Winter Nights 2014 has begun

February 7, Saint Petersburg, Park Inn Pulkovskaya Hotel. The largest conference in Eastern Europe dedicated to the development of mobile games, Winter Nights 2014 has opened its doors.

Pavel Ryakkonen, Distribution Director of Nevosoft, opened the conference with a report on Mobile Gaming Industry Today and Tomorrow. According to him, the number of mobile gamers has come close to the mark of 1 billion users. And over time, there will only be more of them: smartphone sales in 2013 alone amounted to a little more than 1 billion. This is 40% more than in 2012, when smartphone sales amounted to about 725 million.

Greg Ballard, one of the vice presidents of Warner Bros., followed Pavel onto the stage. He shared the history of the company, how much the company has earned on its main franchises (more than $ 7 billion on “Harry Potter”, yes) and what titles it is developing now.

What they expect from the market: the growth of competition, the growth of production costs and large associations in the market. 

Olivier Bernard from App Annie recounted in detail the recent report of his company for 2013. We published it just the other day. However, Bernard also shared new figures. For example, in Chat Rooms, most downloads are still for the App Store. However, in all other regions ahead of Google Play. The exception is China, where this store is banned.

In Japan, which is now No. 1 in the world in terms of revenue from stores, Google Play brings a large share of the money.

But when it comes to downloads, everything is much more interesting. Russia entered the top five countries for iOS downloads in December. According to downloads from Google Play, Russia is in second place after the USA.