Electronic Arts made an announcement in December that their sales aren’t doing as well as expected. Recently, they dropped the bombshell when they posted total revenue of $1.65 billion instead of the $1.9 billion expected. Hence, Earnings Per Share increased by only $0.56 instead of the expected $.088.
With the tough competition out there, EA seems to repeatedly churn out various versions of Need for Speed, Sims and the dozen other Command & Conquer games. Surely gamers are getting bored and moving on to other exciting games like Fallout 3, Fable 2 and so on.
So what does EA now do? Focuses on the Wii. After it’s plan to cut 1,100 people (11% of total staff), close down 12 studios and reduce the number of game titles it publishes, EA said it’s dedication is now on the Wii.
EA’s CEO John Riccitiello stated that his business has 3 different areas to fulfil -
Combined PS3 & the Xbox 360? Hmmm… this is going to make it interesting for Microsoft and Sony given that they both like to have exclusive rights to certain games and if EA is going to combine these two categories, then console makes of the PS3 and Xbox360 will have to re-think their premium pricing (or go to another gaming developer)
Wii has great market share, and hence I can see why EA needs to capitalise on it. It can make games like Tiger Woods Golf, Tennis, various Need for Speed racing and so on. However, we’ll have to see how well EA integrates with the Wii – because unlike the Xbox360 and PS3, where some training time is needed before play, Wii should be a simple pick-up-and-play. Ideally you want your mother to pick up a Wii remote and start playing golf that easily.
YouTube, now owned by Google, still dominates the US Online Web Video market. I am basing these figures on the US simply because, we here in Australia, don’t have access to all video content (for example Hulu’s TV Shows)
Figures show that the US audience have been very keen to take up on Hulu’s Web TV site, but it has had a slow growth in comparison to other sites. Overall the US market share for online videos, grew 13% in December 2008.
comScore have provided the results in the below image, and it has grouped up Google & YouTube together (Google Sites) – and this joint venture has in total served up 5.9 billion videos in the US (assume most of that is from YouTube).
Hulu, jointly owned by News Corp and NBC, ranks in at 7th and has served up 241 million videos. In comparison to previous stats, comScore states that Hulu has had a 6% growth in videos being served – however it’s market share slipped from 1.8% to now 1.7%. However, it’s unique visitors grew 24.6 million (+ 9.4%)
So, numbers aside, what does this all mean? Well, Hulu’s viewers are still watching the longest videos compared to any site in the below results. I believe, they even have a better revenue source in selling it’s premium videos, compared to what Google is doing with YouTube.
I wish I could see revenue growth for these sites during the two comparison periods. I think Hulu has nudged Google as little, and that probably explains why YouTube has started new initiative to add on more premium content by signing up with Hollywood Talent Agency – William Morris Agency. I believe Hulu has a lot more to show.
A survey held by Morgan Stanley shows that in the US during Q4, 300,000 Android phones were sold while Apple sold 1.75 million iPhones. That’s about 6 iPhones to 1 Android.
Now while Google still has to play catch up, the above figures are only based on two of its mobile manufacturing partners – HTC & T-Mobile. Soon enough we should see Motorola, LG, Sony Ericsson et al.
Surprising figures? Not really. iPhone always had an edge over Google’s acquired Android. Best network operator (AT&T rated 1, while T-Mobile rated at 4), better user experience, better multimedia and even better software.
And software is the key point here – the infamous App Store. That’s Apple’s additional revenue model. For Google? It’s not about selling their Android platform – no no no, it’s about making it easier to get it’s users to use Google services to then see (and hopefully click) on their ads.
Does that mean once we have more manufacturers using Android, we may see a sizable increase in revenue for Google? Unknown…
Don’t forget Google can still be accessed on the iPhone. I mean, I use them when I do a web search on my phone, but do I click on their ads? Well, not really.
So where does Microsoft fit in all this? Recently, they have announced that along with the next version of Windows Mobile, they will also release – guess what – an app store!
It’s called the “SkyMarket”. And along with SkyMarket, Microsoft will also launch “SkyBox” (similar to MobileMe to sync emails, contacts, and other data) and “SkyLine” – similar to SkyBox, but for small businesses.
Now, I’m assuming that the SkyBox will be free (or peanuts) unless they plan to make it work for non Windows devices – like a Nokia N95, iPhone or Android for that matter.
However, all this has been done – it’s not cutting edge. What we’re seeing is a company following the footpaths of the successful ones.
Still, Apple is holding it’s ground pretty well.