With Tap Petshop Launch, Pocket Gems Nabs Three of the Top 15 Grossing Apps on iOS

Pocket Gems, a Sequoia Capital-backed gaming company that made its name on casual sim titles with lots of animals, has put a third app into the U.S.'s top-grossing 15 this week with the launch of Tap Petshop. (The company had three in the top 10 earlier, but both Tap Zoo and Tap Petshop have slipped a little this morning.) Android versions of Pocket Gems' apps will be coming soon, along with several brand-new titles before the end of the year. "Our goal is be the leader in mobile entertainment," said Ben Liu, who came on as Pocket Gems' chief operating officer from Playdom. He added that the company will broaden out beyond Tamagotchi-like, animal care-taking games too. "We're working on new kinds of game mechanics and genres which will come out in the next couple of months. It's safe to assume we'll have a bunch of releases soon." The company's staffed up from around 10 people at the start of the year to more than 60 now, so it certainly has the capacity to step up the pace. Tap Petshop is Pocket Gems' second launch this year after Tap Pet Hotel. Considering that iOS titles with a top 15 ranking in the platform's biggest markets often make more than $1 million a month, and north of $3 million at the very highest echelons, all three apps represent a fair amount of revenue for the company. (Unfortunately though, Liu was not really specific about anything concerning revenue.) That said, given that Pocket Gems already had two top-grossing titles, it's not surprising that the company has the marketing muscle to push a third game to the top. The company said last month that it's seen 40 million downloads. Liu said that Pocket Gems launched Tap Petshop using only organic channels at first. The company cross-promoted Tap Petshop in its existing games and sent e-mails to users. The company only recently turned to paid user acquisition channels to keep the title up there. Pocket Gems' prominence on the top-grossing charts is a reflection of how the iOS platform is seeing consolidation around a few mobile-social gaming companies that either moved early or spent considerably to build distribution power. Developers among the platform's top grossing 50 haven't changed all that much this year. Funzio and Crowdstar are relatively new to iOS' top grossing list, but the rest are mostly familiar faces like Rovio, Storm8, Zynga, Addmired, NimbleBit, Capcom's Beeline Interactive and Siberia's Kamagames.

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With Tap Petshop Launch, Pocket Gems Nabs Three of the Top 15 Grossing Apps on iOS

Kim-Mai Cutler

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