Month: July 2014

Midia Research survey published by The Guardian came up with findings that games make up 85 per cent of the top 50 grossing apps on Apple’s app store and Android’s Google Play shop. “The app economy is, for now at least, a games economy,” the report read. The report also showed that out of the 700 surveyed apps on the two mobile platforms, just 50 companies were responsible for 81 per cent; while 61 per cent were developed by US, Sweden and Japan-based companies.

King’s most popular game is Candy Crush Saga, which was launched on King’s website in March 2011. It launched on Facebook in April 2012 and quickly gained popularity. Following its success on Facebook, King launched Candy Crush Saga on mobile (iOS and Android) in November 2012. The game was downloaded over 10 million times in its first month. In January 2013, it became the number 1 game on Facebook. It had over 45 million monthly users by March.

King games offer synchronised play, enabling users to connect to their Facebook account whilst playing on their smartphone or tablet device. This means that the user’s progress is updated across all platforms, allowing the player to switch from mobile, to tablet, to Facebook without losing their progress in the game. They also offer two of their games to connect to KakaoTalk in Korea.

King is led by Riccardo Zacconi, who has served in that role since co-founding the company in 2003. Founding partner Melvyn Morris serves as chairman. The company has 665 employees and parcels development out to small, autonomous teams of designers working with a “startup” mentality. In 2013, it spent $110.5 million on research and development, roughly 6 percent of sales.

Prior to founding King, Zacconi, Morris, and Toby Rowland worked together on uDate.com, a site created by Morris. Morris sold the site for $150 million in 2003. The three joined forces with Sebastian Knutsson, Thomas Hartwig, Lars Markgren and Patrik Stymne to found King in 2003. Originally headquartered in Sweden, King nearly went bankrupt before a Christmas Eve cash infusion in 2003. The company raised $43 million in 2005 by selling a large stake to Apax and Index Ventures. The company finished the year with a profit for the first time and has been profitable each year since.[6] Rowland, who had served as co-CEO, departed the company in 2008 and sold his stake back to the company for $3 million in 2011. Angel investor and former board member Klaus Hommels sold his similar stake at the same time.

By the first quarter of 2012, King had 30 million active users. That number jumped to 408 million by the end of 2013. Sales increased from a little over $62 million in 2011 to $1.88 billion in 2013.