25M People Using PapayaMobile; Should Zynga and Apple Be Scared?

Android's social gaming network has grown more than 940% since the beginning of last year. PapayaMobile.com is having a good day. Today it has announced that it has acquired more than 25 million users, attributing its success to the rising demand for mobile social games as well as the growing number of Android GOOG users. TechCrunch has compiled a list of statistics on the firm, which reveal that PapayaMobile's virtual currency has been swapped in more than 11 million paid transactions. The average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) is more than $22 per month. Better still, the ARPPU across all PapayaMobile users is $10 per month. PapayaMobile also claims that the most amount of money spent by a single user is more than $4,400, to which TechCrunch wisely asks, “Who is this crazy person?” That crazy person just happens to be the very kind of consumer that social game developers are chasing when they invest in this industry. They don't realize that those crazy people are no different from the random rich guy who spent $1,200 buying a Wii on eBay EBAY because Target TGT, Best Buy BBY and GameStop GME were sold out. There will always be a guy here and a girl there who is willing to spend that kind of money for an item, whether it's a tangible good or a virtual currency. That $22 per month figure, however, should definitely be examined more carefully. Because even if PapayaMobile can't convince consumers to continually spend that much on virtual goods, it can probably find a way to convert that into a monthly service fee that users accept. Zynga, of course, isn't likely to listen; the company is too busy milking its current microtransaction system to think about the future. Apple AAPL, however, doesn't have much to worry about. The only company that threatens the App Store dominance is Nintendo (NTDOY), which won't be a problem as long as the Mario maker continues to screw up. If, however, Nintendo learns from its mistakes and recovers next year, we could be in for a whole other ball game. Follow me @LouisBedigian