1）手机游戏公司Storm8日前宣布旗下最新iOS游戏《Bubble Mania》上线三天已实现100万次下载量，目前Storm8游戏DAU总数已超过600万（游戏邦注：今年5月该公司宣布在iOS和Android平台安装量已突破3亿次）。

bubble mania(from venturebeat)

2）comScore最近发布报告显示，谷歌、三星和苹果已占据50%的美国手机市场份额，84%智能手机运行Android或iOS操作系统。

截止2012年6月，三星手机已占据25.6%的美国手机设备（包括智能手机和功能性手机）市场份额，苹果占比15.4%；谷歌旗下的摩托罗位占比11.7%，LG占比将近19%。

Top Mobile OEMs(from comScore)

从智能手机平台来看，Android市场份额达51.6%，比3月份增长0.6%，苹果占比32.4%，比3月份增长1.7个百分点，这两者是唯一实现市场份额增长的智能手机平台。

Top Smartphone Platforms(from comScore)

黑莓智能手机市场份额下降1.6%，Symbian也下滑0.5个百分点。

Windows Phone市场份额下降0.1%，主要原因可能与Windows Phone不可升级到Windows Phone 8操作系统有关。

comScore还针对3万名用户展开问卷调查，发现50%受访者都在使用下载的手机应用，36.9%通过移动设备访问社交网站，33%在手机上玩游戏，27.6%通过手机听音乐。

3）Strategy Analytics最近报告指出，2012年第二季度Android在美国智能手机市场份额为56.3%，苹果iOS则增长至33.2%（同比增长10%）。

smartphone shipment in the US(from strategy Analytics)

第二季度Android在美国智能手机出货量为1340万部，低于去年同期时的1530万部（当时Android美国市场份额为61%）。

4）移动分析公司Flurry最新数据表明，“中级”开发者已经在iOS和Android手机应用领域中崛起。从Flurry分析的20万款应用来看，2011年付费应用及IAP应用所创造收益占比82%（54亿美元），广告收益则占比18%。

apprevenue_ad_vs_premium_and iap(from Flurry)

预计2012年应用市场收益将达87亿美元，增幅为60%，而广告收益增幅则将从2011年的9.8亿增长至20亿美元，增幅超过100%。届时广告收益将占比23%，付费和IAP应用收益将占比77%。

revenue distribution_byrank(from Flurry)

Flurry发现付费应用及IAP应用收益（排除广告收益）多数来自“长尾型”应用。2010年前25名热门应用创收占比28%，前26-100名应用创收占比27%，而“长尾”应用创收占比45%。2012年这一形势明显逆转，长尾型应用创收占比高达68%，前25名热门应用创收占比15%，前26-100名应用占比17%。

revenue normalize_byrank(from Flurry)

报告指出这一领域出现的两个趋势：第一，位居榜单前列的应用收益超过以往（这是行业发展的必然趋势）；第二，前5名之后的应用在2012年收益趋于稳定，并且依排名顺序呈下降曲线，但在前100之列的应用收益都高于去年水平。

从中可以看出，应用经济领域已经日趋成熟，虽然顶级应用收益仍然较高，但中级和底层应用收益也在不断增长，并且增速更为明显。

5）据insidemobileapps报道，谷歌日前通过Android官方博客宣布Google Wallet（游戏邦注：该应用支持用户通过手机NFC技术付款）已更新至云服务版本，支持用户使用Visa、万事达、美国运通及Discover的所有信用卡和借记卡付款。

google wallet(from insidemobileapps)

谷歌表示这个版本的Google Wallet更为安全可靠，因为用户的付款卡信息可由此存储在谷歌服务器中，手机上所保存的信息只有Wallet ID。此外，如果用户手机丢失或被盗，他们就可以通过任何一部电脑远程删除手机上的Google Wallet应用。

6）新兴移动分析公司Adeven最近报告指出，iOS App Store中有近三分之二应用属于不活跃状态的“僵尸”应用，约有40万款应用未获得任何下载量，也无法得到用户关注，无法进入榜单排名。

apps(from ijailbreak.com)

该公司首席执行官Christian Henschel指出，这一现象与苹果封闭的系统有关，用户难以从中发现这些默默无闻的应用，若应用商店搜索功能不佳，用户就只能通过榜单排名发现新应用。位居热门榜单前25名的应用基本上出自那些投入数百万美元营销成本的公司之手，而小型独立应用开发者则难以从中突围。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）Mobile developer Storm8′s Bubble Mania iOS game reached a million downloads in three days (exclusive)

Evan Killham

Storm8, developer of 31 free-to-play mobile games including Pet Shop Story, World War, and Vampires Live, announced today that its latest iOS game, Bubble Mania (pictured above), reached a million downloads in just three days. This makes it the company’s most successful title to date.

