1）据mobile-ent报道，最近有一项针对1.7万智能手机用户的调查报告显示，Android用户对付费应用的消费情况已开始追赶iPhone用户。

2011年调查结果显示，有35%的iPhone用户下载20款以上的付费应用，仅有3%用户未曾下载一款付费应用。而从未下载付费应用的Android用户比例则是12%，下载20款以上付费应用的比例仅为10%。

paid_apps（from mobile-ent)

但今年有19%的Android用户，26%的iPhone用户曾下载20款以上的付费应用；有6%的iPhone用户（增加了3个百分点）和7%的Android用户（下降了5个百分点）从未购买任何付费应用。

观察者认为Android用户付费意愿提升可能与应用开发者现在已更了解移动设备功能，并提升了应用质量有关；此外手机支付功能更加便利，付费应用确实为用户带来价值和方便也是其中原因。

2）YouGov最近调查结果显示，18%英国人已经知道苹果即将发布新产品的消息，有21%英国用户考虑购买iPhone 5，还有67%的iPhone用户表示未来会购买一部iPhone 5。

iphone-5(from siliconangle.com)

37%非iPhone用户怀疑新iPhone设备拥有更长的电池续航能力，并且支持4G技术，67%的iPhone用户也认为新设备的电池性能更优越。

34%的iPhone用户认为新设备将采用NFC和移动支付功能，44%用户希望Siri支持英式英语而非美式英语，63%希望其3.5英寸屏幕有所改观。

3）据gigaom报道，ZDNet最近根据谷歌董事主席Eric Schmidt所宣称的相关数据（游戏邦注：即Android设备每日激活量达130万部，其中有7万部是平板电脑），以及苹果iPad销售数据分析指出，Android平板电脑目前销量将近iPad的40%。

Best-Android-Tablet-Vs-Ipad-2(from guide-to-android-tablet.com)

在此要注意，这里所指的Android平板电脑激活量仅包含那些使用谷歌帐号及应用的设备，这就排除了Kinlde Fire和Nook Tablet这类未使用谷歌应用的产品。也就是说，这7万部Android平板电脑是使用纯谷歌平台的设备。苹果在最近财季中的iPad销量为1700万部，相当于每日售出18万8888部iPad，与Android设备的7万日激活量相计算，Android平板电脑日均销量就是iPad的37.2%。

4）据gamasutra报道，Double Fine本周二向iOS平台发布其超级英雄管理游戏《Middle Manager of Justice》时不幸发生问题，该工作室不得不从iOS App Store中撤下游戏，计划再过数周后重新发布游戏。

Middle Manager of Justice(from gamasutra)

但已有不少粉丝下载了这个漏洞百出，故障频频的游戏版本，游戏开发者Kee Chi承认自己针对这一新平台开发游戏时犯了错误，因为他并不是很了解向iOS提交应用时需注意的发布日期。而当他们提交游戏后，却发现游戏还不尽完善，但他们又不想取消游戏审核流程，以免苹果也发现问题，他们又需重复提交游戏，而正是这种疏忽酿成了大错。

不过该工作室立即推出了补救措施，他们在移除游戏后，迅速到许多不同论坛告诉已下载游戏的玩家，这个游戏是测试版本，请求玩家参与测试并向其反馈其中的故障，以改善正式版本的游戏体验。数天后他们获得了大量有价值的反馈内容。Double Fine表示这次经历让他们收获了重要的教训：错误不可避免，关键是如何随机应变。

5）游戏调研机构EEDAR日前报告指出，移动游戏领域最具盈利性，用户忠诚度最高。

该报告显示，鲸鱼玩家（每月消费可达50美元的用户）在出手最阔绰的手机游戏玩家面前只能居于次位。EEDAR将这类新型高消费用户称为“杀手级鲸鱼”，这类用户在手机游戏玩家中仅占比1%左右，但他们人均每月为游戏消费将近70美元。

killer whale(from EEDAR)

与鲸鱼玩家相比，这些杀手级鲸鱼在游戏中的投入程度是前者的两倍，并且是其所在社交圈的手机及平板电脑游戏的情报中心。（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）Android gaining ground on paid apps

by Mike Shaw

iPhone users are downloading fewer premium apps while Android users are buying more.

A survey of 17,000 smartphone users shows that Android users are catching up with iPhone users when it comes to buying apps.

In 2011 Apple was streets ahead with with 39 per cent of iPhone users having more than 20 paid apps, and only three per cent having none.

On the other hand, Android users were more likely to have no paid apps at all (12 per cent) than they were to have more than 20 (ten per cent).

