1）App Annie最近追踪70万款应用的数据显示，在过去24个月中，全球iOS免费增值应用收益增长4倍左右；而Google Play在2012年全球免费应用收益也增长3.5倍。现在免费应用在全球iOS应用中所创收益占比达69%，在全球Android应用收益中占比75%。与此同时，付费应用收益基本上与过去持平。

iOS revenue growth gloabl(from appannie)

Google Play revenue growth global(from appannie)

gigaom两年前曾报道，美国iOS热销应用榜单有三分之一产品采用免费增值模式；Distimo报告也曾指出，截止2011年底，美国前200名热销iPhone应用收益有半数来自免费增值产品，Android Market有65%的热门应用收益来自免费增值应用。IHS在1月份报告指出，2011年免费增值应用中的IAP全球收益达9.7亿美元，预计2015年这一数据将增长至56亿美元，占全球应用收益的64%。

App Annie报告还指出，中国和日本是过去一年中免费增值应用增长最快的市场，日本Google Play免费增值应用收益在过去一年中增加24倍，而中国iOS免费增值应用收益自2011年1月以来已增长近25倍。

2）据pocketgamer报道，苹果首席执行官Tim Cook在日前的财报电话会议上针对微软Surface平板电脑的问题指出，他认为Surface是一个“令人困惑的产品”，并比喻称人们可以设计出能够飞行和飘浮的汽车，但这种汽车各方面的功能未必尽善尽美，所以他认为与iPad相比，大多数用户都会选择iPad。

surface vs iPad(from knowyourmobile.com)

苹果首席财务官Peter Oppenheimer则针对iPad Mini定价问题表示，苹果研发iPad Mini的出发点并非制造小型而廉价的平板电脑。

3）据games.com报道，游戏开发商Five One Nine Games最近针对旗下竞选题材的Facebook游戏《Campaign Story》发布信息图表指出，在游戏中选择保守路线的玩家消费水平超过了自由派玩家，两者消费比例为3：1。

campaign story infographic(from Five One Nine Games)

值得注意的是，在游戏中选择中间路线的玩家消费水平也几乎是自由派玩家的3倍左右；中间和保守派玩家在这一过程中的投入水平远超自由派玩家。根据这一信息图表数据预测，奥巴马很可能于11月6日获胜并连胜美国总统。

4）据BusinessInsider报道，网络黑客组织Anonymous最近发布消息称，他们将在11月2日攻击Zynga游戏，以抗议Zynga对其员工及诸多开发者的不公待遇和举措。

据该组织爆料，他们已得到Zynga机密文件，得知Zynga有意裁员上千人并将起诉对外公开这一消息的人员。Anonymous声称如果Zynga停止这一计划，他们就放弃攻击其在线游戏的计划。

anonymous(from businessinsider.com)

Anonymous透露的Zynga战略计划包括，到11月23日再裁减约800名员工，以便节省业务运营资金；将位于印度班加罗尔团队的开发工作完全外包出去；Zynga正与《Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime》、《Shove Prod》和《Music Invaders》等第三方游戏的开发商协商收购IP事宜，其交易额将近2000万美元，他们将在本月完成这些交易，以便应对与其他移动游戏开发商的竞争。

至于Anonymous泄露的这一消息究竟是否属实，Zynga发言人现在仍拒绝做出回应。

game quality(from games)

5）据Gigaom报道，Facebook用户发展业务高管Alex Schultz最近表示，Facebook重视社交游戏业务发展，他们必须确保为大量用户提供出色的游戏，让用户先转化为游戏玩家再转为付费用户，Facebook的未来部分取决于其游戏质量高低，以及能否最大化游戏收益。他指出App Center极大推动了Facebook游戏发展，但并未解决游戏质量的问题。（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）Freemium app revenue growth leaves premium in the dust

By Ryan Kim

This Freemium app revenue is now dominating premium for developers on both iOS and Android, said App Annie. The analytics firm said that freemium apps generate 69 percent of the worldwide iOS app revenue and 75 percent of global Android app revenues.

photo: Flickr/401(K) 2012 The mobile app world took to the freemium model with a passion last year, as revenue from freemium iOS apps eclipsed 50 percent mark in the US about a year ago.

But in the last year, the momentum behind freemium apps has only grown stronger, according to new data from app analytics firm App Annie.

App Annie Intelligence, which tracks more than 700,000 apps, found that global revenues for freemium apps on iOS have quadrupled over the last 24 months. And for Google Play, worldwide freemium revenues have grown 3.5x in 2012. Now, freemium apps generate 69 percent of the worldwide iOS app revenue and 75 percent of global Android app revenues. Meanwhile, premium app revenue from paid download apps have remained relatively flat over the same periods.

The numbers confirm the trend we’ve been noticing but the fact that there’s been no let up shows just how app developers continue to embrace the freemium model and how those apps continue to bring in more money. We reported two years ago that the 1/3 of the top grossing apps on iOS in the US had moved to the freemium model. By the end of 2011, Distimo reported that about half of the revenue from the 200 top grossing iPhone apps came from freemium app while 65 percent of the revenue from top apps in the Android Market came from freemium apps. Here’s a look at some of the charts worked up by App Annie Intelligence:

In January, IHS said that in-app purchase in freemium apps brought in $970 million in worldwide sale last year, or 39 percent compared to paid downloads. And freemium app revenue was expected to grow to $5.6 billion by 2015, representing 64 percent of the total market. The App Annie data, which is limited to iOS and Android, suggests we may be on a faster pace than IHS predicted.

