The last two days have brought us some revealing news on the state of the mobile web.
Probably the biggest and most complex offering was Morgan Stanley’s Mobile Internet Report (Complete) which was provided on Tuesday by Business Insider.
Among other gems hidden in this 600+ page document are these revealing figures on Facebook and Apple.
Apparently Facebook has a world-wide audience of 430 Million unique who have made over 500 Million downloads from a choice of over 350,000 apps. In comparison Apple has sold 57 Million iPhone/iTouchs and the owners have made over 2 Billion Downloads from choice of over 100,000 apps.
Meanwhile GigaOm has published a diagram showing By the Numbers: Facebook’s Road to an IPO while the Business Insider reports that Facebook Revenues [are] Screaming Toward $1 Billion.
So let’s take a closer look at what all this excitement means. Do the quick maths and you’ll soon discover that $1 Billion in revenues from 430 Million uniques equals $0.19 in month ARPU for Facebook. So while everybody is getting excited about the Facebook IPO it would appear their APRU is going backwards. Why? Because last years figures (as proven in our recent post What’s on the MobCon Radar for the Social Networks?) suggested an ARPU of $0.25.
So the great hope of global social network marketing can’t even generate the equivalent of 1 SMS per month in revenues from its user base. Fascinating?!
So what about Apple? We again a quick calculation based on 20.7 Mil.Units delivering $13.2 Billion in revenues for the 4 quarters ending Sept 09 would suggest an annual ARPU of $637.68 (e.g. The Average Sales Price of the iPhone plus revenues from the Apps store).
So Facebook is delivering an annual ARPU $2.28 vs Apple’s $637.68. Further proof, if any was needed, for the position I set out in Facefone, myPhone and LinkedTel.
So what about Apples developers? How are they faring since our examination of the Apps Gold Rush in Watch out! iPhones have long tails too and So just how much money can you make developing iPhone Games?.
Well a couple of stories of interest have emerged over the past two days about the success of developers of Bar Code scanners for Mobile Phones. The first is GigaOm’s Eventbrite Launches Analytics; Barcode Reader and Directory on the Way
Around the end of the month, Eventbrite expects to launch a live barcode scanner device through a partnership with Trakkers, giving organizers a very, very simple and small Linux-based system for scanning tickets.
The thing that interests me about this company is
- They have built a version of the mobile ticketing system I discussed in an earlier post A Telco you can Bank on?
- They have grown their business by applying the Find Me, Find You and Exchange retail media model. Driving ticket sales at first by Google SEO, then by hooking into Facebook Events, and lately via Twitter.
The other company of interest is Red Laser. I originally covered Red Laser and ShopSavvy in the posts on how the Smart Phone was revolutionising retailing. (See It’s the New Plastic and yes, it feels Fantastic and Point, Click and Discover the Future of Retailing.)
Shopsavvy is of course the free Android app that has been recently migrated to the iPhone. Red Laser is the paid app. This new article from Mobile Crunch Bar-code Scanning RedLaser iPhone App reaches 750K downloads, over $1M in revenue provides us with some interesting data on the economics of iPhone development.
RedLaser has been in the top 5 of the App Store paid apps for 3 months now, and again has got there without any advertising or marketing whatsoever. The interesting thing is the news that a top 5 paid app averages only $12,000 in revenues per day.
This of course makes us think once again we need to watch out because iPhones have long tails too.
Finally there is the news that Mobile Web Apps Look Hot – Can They Challenge the iTunes App Store? and iPhone Users, Get Ready for Flash Games.
Neither of these two stories provides long-term hope for the mobile games industry. As we have proven before you can make money developing iPhone games but the long tail of online game development means Analog Dollars equals Digital Pennies for Online Games Developers.
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