In 2012 those numbers have changed significantly.

This year, 19 per cent of Android users and 26 per cent of iPhone users now have more than 20 paid apps on their phones. Meanwhile, the number of those with no premium apps at all is now more balanced: six per cent of iPhone users (an increase of three per cent) and seven per cent of Android users (a drop of five per cent) don’t have any paid-for apps on their phones.

There are a few possibilities as to why Android users are downloading more premium apps.

The first is that as app developers become more proficient and aware of what does and doesn’t work on handsets, the quality of apps is improving. Combine this with the increasing ease of mobile purchasing, and for the average consumer, paying for an app offers value and convenience.

The most likely reason, however, is the pursuit of an easy life. By heading for paid apps, it’s far easier to cut through the shit that clogs up the Android store. With fewer restrictions on the Google Play Store there are a plethora of free apps that don’t do what they are supposed to. Once you’ve downloaded five free apps and uninstalled them all, you’re far more likely to bite the bullet and spend a dollar on something that does the job first time.（source:mobile-ent）

2）Two-thirds of Brit iPhone owners plan to buy an iPhone 5

by Zen Terrelonge

And they expect it to sport NFC, 4G, and an improved battery.

Apple released a mysterious alert this week to say ‘It’s almost here’, which hints the iPhone 5 will arrive on September 12th, a date that’s been the industry prediction for some time.

YouGov has found that 18 per cent of Brits know Apple is about to launch a product, which demonstrates the power of Chinese Whispers and rumour.

Meanwhile, 21 per cent would consider buying an iPhone 5, which spikes to 67 per cent of iPhone owners who say they expect to purchase one in the future.

37 per cent of non-iPhone owners suspect it will have longer battery life and 4G support, while a further 67 per cent of iPhone users agree better battery is on the way.

Additionally, 34 per cent of the device owners reckon NFC and mobile payments will be included, 44 per cent expect Siri to speak English and not American, and 63 per cent expect the 3.5-inch screen to get a size upgrade.（source:mobile-ent）

3）Daily Android tablet sales nearing 40% of iPad sales

By Kevin C. Tofel

At a Motorola press event on Tuesday, Google’s ex-CEO and current chairman, Eric Schmidt offered up a key data point when talking about Android device activiations. Schmidt said nearly 1.3 million Android devices were activated daily, and of those, 70,000 were tablets. ZDNet’s Ed Burnette used that information in conjunction with Apple’s reported iPad sales and found that Android slate sales are approaching 40 percent of Apple’s iPad sales.

Here’s the reasoning. We know that Android tablet activations only include devices that use Google accounts for the device and apps. That rules out tablets such as the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet, both of which forgo the use of Google apps. So the 70,000 per day are tablets that are purely based on Google’s platform. Burnette notes that Apple sold 17 million iPads in its most recent fiscal quarter, which works out to 188,888 iPads sold each day, on average. Divide that figure into the 70,000 Android tablet sales number and you get 37.2 percent.

That’s a big jump from 14 months ago when I last tried to extrapolate Android tablet sales. Back then, I figured that of the cumulative 133 million Android devices activated at the time, only 1.2 million of those were tablets. And in the quarter ending in June 2011, Apple sold 9.25 million iPads. Obviously, over 9 million iPads sold in a three month period easily trumped 1.2 million Android tablets sold all time. Based on the math, though, the gap is surely closing.

There are two main reasons for Android tablets starting to catch up. First is the state of Android’s tablet software. In February 2011, Android 3.0 was the tablet platform and it was clearly rushed and incomplete. That changed with Android 4.0 and more recently 4.1; both offer a much better tablet experience.

Second, and more timely, is Google’s low-priced Nexus 7 tablet. For $199 consumers can go online and buy a relatively high-performing 7-inch slate that’s easy to take everywhere. Combine the Nexus 7 hardware and software with improved Google Play content services and you’ve got an attractive product.

Is Apple’s iPad still the top dog when it comes to tablets? Absolutely, and I see no evidence to suggest otherwise. But the theme of “there is no tablet market, there is only an iPad market” is starting to look outdated based on the data we see today.（source:gigaom）

4）Double Fine turns an iOS slip-up into an accidental beta test

By Tom Curtis

Earlier this week, Double Fine released its free to play superhero management game Middle Manager of Justice, the first real mobile title to come from the San Francisco-based studio. Fans swarmed over the game when it launched Tuesday night, but there’s just one problem: The game wasn’t supposed to debut for another several weeks.

