We compete with a continually increasing number of companies, including Activision (the parent company of King Digital Entertainment), DeNA, Disney, Electronic Arts (EA Mobile), Gameloft, Gamevil, GREE, GungHo Online Entertainment, Netease, Netmarble, Nexon, Nintendo, Rovio, Warner Brothers, and Zynga and many well-funded private companies, including DoubleDown, Epic Games, Firecraft Studios, Jam City, Machine Zone, Miniclip, Niantic, Peak Games, Playrix, Pocket Gems, Scopely, Storm 8/Team Lava, and Supercell. In addition, hyper-casual games published by companies such as Ketchapp, Lion Studios, Playgendary and Voodoo account for a significant and growing percentage of mobile gaming downloads. We also face competition from online game developers and distributors who are primarily focused on specific international markets. We could also face increased competition if those companies choose to compete more directly in the United States or the other markets that are significant to us or if large companies with significant online presences such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft or Verizon, choose to enter or expand in the games space or develop competing games. For example, recently Apple announced its Apple Arcade subscription service in which users will receive access to a curated selection of paid titles on the App Store, and Google announced both its Stadia cloud gaming service in which users will be able to stream games to various devices as well as a new first-party gaming studio that will be creating exclusive games for Stadia. In addition, we also face competition from mobile applications and websites focused on the home design market, which may include games, e-commerce titles, design applications and others seeking to displace our Design Home title which is a leading title in the currently unsaturated home design application market. Competitors in this space include, or may include, established game developers, established real estate companies, interior design companies, e-commerce companies and other well-funded private companies looking to enter the home design market. Given the open nature of the development and distribution for smartphones and tablets and the relatively low barriers to entry, we also compete or will compete with a vast number of small companies and individuals who are able to create and launch games and other content for these devices using relatively limited resources and with relatively limited start-up time or expertise. As an example of the competition that we face, it has been estimated that more than 3.9 million applications, including more than 900,000 active games, were available on Apple’s U.S. App Store as of July 31, 2019. The proliferation of titles in these open developer channels makes it difficult for us to differentiate ourselves from other developers and to compete for players without substantially increasing our marketing expenses and development costs.
We also compete for downloads and time spent on mobile devices with companies that develop popular social media and messaging applications, such as Facebook (with its Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and other applications), Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, Twitter, Vevo and YouTube, companies that develop streaming music, movie and television applications, such as Pandora, Spotify, Tidal, HBO Go, Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu, and with companies that create other non-gaming related software applications.
Some of our competitors and our potential competitors have one or more advantages over us, either globally or in particular geographic markets, which include:
●significantly greater financial resources;
●the ability or willingness to spend significantly more than we do to acquire new players, which may be due to competitors having games with higher lifetime values than our games (i.e., the amount of money the average paying player spends in the competitor’s game over the player’s lifetime is greater than in our games) or where a competitor is willing to pay to acquire users in a manner that does not have a positive return on investment in an effort to increase its revenues and/or user base;
●greater experience with free-to-play games, building and maintaining growth games, and building social and community features into mobile games, as well as more effective game monetization;
●stronger brand and consumer recognition regionally or worldwide;
●the capacity to leverage their marketing expenditures across a broader portfolio of mobile and non-mobile products;
●larger installed user bases from their existing mobile games;