Candy Crush Saga

Candy Crush Saga is one of the biggest games currently. Available on Facebook and Mobile devices, you can play the game and your progress will be shared among your devices.

I have about 1400 friends on Facebook, and this is the first game where I have more than 140 friends playing! That is 10% of the people I know on Facebook!

I could say that the game hits a lot of good Gamification principles.

1) The game has an easy onboarding. The first 20 levels are rather easy, and although it gets progressively difficult, it did not seem impossible.

2) The game is interesting, colorful and catchy music. Its not too cheaply made, and the graphics and gameplay is actually pretty good.

3) The game gets challenging. As the level progresses, it does get increasingly difficult.

4) The game encourages social gaming. With 5 lives to start with, you do get stuck on some levels, and you can ask your friends to give you lives, or you can wait 25 minutes for a life. So the game does benefit people with a lot of friends playing and many of my friends invited me to the game. Otherwise you can always pay for more lives.

There are parts of the game that require friends to give you a ticket to continue, so you need to invite friends and connect with Facebook, which in turn promote the game and get more people to play it.

6) The game is free! Joining the game, getting the app on your phone is free. Progressing in levels is also free!

7) The paid parts of the game is tempting but not essential. I think this is a strong model as some competitive gamers that want to advance WILL pay to move forward, but for casual games to continue playing and attracting more people to play, they can do it for free.

8) Good use of PBLs. There is a good use of the points, badges and levels. You get to see how you do compared to your friends in each level which may encourage you to replay a same level to beat your friend's scores. You also get to see which levels your friends are and your friend's progress.

I really like the implementation of the game, and I think is it one of the most downloaded game on the Android store and it is also the top game now.

I wish for all its success, and unlike a lot of annoyed folks on Facebook when they receive a Candy Crush Saga Request, free free to send me lives or tickets to help me move up the levels!

-- Robin Low

The changing phase of mobile devices.

As portable devices such as mobile phones, tablets and notebooks become more popular, companies need to watch for the trends now when deciding on the platforms to engage their customers

Gartner: Android smartphone sales surged 888.8% in 2010

Manufacturers shipped 67.2 million Android smartphones last year, up from 6.8 million in 2009. That works out to an average 184,000 Android smartphones sold per day. By comparison, Apple sold an average 127,000 iOS smartphones a day, or 46.6 million for the year.

Previously, Apple, once thought to be a dominant iOS for smartphones has now lost his growth compared the the explosive growth of Android smartphones.

In an earlier note, Nokia must change or be 'burned alive', says chief executive Stephen Elop it is clear that Nokia has lost its edge on the mobile phone market.

So how does this affect your business?

1) Applications.
If you are interested in creating apps for your clients, Android is now a very promising platform, more so than iOS. You can almost ignore Symbian development platform.

2) Mobility.
When more people have 3G enabled devices, they are able to go online on the move. It means there are more people you can engage around the clock on social networks if you engage them properly.

3) Information.
With the increase in 3G users and information at their fingertips, it is harder for a "sale" to sell things which is not as good. Customers have all the information at their fingertips to compare prices and talk about your company. It is important to watch what the public is saying and react and adjust to the responses.

4) Location based apps.
With more GPS enabled phones sold, there are more opportunities to leverage on apps like Foursquare and Gowalla to promote your business. The number of users is growing and watch what your competitors are doing or offering.

-- Robin Low