of the new “Hobbit” in the movie

In the wake of the success of Heroes of Camelot and in anticipation of the release of the next part of The Hobbit, the developer Kabam launched the game The Lord of the Rings: Legends of Middle-Earth.

Do not wait for the game exciting adventures, and indeed too much. The result was a rather boring card battler, a clone of Heroes of Camelot, in the gloomy setting of Middle-earth. The main gameplay takes place around collecting and pumping cards, passing the story and PvP battles.

The project is interesting because with his example you can see how successful a mediocre game made using a strong brand can be, published by one of the most successful publishers at the right time.

The first toy on HealthKit

Apple's HealthKit came out just recently, and applications have slowly begun to use it. But using it just to track health indicators isn’t it boring? Attempts to take a look and use this API in a variety of forms, we are sure, will continue, but right now the first game has appeared with the use of HealthKit.

Yes, this is more an example of using gamification for training, and even using HealthKit is quite conditional there - calculating steps and distance covered, but nevertheless a start has been made - a virtual pet-tamagotchi, which is developed due to the energy that you spent. Maybe in the future, a virtual voodoo-doll that displays the state of a person will help people to be more careful about their health, because it is often more important for people to take care of others than about themselves, isn't it?