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雷达卡
source from：Barron's
After years of punishing Nintendo for missing the smartphone revolution, investors have made quick amends. The stock (ticker: NTDOY) has surged 89% since the July 6 release of Pokémon Go.
In case you missed the headlines about distracted players walking into ponds and falling off cliffs, the Pokémon Go smartphone app has millions of people on a simultaneous quest for monsters.
The virtual hunt takes place in a fusion of the real and imagined known as augmented reality. “Pokémon” are hidden across the globe. As users walk around their towns, the monsters—queued by the phone’s GPS signal—pop up in the app. The initial goal is to catch them. Eventually, Pokémon become fodder for trade and virtual battles. The real world— picked up by the phone’s camera—is the backdrop for the action.
In a few days, the app had more users than Twitter, by some estimates, and was sucking up more smartphone time than Facebook. (Shuli Ren at Barron’s Asia is tracking Pokémon’s day-to-day successes.)
Pokémon’s impact could extend beyond the phone. Retail analysts at Cowen argue the game could save bricks-and-mortar shopping by pushing people to malls in search of monsters. Sponsorship opportunities are significant for retailers and anyone else seeking to draw people to physical locations.
Nintendo controls only a third of The Pokémon Co., and the game’s economics remain hazy. But the craze is reminding investors that nobody knows gaming better than Nintendo.
Barron’s highlighted the opportunity last year (“Nintendo Bets Smartphones Can Revive Its Fortunes,” June 20). We wrote that Nintendo’s American depositary receipts could go from $20 to $30, once the company stepped outside its console box and embraced smartphones. Sure enough, a week after the Pokémon app’s debut, Nintendo hit the target and kept going, closing Friday at $33. There’s more good news to come.
Jefferies analyst Atul Goyal, who has been a rare Nintendo bull, calls Pokémon Go “the tip of the iceberg.” Nintendo plans two of its own mobile games by September and another two by March. One 2017 release could feature Mario, Nintendo’s best-known character. “Mario is many times bigger than Pokémon,” notes Goyal. “This isn’t about Pokémon’s earnings, based on five days of data.” He says Nintendo has become a “concept stock” that requires a long-term view.
Nintendo ADRs hit $79 in 2007, when its intellectual property—Mario, Zelda, Pokémon, and more—powered games for the Wii and DS consoles. Our 2015 story argued Nintendo could revisit that all-time high in three years, if the phone strategy panned out. So far, so good.
Consoles’ reach pales in comparison with that of smartphones. Nintendo sold 102 million Wii units. Candy Crush from King Digital, in comparison, had 550 million active smartphone users at its peak. Goyal thinks Pokémon Go could easily reach one billion.
Nintendo is about to launch a $35 wristband that notifies users when Pokémon monsters are near. If just 5% of a billion users buy it, Nintendo would generate $1.75 billion in revenue and north of $1 billion in operating profit—from one accessory for one game. Nintendo’s profit—just $273 million last year—peaked at $6 billion in fiscal 2009. The smartphone could drive a worthy sequel.
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