Double Fine has since pulled the game from the iOS App Store, but not before plenty of fans got their hands on an unfinished, and unfortunately buggy version of the game. We recently spoke to the game’s project lead, Kee Chi, who told us exactly what happened, and how Double Fine turned its unfortunate blunder into a helpful production resource.

As the lead developer on Double Fine’s first mobile game (excluding the Psychonauts companion app), Chi suspected he’d run into some hiccups when working on a new platform, and he said the game accidentally found its way into the wild because he wasn’t aware of the idiosyncrasies that come with submitting an app to the iOS marketplace.

“Yeah, it was totally my fault,” he said. “With the way you submit things on the App Store, you have to specify what the release date is, and a while back we had set the date to September, but at the time we didn’t know if that would be final or not.

“Once we submitted the game, we realized we had a lot of things we still needed to tweak and fix, but at the same time, we didn’t want to remove it from the [submission] process in case Apple catches other things we need to take care of, and we didn’t want to do a double submission.”

Unfortunately, Chi and his team didn’t realize their “tentative” September launch date was still very much in effect.

“So I was on the train heading to work this week, and I get a call from our tech director saying, ‘Hey, um, so it looks the game is live in every territory.’ And I just went, ‘What!?’”

Looking back on it, Chi laughs, but for a time he was worried about how this early launch could affect his game’s reputation.

“It wasn’t what I wanted the world to see quite yet,” he said. “At Double Fine, we pride ourselves on putting a solid product out there, so having something out there that was buggy and not quite ready yet was really frustrating.”

With an unfinished version of the game already in players’ hands, Double Fine couldn’t fix the issue, but instead chose to make the most of its inconvenience. Shortly after unpublishing the game, Chi and other Double Fine staff reached out to players on a number of different message boards, telling them that if they had downloaded the game, they were encouraged to become impromptu playtesters and help Double Fine work out the kinks before Middle Manager’s official release.

“I guess it kind of just turned into a beta test,” Chi said. “I mean, if people find bugs that we haven’t found internally, I’d love to know about them so I can fix them,” Chi said.

Even just a few days later, Chi says he’s received a ton of valuable feedback that’s helped Double Fine eliminate bugs, and make the game’s free-to-play elements less restrictive for non-paying players.

“If anything, I welcome these suggestions from people, because we’re still learning and we plan to work on this well after it goes live to make the game deeper, and luckily this means we’ll get an early start on that process,” he said.

Reflecting on the mix-up, Chi’s certain Double Fine will stay clear of this issue in the future, but his experience serves as an important lesson for anyone working on a new, perhaps unfamiliar platform: Mistakes will happen; the real trick is learning how to adapt to them.

The final version of Middle Manger of Justice will find its way to the iTunes App Store in the coming weeks.（source:gamasutra）

5）EEDAR lifts lid on mobile’s top spender: The $70 a month ‘killer whale’

by Keith Andrew

Games research specialist EEDAR has claimed mobile’s most lucrative and loyal consumer – the ‘whale’ – has been superseded.

Detailed in the body’s latest extensive report on mobile and tablet gaming, EEDAR states whales – capable of spending up to $50 a month each in play – now play second fiddle to a brand of mobile gamer even more willing to part with cash in play.

Fresh hunting

The so-called ‘killer whale’, claims EEDAR, represents a relatively small group of consumers – around 1 percent of mobile gaming’s total userbase – but each one on average spends almost $70 a month on games, making the group a prime target for many mobile outfits.

“After surveying mobile and tablet gamers, we found there exists a small, but very critical, subset of gamers whose engagement and purchasing habits significantly outperform that of what we would consider an average whale,” detailed VP of analysis Jesse Divnich via email.

“We have dubbed them killer whales.

“Compared to whales, killer whales spend nearly three times as much, engagement more than twice as often, and are found to be a central hub for mobile and tablet gaming news or reviews among their social group.”

Genre buster

According to Divnich, the small size of said group doesn’t detract from its overall influence on mobile studios.

Indeed, EEDAR’s research suggests killer whales are already “one of the most thought after markets for developers to target.”

“Despite these killer whales being the most ‘hardcore’ of the consumer segments, they spread their wealth pretty evenly between genres,” added Divnich.

“From RPG’s to word puzzles, killer whales are a large contributor to the mobile ecosystem and understanding their behaviours is a key critical component to market success for publishers and developers.”

EEDAR’s mobile gaming spending review is just one part of the findings drawn from the firm’s Emerging Markets Mobile Gaming Report 2012.（source:pocketgamer）