“Our team knocked it out of the park,” said Perry Tam, chief of Storm8. “Bubble Mania appeals to a wide a range of players and is a good example of why more and more people are playing Storm8 games every day. We’re constantly working to reach new audiences with enjoyable new experiences for every taste.”

With the success of Bubble Mania, Storm8 currently has over 6 million daily active users of its games. In May, the developer announced that it had exceeded 300 million installs on 100 million unique iOS and Android devices.（source:venturebeat）

2）Smartphone wars: Google and Samsung largest, Apple growing faster

John Koetsier

ComScore just released its June 2012 U.S. mobile report, and the results were mostly predictable.

The unholy trinity of Google, Samsung, and Apple captured 50 percent of the mobile phone market, and 84 percent of all smartphones run either Android or iOS. But Apple is growing slightly faster in both categories.

Samsung manufactured 25.6 percent of all phones in use in the U.S. as of June 2012, ComScore says, while Apple had a 15.4 percent share of the entire mobile market, which includes both smartphones and feature phones. Motorola, which is owned by Google, came in at 11.7 percent, while LG has almost 19 percent market share.

Top mobile manufacturers

When it comes to smartphone platforms, Google is in the undisputed lead, with a 51.6 percent share. Apple has a 32.4 percent share but grew 1.7 percent over March 2012 numbers — faster than any other platform vendor. In fact, the only other mobile operating system to grow was Android, with an uncharacteristically anemic .6 percent growth rate.

Top smartphone operating systems

Predictably, RIM was down 1.6 percent, and Symbian (Nokia) also dropped.

Windows Phone, supposedly a platform of the future, also dropped a small amount. Most likely that drop was due to turmoil around Windows phones and upgradeability: If devices on the shelf right now can’t be upgraded to Windows Phone 8, what’s the point of purchasing a Windows Phone today?

ComScore also asked the 30,000 survey respondents a few usage questions. The highlights include:

■75 percent of mobile subscribers send texts

■50 percent use downloaded apps

■36.9 percent access social networking sites via their mobile device

■33 percent play games on their phones

■27.6 percent listen to music on their phones（source:venturebeat）

3）Android’s growth tempered in US as iOS makes gains on Google

by Keith Andrew

Android’s largely unchecked growth in the US appears to be being stemmed by iOS, with numbers from Strategy Analytics reporting Google has lost more than 4 percent market share in a year.

The platform remains on top of the smartphone market overall – Android sitting on 56.3 percent in Q2 2012 – but Apple’s OS is fast playing catch up, up 10 percentage points to a 33.2 percent share during the same period.

Two horse race

The supposed shift in power, Strategy Analytics claims, due to a general slowing in smartphone shipments, thanks largely to a “volatile economy.”

“We estimate Android shipped 13.4 million smartphones for 56 percent share of the United States market in the second quarter of 2012,” added executive director Neil Mawston.

“This was down from 15.3 million units shipped and 61 percent share a year earlier.

“Android remains the number one platform by volume in the United States, but its market share is approaching a peak and Apple iOS has been gaining ground. Apple’s US market share has risen by ten points from 23 percent in Q2 2011 to 33 percent in Q2 2012.”

The worry for Google, Strategy Analytics suggests, is that Apple’s growth comes ahead of a rumoured pending launch of the iPhone 5, expected to eat into Android’s share further before the year is out.（source:pocketgamer）

4）Eat The Rich: The App Economy’s Middle Class Is Booming…And So Is The Poor

Sarah Perez

In the mobile application ecosystems offered by the iOS and Android platforms, there’s now a booming “middle class” of mobile application developers, according to new data from analytics firm Flurry. Even the long tail is benefiting – something that goes counter to traditional industry trends, which tend to see wealth established at the top as an industry matures.

Typically, established players and brands invade from other platforms, then start to depress the opportunities for many of the platform’s earlier players, Flurry’s report explains. But the opposite appears to be true for the app economy. Here, there’s a rapidly growing middle class of app developers, and even the long tail is generating a larger portion of the revenue than ever before.

