Andrew Mooney, an adviser for Outfit7 Inc., talks about the company’s Talking Friends applications. Mooney speaks with Pimm Fox on Bloomberg Television’s “Taking Stock.”
Outfit7 says its games on the iPhone and iPad have hit more than 300 million downloads since launching a year and a half ago.
At that size, it claims to have outpaced Rovio’s Angry Birds, which took 20 months to hit 300 million.
If you haven’t heard of Outfit7, it’s probably because it hasn’t raised any institutional venture capital, it wasn’t founded in the U.S., and much of its application usage is spread across 120 countries.
Read the whole story on AllThingsD
We usually hear that the most popular apps in Apple’s iTunes App Store are games. But an exception to that rule is Talking Tom Cat, an app from Outfit7 that has racked up 100 million downloads on iOS and Google’s Android.
Talking Tom Cat is an app that puts something of a personality on your iPhone or iPad. Talking Tom (also on Android) puts a 3-D cat on your device’s screen and responds to speech. Tom repeats what you say to him in a goofy voice, and can also be interacted with using touch controls; you can pet Tom, pull his tail and poke him to get different reactions out of him.
Read the whole story on Appolicious
As Rovio will attest, building a successful suite of merchandise around a brand can be just as important as delivering the games that fuel it.
Outfit 7 has already licensed its Talking Friends franchise out to Beanstalk Secure – with characters from the series popping up on apparel, footwear, sleepwear, home décor, collectibles and plush toys as a result – and now it’s set to branch out into the world of virtual merchandise.
Read the whole story on PocketGamer
Talking Tom 2 was also a runner up or came in third in several other Best App Awards categories.
Read more here:
Best Toy App
Best Game Series
Best App Ever
Best Elementary Student App
Best Kid Distraction App
Best Lead Character
Joshua Nykolajcuyk, 8, plays with his Motorola Xoom Table. His mom Beth says his favorite is a Talking Tom app.
“It repeats what he does, it repeats what he says, so it encourages him to talk and to hear what it’s saying back to him. A lot of times he walks, he looks for us to repeat what he says, so Talking Tom does that for him,” said Beth.
Read the whole story on ABC.
Three years ago, you wouldn’t have heard the word. Now, over 28 billion downloads later, you can barely move for apps.
Read the whole story on Mail Online.
The holiday season is in full swing, and smartphone and tablet app stores are flooded with products designed to capitalize on the winter cheer.
Read the whole story on Mashable.
Outfit7, the developers behind Talking Tom Cat, have launched a festive version of the fun game featuring Father Christmas himself.
Read the whole story on PC Advisor.
Outfit7, which has built up an expansive empire of talking character apps, is ending the year with 270 million downloads and close to 80 million monthly active users.
Read the whole story on Inside Mobile Apps.
This week of Santa coverage included different types of websites for personalized messages from Portable North Pole, catching Santa in the act and tracking him on Christmas Eve with NORAD.
Since we’re in such a festive mood, I thought it fitting to end this Christmas-themed week with some great Santa apps. And they’re all free!
You might expect folks who make iPhone Santa apps to be filled with the holiday spirit, but after testing some of their wares, I’ve concluded they might be some of the Scroogiest people around. I tried some apps similar to one I liked last year, “Talking Santa,” which let me record a message and make it appear to come from an animated Santa. I thought it would be a fun way for parents to send a message from Santa to their children.
If you say, “Hello,” Rex will say “hello” in dinosaur voice. If this little creature is going to imitate everything they do from tongue raspberries to words, then kids will spend more time vocalizing to the creature and that’s more time that they’re practicing and learning about how to vocalize and how to say things. Talking for this population is probably one of the most difficult things they can do. –Lindajeanne Schwartz
Thanks to a strategic partnership with New York-based licensing agency Beanstalk, Outfit7 has introduced a full line of Talking Friends-branded swag that kids are bound to shriek incessantly over.
Read the whole TechCrunch article.
After months at hinting at merchandising strategy, today the company finally said it’s working with Beanstalk, a brand licensing agency that has represented Covergirl, Old Spice and Jaguar, to build out a merchandising business next year.
Read the whole story on Inside Mobile Apps.
Regardless of how you may feel about their anthropomorphic cast of characters, Outfit7 just keeps picking up steam. Today the company has announced that their Talking Friends series of apps have just bounded over the 200 million download mark.
Read the whole TechCrunch article.
It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from Outfit7 — the Slovenian company behind those popular talking animal apps — especially after the company switched chief executives. But the company has given a status update today, saying it crossed 225 million downloads and has 60 million monthly active users. That’s triple the number of monthly actives it had at the beginning of the year and the company’s growing at roughly 20 million downloads per month.
Read the whole story on Inside Mobile Apps.
Outfit7, creators of the “Talking Friends” mobile games, announced today it has seen 225 million downloads only 5 and a half months after announcing 100 million.
Read the whole story on VentureBeat.
Outfit7, the purveyors of the Talking Friends apps, have announced a staff shakeup they hope will help them bring their characters to even bigger screens.
Read the whole TechCrunch article.
Mobile app developer Outfit7‘s signing with Hollywood agency William Morris Endeavor shows the start-up’s wide ambitions to turn its characters into books, films or television shows.
Read the whole story on Forbes.
After almost a year since the birth of Talking Tom in July 2010, the Outfit7 Talking Friends are ready to graduate from their smart phones and head for bigger screens. The company has signed with Ari Emanuel, co-chief executive of talent agency William Morris Entertainment. WME will help the brand extend into books, movies and television.
Read the whole story on VentureBeat.
Once again brands, manufacturers, retailers and agents from around the world are congregating at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas for the 2011 Licensing International Expo.
Read the whole story on FierceDeveloper.
They say that cats have nine lives. Outfit7′s Talking Tom Cat is on its second, but so far, so good. Introduced in mid-2010, Talking Tom Cat–an interactive virtual pet app enabling users to record and share feline-themed storytelling videos via YouTube, Facebook, email and MMS–has emerged as a pop culture phenomenon, generating 55 million downloads across the iOS and Android platforms and even scoring a cameo on the hit ABC sitcom Modern Family.
Read the whole story on FierceDeveloper.
Outfit7, the Slovenian developer that’s aiming to become a toy company on the order of Mattel or Hasbro through talking character mobile apps, said its latest release Talking Tom Cat 2 did more than 1 million downloads in a single day this week.
Read the whole story on Inside Mobile Apps.
Entertainment conglomerates such as Walt Disney spend billions developing popular franchises. However, they’ve had mixed success translating those film, television, and theme park characters to smartphones, where more and more eyeballs are glued. The makers of some popular iPhone games are hoping they’ll have an easier time going in the opposite direction, and are trying to launch cross-media franchises based on their hit digital characters. “The new entertainment medium is apps,” says Paul A. Baldwin, chief marketing officer of Palo Alto (Calif.)-based Outfit7, whose Talking Tom app has been downloaded 50 million times.
Read the whole story on BusinessWeek.
The App Store is turning into a proving ground for Saturday morning cartoons, which means the screeching cat and his friends could soon be on a TV, cereal box and onesie near you.
This week’s Economist cover story, “A New Tech Bubble,” has people abuzz once again about how Silicon Valley is ripe for another fall. According to the article, irrational exuberance has gripped tech industry investors, and it’s only a matter of time before the general public is left holding the check, just like they did in 2001.
Read the whole story on GigaOm.
Outfit7, the maker of character-based mobile apps, recently passed 100 million downloads in just 10 months on the Apple App Store. That places the company in rarefied air with apps that have become pop culture cross-overs such as Rovio’s Angry Birds.
Read the whole Forbes article.
