India and Spain. Three of them have been acquired by Digital Chocolate to enhance their products to have an edge on competitors’ product. As the trend is changing so do peoples mind, it has become necessary for Digital Chocolate to cope up with this advancement by introducing new interactive social games to claim its right on gaming market. Change has already started in mobile industry particularly after the launch of Apple’s iPhone in market and now it has become necessary for Digital Chocolate to adapt quickly to these changes and start catering this new segment.
In order to focus on this new market, Digital Chocolate has to redirect its resources towards iPhone games and to do that they have experienced personals at their disposal. Trip Hawkins Background From early childhood Trip Hawkins started developing board games. Hawkins went to business school at Stanford, after that he joined Apple in 1978 as one of the first members of the marketing staff. Later, he started his own company known as Electronic Arts (EA) in 1982. He served as the CEO of EA till 1991 during which the company sold over 600 unique titles by earning nearly a revenue of $200 million.
At the time he left to start 3DO, a new venture in which company would design devices with video and audio features along with gaming functionality. But due to its high prices, Hawkins shut down 3DO but did not deviate from his path. In early 2000s Hawkins realized that in coming years people in the world would be carrying mobile phones, so why not start developing games for that market. He believed that there would be tremendous opportunities in this sector and in 2003 Hawking founded Digital Chocolate just to focus on this new market.
The Essay on Chocolate Market Research
Table of Content Chocolate History3 1. Market Area3 2. Market Structure 3. Market 4. Market Dynamics 5. Market evolution 6. Market conjuncture 7. Demand and offer 8. Prices and tariffs 9. Imports and exports Chocolate History Chocolate has been used as a drink for nearly all of its history, but until the 16th century, no European had ever heard of the popular drink from the Central and South ...
After the completion of his business plan, Hawkins immediately raised funds from top Silicon Valley venture capital firms. And in 2006 Digital Chocolate raised around $34. 8 million just in three rounds of funding. In 2006 the company became profitable. Core Values Hawkins believed in E-I-E-I-O i. e. Energy, Innovation, Excellence, Integrity and Ownership. These are the qualities which Hawkins suggested that are the main factors behind any organizations success. Furthermore cultural fit enables us to retain only those people who share organizations value. While etting go of any valuable person if they don’t fit in their team. Strategy of Digital Chocolate As the CEO of Digital Chocolate, Hawkins has set the direction of the organization towards developing new interactive social games. For this purpose he has completely worked on the vision of Digital Chocolate i. e. “to be on top every game developer”. To achieve his goals Hawkins has made a strategy which differentiates Digital Chocolate among his competitors. Vast Network Without deviating from his main goal of profit maximization, Hawkins started acquiring companies to jump start the organization.
And by 2004, Digital Chocolate acquired Sumea, a Finnish company that developed mobile games. Why acquire Sumea? Hawkins being an entrepreneur has every single trick in his sleeves, since Sumea was the manufacturer of high quality game titles along with its existing relationships with leading European cellular phone carriers who decides which game would be available on wireless phone. So in order to save this money, Hawkins acquired Sumea. Also he didn’t fire Illka Paananen to save this additional cost; on the contrary he made Illka Paananen to be the head of Digital Chocolate’s Creative Studios.
This type of promotion made Illka more passionate towards his work and aligned him with his goal of achieving high quality games. To have more leverage in business, Hawkins acquired a 25 person company in Bangalore, India called Small Device. Why acquire Small Device? To reduce the cost and enhance Digital Chocolate’s engineering capabilities, Hawkins acquired Small Device. He also knew that India is the only country in the world where one could find English speaking college graduates with computer and electrical engineering degrees.
The Essay on Digital Convergence 2
The rapid development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has led to a situation where digitization, storage, manipulation and development and dissemination of all forms of multimedia, be it text, graphics, photographs, audio, animation or audio-visuals, are accomplished quite easily and conveniently. This in turned has put into motion the process of Media Convergence which could ...
Furthermore, he perceived that that the people he met at Small Device would work with Finnish people with harmony and respect. Small Device became the Operations center for Digital Chocolate having the main responsibility of adapting games to work on all devices. On the other hand Digital Chocolate acquired Microjocs, small creative development team in Barcelona, Spain. Why acquire Spanish team? The main reason to acquire Gerard Fernandez’s team was to penetrate into Latin America, South America and Spain.
In addition to it, Microjocs had an agreement with Telefonica, the leading communication operator in Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries. The main reason behind is that they are energetic, young, creative and passionate. Effective Communication At the time acquiring these firms, Hawkins kept in mind that language difference could become a major hindrance between four regions of Digital Chocolate. So to prevent this problem, Hawkins carefully selected the companies in which English speaking environment is present. That’s why he acquired Sumea & Small Device because he knew that language barrier would be at its minimum.
Only interference could be from the team of Spain where they feel pride to talk in Spanish. Limitations As the company is expanding its divisions in different regions of the world, a major issue of Salary Difference can be raised. Because the Mexico team is performing its duties at lower rates even its border touched with US. This income disparity could be a negative factor which could demotivate the employees and build a “Who Cares” attitude in them. For this attitude to be at minimal risk, Hawkins should interact with CFO of Digital Chocolate to solve this issue.