First, a look at the revenue picture in today’s market. Using data from over 200,000 mobile applications on its network – a good-sized sample for app stores which each now have over 600,000 apps available – Flurry calculated worldwide app revenues for this year and years past. Since 2012 isn’t over yet, Flurry estimated the growth rates based on proportional changes from 2011.

In 2011, revenue from premium (paid) apps and in-app purchases was 82% ($5.4 billion) of the total revenue generated, and ad revenue was 18%. In 2012, Flurry predicts revenue to grow by 60% to reach $8.7 billion, with ad revenue growth climbing by over 100%, going from $980 million in 2011 to $2 billion in 2012. That means that for this year, ad revenue will be 23% of the total, with paid apps and in-app purchases accounting for 77%.

Drilling down into paid apps and in-app purchase revenue only (excluding ads), Flurry found that the distribution of revenue was spreading out across the long tail of mobile apps in a rather surprising way, which goes counter to the trends you’ll often see in other industries. In 2010, the top 25 ranked apps accounted for 28% of the  revenue, the top 26-100 generated 27%, and the “long tail” was 45%. Now look at 2012: the long tail is responsible for 68% of the revenue generated, with the top 25 at 15% and the top 26-100 at 17%. (See chart below).

That’s quite the shift.

Flurry also normalized the data for revenue by rank in order to compare revenue generated for the top 100 apps from 2010 to 2012 estimated. The results show two major trends: one, that being in the top rankings means more revenue than before, which is not surprising due to industry growth. The second trend is that the revenue for 2012 stabilizes after the top 5 positions, then gently drops down through the top 100, but stays much, much higher than before. Remember, this is normalized data (percentage from top spot, set at 100%), not actual dollars here, so what this means is that the middle class of apps – is also growing like crazy too, in terms of earning power.

Bottom line, in the new app economy, there’s no struggle of the 99% here. The richer are getting richer, but so are the middle class and the poor. And those last two are gaining fast.（source:techcrunch）

5）Google Wallet now cloud-based, accepts all credit cards

Emanuel Maiberg

Google today announced on the official Android blog that Google Wallet, the app that allows users to pay with their phone via near field communication (NFC), has been updated to a cloud-based version that supports all credit and debit cards from Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover.

As Google explains it, the move to a cloud-based system speeds up the integration process for banks that want to add their cards to the Wallet app and also makes the it more secure.

Back in February, Zvelo exposed security vulnerabilities in Google Wallet’s PIN system, but Google insisted that the app was in many respects much safer than a physical wallet.

Now that it made the app cloud-based, Google claims that it’s even safer as the only information that’s stored on the phone is the Wallet ID (virtual card number). The user’s payment cards are stored on highly secure Google servers.

An added security measure is that users are now also able to remotely disable the Google Wallet app from any computer in case their phone is lost or stolen.

The update to Google Wallet follows Google’s announcement yesterday that all Google Play apps must use Google’s payment system. The company will still make exceptions for apps that sell physical goods or services such as movie tickets, but developers of most apps will now have to use Google’s official channels, rather than alternative payment providers like PayPal, Boku or BoxPay.

The Google Wallet app is available now on Google Play. It’s compatible with six phones from Sprint and Virgin Mobile, as well as the new Nexus 7 tablet.（source:insidemobileapps）

6）App Store infested with zombie software, claims analytics startup AdevenBy David Meyer

David Meyer

Zombies may provide a perennial source of material for mobile games, but no developer actually wants their app to be the walking dead. Nonetheless, according to new mobile analytics and ad verification firm Adeven, that’s what almost two-thirds of the iOS App Store constitutes.

The Berlin company’s Apptrace tool launches on Tuesday and as a result it’s showing off several stats as a way of strutting its stuff. The most interesting one is the revelation that around 400,000 App Store apps get no downloads, are invisible to users and have no ranking.

“The reality is there are only a couple of thousand apps that really make some kind of downloads,” Christian Henschel, Adeven CEO, told me. “This is based on Apple’s closed system — it’s tough to discover those kinds of apps. You don’t have proper search, so the only way to discover new apps is through the top listing.”

“If you’re not on those lists, it’s not sure that you’re being discovered by anyone else. The top 25 tend to be the same companies who spend millions of dollars to get to the top of those lists. If you’re an independent, small app publisher, then it’s really tough to be discovered.”（source:gigaom）