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Microsoft BizSpark startup QONQR battles its way to profitability in mobile games space

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Risk meets Foursquare in a geosocial, mobile game called “QONQR” that has achieved success using Windows Phone as one of its platforms.

It looks like a tongue twister of a name – rivaling my own, I’d argue – but you pronounce it “CONQUER.” The game’s basic premise: players battle for control of the towns and cities in which they live. They’re fighting an invisible war that pits three rival factions against each other, pursuing different agendas in relation to an Artificial Intelligence known as QONQR, which has spread all over the world.

The folks behind the game won the first Twin Cities Startup Weekend in September 2010 in Minneapolis and used that momentum to crank out new features and capabilities for the game. They spent more time on that rather than on the arduous work of pitching and meeting with venture capitalists, and were able to achieve financial independence without relinquishing control to external investors.

Their rise to gaming heights is captured in this feature story.

The game has become one of the top-rated mobile apps in the Windows Phone marketplace – a calculated and unusual move on the developers’ part to target a smaller pool of interested customers and generate a rabid fan base without having to compete against “half a million other app developers who can afford to spend millions of dollars in marketing money to essentially buy their initial user base.”

“We released QONQR at the same time on Windows Phone and iOS platforms, and today we have 10 to 15 times more downloads, up to about 18,000 a month, on Windows Phone,” says QONQR CEO Scott Davis. “Sure, the Windows Phone consumer base is smaller than the one for iOS, but the market is still bigger than any startup can reach, and it’s so much easier to be found and embraced by that all-important first set of users.”

You can find many more details to QONQR’s march to popularity and profitability in that feature story and if you’re intrigued and want to join the action, download the game in the Windows Phone store.

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Athima Chansanchai
Microsoft News Center Staff


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