Monday's Digest
Samsung earned $ 42.15 billion in the last quarter, largely thanks to its mobile division; according to Flurry Analytics, Android apps are enjoying great success on Kindle Fire; the creators of Triple Town are suing for cloning game mechanics; Siri plays in the TV series “The Big Bang Theory”.
Samsung’s Golden Days
The South Korean giant has reported on its financial success for the last quarter.
Over the last three months of 2011, Samsung earned $42.15 billion, of which $3.56 billion was net profit. Revenue growth was 13% compared to the same result in 2010, revenue growth was 8.5%.
The mobile division, which showed a 52% increase in sales and a 79% increase in profitability, allowed the company not to slip into the negative. Which is not surprising, given the popularity of the Galaxy S II not only in the Korean market – as we wrote about recently – but also the huge demand for the model in the United States.
So, according to Ittai Kidron, an analyst at Oppenheimer, “Smartphones remain the main focus of the company. The policy is also the same: coverage of as many platforms and segments as possible.”
By the way, Samsung is the most successful of the companies producing Android devices. Sony Ericsson has already ceased to exist as a brand, Motorola lost almost $ 80 million in the fourth quarter, and interest in HTC from the market is falling.
Kindle Fire is a superstar among Android platforms
The “fiery” tablet from Amazon has overtaken all its Android competitors in the number of sessions.
According to Flurry Analytics, Kindle Fire accounts for 35.7% of all sessions on the Android platform. The closest competitor, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, takes 35.6% of sessions. Back in November 2011, 63% were registered for it.
This data is good news for Kindle Fire developers. At least now it’s clear that the games and apps available on the Amazon App Store are in demand.
Moreover, Amazon promotes apps much better than Google, according to Flurry. With Kindle Fire, 2.5 times more paid downloads are made than with Galaxy Tab, despite the fact that there are twice as many activated Samsung tablets as Amazon tablets.
In addition to all this, analysts from Flurry reported that the total number of sessions for the period from November 2011 to January 2012 tripled.
Bears in court
Spyro Fox, the company that created Triple Town, accused the authors of Yeti Town of plagiarism and sued them.
Last month, the company 6Waves Lolapps released the game Yeti Town, completely repeating the mechanics of the hit Triple Town from Spyro Fox (a “political” clone called “Democracy” was released in Russia). The release caused a mixed reaction, both from the players and from the developers of the original game.
Arjun Sethi, one of the directors of 6Waves, reacted calmly to this: “There are many similar match-3 games, so criticism is quite natural here.”
After that, Spry Fox called the Yeti game “a brazen copy of Triple Town” and accused 6Waves of stealing gameplay. Moreover, the developers of the original game sued the creators of Yeti Town.
It is not yet clear how Ajun Seti will react this time.
Moreover, if the court finds 6Waves guilty, it will create a dangerous precedent. The fact is that, apart from the mechanics, Yeti Town is an original project with original content. Moreover, unlike Triple Town, it is built on a three-dimensional engine. If Spry Fox wins, we can expect numerous court hearings in the case a la “Quake vs Unreal”.
Siri cameo in TV soap
Siri service got a small role in the 14th episode of the 5th season of the popular TV series “The Big Bang Theory”.
Fashionable devices and gadgets have repeatedly appeared in one role or another in American sitcoms, but the creators of the comedy series about nerds “The Big Bang Theory” went further, humanizing the popular voice service Siri.
In the latest episode, one of the heroes of TBV – Hindu Rajesh Koothrappali – falls in love with the voice of his iPhone 4S. Moreover, he falls in love so much that he goes to visit Siri with flowers. Curiously, Rajesh is lucky, and he meets his dream girlfriend in person.
