Bootstrapped CrowdStar Chasing Funding-Flushed Zynga and Rovio

The U.S. social gaming market is expected to grow at 28% in the current year to $1.1 billion and another 21% in 2012 to reach $1.32 billion. Zynga leads the segment with more than 360 million users accessing its gaming properties. But smaller players such as CrowdStar are giving it worthwhile competition.

>>>

Featured Videos

Rovio, Finland’s Answer To Zynga

Gartner projects worldwide mobile gaming market to reach $11.4 billion by 2014. The mobile gaming market is estimated to have grown 19% over the year in 2010 to cross $5.6 billion in revenues. Gartner’s report estimates that 70% to 80% of all mobile app downloads are mobile games. Further, 60% to 70% of those downloaded games are free. Most mobile games are priced in the range of free to $5. The low price of these games is causing concern among veteran video game players. Recently, Nintendo’s management voiced concerns that mobile games are impacting the quality of games and influencing the consumer’s expectations of prices for games.

>>>

Epocrates: A Mobile App Case Study In Healthcare

Epocrates (NASDAQ:EPOC) was founded in 1998 by two Stanford students as a means to ease doctors’ burden of carrying around books to look up drug information, drug interactions, and dosing information. Since then, the company has transformed itself into a leading provider of clinical information and solutions to healthcare providers. It boasts of a network of over 1 million healthcare professionals, spanning over 300,000, or 45%, of U.S. physicians. Ranked tenth in the top 50 list of most innovative companies for 2011 by Fast Company, Epocrates also launched its well-received IPO in February of this year.

>>>

EDA Feeling Icahn’s Touch

The EDA industry is finally seeing some much-needed action. Carl Icahn, the largest shareholder in Mentor Graphics (NASDAQ:MENT), realizes the importance of consolidation in the industry and believes that Mentor needs to be merged with another player, a move that could cut costs significantly. Several years ago, I had proposed the same thing.

>>>

OpenTable, A Web 3.0 Case Study

One of the decade’s major trends in vertical and local Web that I identified earlier was the growing importance and popularity of high-quality, specialized, niche content. OpenTable (NASDAQ:OPEN), the online restaurant reservation solution provider, seems to have fully understood this trend and how to take advantage of it.

>>>

RIM’s Uphill Battle

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ:RIMM) last week reported fourth-quarter results that beat estimates by a slight margin but gave a weak outlook that sent its shares down and led many analysts to downgrade it. RIM is launching its tablet, PlayBook, on April 19 and much depends on the device’s success. PlayBook will be based on RIM’s new QNX operating system and will support Android applications. Will this strategy work to revive RIM in the extremely competitive and crowded mobile device market?

>>>

Oracle Done With Sun. Are Chips Next?

Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) last week reported a strong quarter that beat analyst estimates. Increased spending on cloud computing by companies in many industries has been beneficial to Oracle, which entered the more difficult server business with its acquisition of Sun. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

Adobe Makes A Conciliatory Move

Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) this week reported an 84% increase in its profit but gave a conservative outlook due to the recent tragedy in Japan, which accounts for 10% to 15% of revenue. Meanwhile, Adobe appears to be changing its strategy around Flash and HTML with the launch of a new Flash-to-HTML converter last month. It also plans to release an update to its Creative Suite software that will make it easier for designers to build websites using the HTML5 Internet standard. This is a practical move from Adobe, which last year clashed with Apple and Apple’s decision to ban Flash on iPhones, iPads, and iPods and go for HTML 5 for video and animation. >>>

Microfinance Across Regions

Earlier this year, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released the Malegam Committee report, an important development for the MFI sector in the country. The report has paved way for the creation of a separate category of nonbanking financial corporations (NBFCs) operating in the microfinance (MFI) sector and meeting certain specified requirements; these companies will be designated NBFC-MFIs. The NBFC-MFIs will be treated as “priority lending” sector and find it easier to obtain loans from banks. More important, the committee has exempted the NBFC-MFIs from the state moneylending acts and stipulates that the sector will be regulated by the RBI. The exemption helps remove the NBFC-MFIs from the control of the Andhra Pradesh Micro Finance Institutions (Regulation of Money Lending) Act which last quarter restricted interest rates and the debt collection methods followed by the microfinance industry. The report instead controls the interest chargeable to the borrower by putting a margin cap based on the size of the MFIs and limits the charges levied by the MFIs to processing fee, interest, and insurance charges.

>>>

European Acquisitions And Tie-Ups Position Electronic Arts To Capture Digital Population

A recent Games Purchase Drivers 2010 report published by The NPD Group revealed that an average of 71% of games bought by consumers in the U.S. comprised physical games, and 29% were digital games. In February of this year, total game industry sales rose 3% over the year to $1.36 billion. Sales of video game hardware increased 10% to $0.47 billion, while sales of software fell to $0.60 billion from $0.63 billion a year ago. Sales of video game accessories continued to grow driven by the growing popularity of Microsoft’s Kinect. Video game accessory sales increased from $0.21 billion a year ago to $0.26 billion.

>>>