Competitors & Market Revenues Digital Chocolate’s competitors include Gameloft, Namco, Glu Mobile and Oberon Mobile. In 2008, the mobile gaming generated revenue approximately $5. 4 billion and by 2013 it is expected to reach $10 billion. Target Market Market for Digital Chocolate’s product split geographically almost evenly across Asia, Europe and the United States. Amongst them are 60% male and 40% female gamers. And by splitting them in age groups, it is found that 25% were less than 18 years, 50% were between 19-49 years and remaining 25% were greater than 50 years.
The Term Paper on Assignment – Team Work in Business
Some management teams are bound to succeed while other are not due to a number of factors. A team, according to Adair (1986), is more than just a group with a common aim. It is a group in which the contributions of individuals are seen as complementary. Collaboration, working together, is the keynote of a team activity. Adair suggests that the test of an effective team is: “whether its members can ...
Mode of Penetration Hawkins carefully developed the means by which Digital Chocolate would put their products in market. For this purpose they used distribution through carriers and distribution through consumer marketplaces. Distribution through Carriers From starting of Digital Chocolate to 2008, their primary sales channel was through big wireless carriers such as Verizon/Altel, Sprint/Nextel, ATT, Vodafone and TMobile. Game developers would provide their games before completion to take their advice whether they would sell this game through their mobile phones or not.
So in order to make games which are compatible with mobile phones, game developers should have to be in contact with handset manufacturers such as Samsung, Nokia, LG etc. to gather all the specifications so that the game developed should run on that particular handset. This mode of distribution has most disadvantages stated below: Disadvantages * No direct contact with consumer * Digital Chocolate was compensated by carriers on the number of downloads * Sharing of revenue, sometime 50-50% * Payment receives from the carrier within 30 – 90 days * No real time feedback from market Only relied on professional game reviews Distribution through Consumer Marketplaces By the launch of Apple’s Application Store (App Store), life of Digital Chocolate became easier in which consumer is enabled to search, purchase and download games directly and instantly to their devices. This mode has major advantages which are as follows: Advantages * Game developers had the flexibility to upload new games, price accordingly on the App store * Can offer free Trail version * Paid games can also be uploaded More than 65,000 games available by which consumer can download according to its own will * Higher number of downloads shows the responsiveness of the gamers Alternative Approach Digital Chocolate should also had cater the market of Google (Play store) simultaneously so that revenues could be generated more in the lng run. Because App store is only providing to people using iPhones or iPads. On the contrary Google’s Play Store provides the services to HTC, Samsung, Verizon and thus any handset which contains Google’s Android software.
The Term Paper on 401 Games Group Paper
The market for board games has seen annual increases of 10-20 per cent over the last decade, leading some to suggest we are in a “board game renaissance” (Carlson, 2013). 401 Games is a Toronto-based retailer of board games, card games, and collectibles which also provides on-site gaming space. A recognized early mover in the board game revolution, owner John Park was among the first to tap into ...
So if they would have used this strategy to work parallel both on App store and Play store, then hawking revenue and profit maximizations dream would be easily achieved with ease. Teamwork Hawkins team leading capabilities made people to work in teams irrespective of language and color which are really a hallmark of Digital Chocolate. To make people communicate with each other from different regions is not only difficult but close to impossible but Hawkins completed this task gracefully. He broke all the silos between departments to flow the information smoothly and easily.
For this purpose he even changed the name of his distribution list “DC-Mon” to “Trip’s Staff” so that people would not be proud of themselves causing disparity between employees and to make it less political. He knew that everyone should feel that he is a part of the team and their ideas are valued. Proposed Solutions Solution#1:Buy a Start-up To enter in this category quickly, Digital Chocolate should start buying a company which had several winnings and titles. But the limitation arises that these companies of social gaming are sure about their success in near future that’s why they are not for sale or they are out of price range.
Solution#2:Specify the Offices In order to prevent distraction among the rest of the organization, they should specify one office location as the “social gaming”. This office should be given a head so that their work goes accordingly and that head could report directly to Hawkins. For this purpose Mr. Shah would be suitable because he already reports directly to Hawkins, so if he gets a department under his wing then it is obvious that it would work to its optimizing level.
Solution#3:Form Tracks of Social Gaming Teams To make things to work flawlessly, group of employees from each location should be picked to make a team but this would decrease the productivity of the department because people would be busy in performing that given task and mainly disregarding its previous work. Recommended Solution 1) To have a portfolio of new social games in just a couple of months, Hawkins should go for the approach of merger because he has previously acquired the companies beautifully.
The Essay on How Can You Effectively Work in a Team?
What is a team? As noted by Dwyer (2006) “The terms ‘team’ and ‘group’ are frequently used interchangeably, since on many occasions that they share almost identical characteristics”. Or in other words, a team is composed of two or more individuals who are working together interdependently and cooperatively towards a common purpose or goal. The team is the most important asset of any project; an ...
Keeping in mind that the attitude and responsiveness towards the work should be adequate. 2) In order to cut out the production steps, teams could be moved to Finland, Spain or India depending upon the scenario in which the firm resides currently. Implementing Recommended Solution Hawkins should start looking for the companies who would want to get merge with Digital Chocolate. After the merger, Hawkins should start working accordingly because it have worked previously well.
