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Apple vs Facebook: 38% Of Mobile Gamers Have Used Facebook's 'App Store'

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Last week Facebook gave mobile game publishers in its Messenger platform the ability to monetize their games with purchases and ads, a direct challenge to Apple's App Store supremacy.

Today, TapResearch released insight into who's playing Messenger games.

And Facebook has a ways to go.

While 80% of mobile gamers use Facebook Messenger -- more than double the number that use Snapchat -- only about half of them have played a game inside Messenger. And of those, two thirds played some time in the last month.

Tap Research

The biggest problem, according to Tap Research, is awareness:

"Of the 62% that have never played a messenger app game, awareness was the number on reason they have yet to play," Michael Sprague, VP of business development at the company, says.

The most popular games, according to the 1,070 mobile users the company surveyed, are puzzle and word games, followed closely by action and triva.

Tap Research

The challenge for Facebook will be to avoid running afoul of Apple's app regulations.

Many apps have been kicked off the App Store for too closely mimicking what the App Store itself does. AppGratis, for example, was removed just weeks after the company closed a $13.5 million financing round and days after being approved.

Apple's concern at the time was simple: don't make apps available for download in your app. After all, that's what the App Store is for.

The challenge for Apple is how it can rein in Facebook, which owns four out of the five most popular apps on the planet. Popularity at this scale brings power: delete Facebook from the App Store, and its users would likely revolt against Apple.

Facebook's "instant games" are a somewhat different than full apps that install on your phone and have a separate existence from the app they were installed from, of course. In fact, they don't install at all, being instantly available.

Still, there's little doubt that conflict is brewing here, especially since Facebook is now enabling monetization of Messenger games and apps.

"Whether the two companies enter into a cold war, a hot war, or peacefully co-exist, it's not hard to imagine any number of actions that both companies could take, either in the spirit of being downright hostile or merely passive aggressive," says mobile expert Eric Seufert.

Those include Apple trying to cut off some of Facebook's app install ad revenue, and Facebook building an ad engine for its own instant games.

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