It’s not just in the US, where the figures generally mirror the world stats. App Annie said countries like China and Japan have rapidly adopted the freemium model in the last year.

Japanese freemium revenues grew by 24x in the last year on Google Play and Chinese freemium revenue grew by nearly 25x on iOS since January 2011.

Not every app needs to go freemium. As Flurry recently pointed out, some apps are better suited to that model. For example, apps with high intensity of usage in a short window creates an opportunity for developers to make money though in-app purchases that users can binge on. And for users who come back repeatedly over a long period of time, there’s also a chance to keep selling them on more content and add-on functions. Apps that don’t necessarily hold on to users over a long period of time might monetize better through one-time paid downloads, said Flurry.（source：gigaom）

2）Apple CEO Tim Cook labels Microsoft Surface tablet a ‘compromised and confusing product’

by Tom Cooper

By virtue of being Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook is arguably the most powerful man in tech. And what does Cook choose to do with all that power? Why, he compares his competitor’s devices to a fictional car that flies and floats, of course.

The product in question is Microsoft’s Surface with Windows RT tablet, which goes on sale today.

During Apple’s financial earnings conference call last night with analysts and journalists, The Big A’s head honcho was asked if he’d had a chance to play around with a Surface yet.

To no one’s massive surprise, Cook replied in the negative (presumably, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer didn’t FedEx one over to Apple HQ during the week). After reading some reviews of the device, though, Cook reckons it looks like a “very compromised and confusing product”.

“I suppose you could design a car that flies and floats, but I don’t think it would do all of those things very well,” he went on to say. “And so I think people, when they look at the iPad versus competitive offerings, are going to conclude they really want an iPad.”

How much?

Later on in that same conference call, the subject of the iPad mini’s pricing was brought up.

As I’m sure you’re all aware, Apple’s recently announced 7.9-inch touchscreen tablet is available to pre-order from £269 / $329.

Now, compared to the Nexus 7′s and the Kindle Fire HD’s starting price ($199), the RRP for the base model iPad mini seems rather steep.

As is to be expected, both Cook and Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer defended the iPad mini’s pricing, essentially repeating Apple’s long-held mantra that you get what you pay for in this industry.

“When we set out to build the iPad mini, we didn’t set out to build a small, cheap tablet,” Oppenheimer said.

Picking up on that point, Cook then stated: “I would encourage you to use an iPad mini and I don’t think that you’ll be using anything other than another iPad after that.”（source：pocketgamer）

3）Infographic: Conservatives spend more in Facebook games than liberals

by Joe Osborne

That is, if they’re playing Campaign Story, the new political-themed Facebook game by Five One Nine Games. The developer recently published an infographic that not only attempts to predict the outcome of the upcoming election by player habits, but shares some interesting information regarding which types of players spend more.

According to this information gathered from Campaign Story players, those that chose the conservative route in their game outspend those that took the liberal path nearly 3-to-1 on average.

If the players that chose their respective slants for their in-game campaign do, in fact, ascribe to those political views, then it’s quite possible that this figure extends out to social games unrelated to politics. (Besides, people never take their political stances lightly, so who would actually choose the opposite?)

Oddly enough, players who chose the moderate take in Campaign Story outspend liberal players nearly 3-to-1 as well. And what do you know: The moderate and conservative players that outspent the liberals outpaced the latter by huge margins in terms of progress made toward their ultimate elections. (What does this say about the old adage that liberals like to spend, spend, spend?) Oh yeah, and the infographic predicts that Obama will emerge victorious on Nov. 6.（source：games）

4）Anonymous Is Going After Zynga For Mistreating Employees, It Has Leaked Confidential Documents And Games

Drew Olanoff

As you know, gaming company Zynga laid off employees last week and shut down a few of its offices right before its quarterly earnings call. Well, Zynga has pissed off the online group Anonymous, and it’s quite serious. Here’s a video just released by them, discussing exactly what it plans to do and why. CNet is also reporting on this story, and we’re actively checking to see if this is a legitimate maneuver.

According to BusinessInsider, the group is threatening to take down both Zynga and Facebook on November 5th.

The offensive has been dubbed “#OP MaZynga”:

Here’s a transcript of the video:

Zynga customers and Facebook users , We are anonymous . During the last few days anonymous has been targeting Zynga for the outrageous treatment of their employees and their actions against many developers .

We have come to believe that this actions of Zynga will result in massive layoff of a thousand people and legal actions against everyone that speaks to the public about this plan.

It will also come to end of the US game market as we know it as all this jobs will be replaced in other more convenient financial countries.

With a billion dollars cash sitting in a bank we do believe that such actions are an insult to the population and the behaviour of corporations like Zynga must change.

Anonymous could not allow this to happen so it’s starting to release confidential documents we have leaked on this plan

As we speak we are planning to release also all the games we’ve taken from their servers for free.

That being said we will stop the idea of the distribution of such games if Zynga will cease immediately the plan.

The leaked strategy of Zynga , transcript:

Following the preliminary announced of this week the final strategy for the next two quarters has been successfully set to delivery by november 23 an additional but of 800 jobs with further raising of new capital from the market to support businesses.

We’ve identified our global gambling strategy with bwin.party and as we speak discussions are progressing with a partner to cover the US market.

Work is focused and on-going to completely outsource our development teams in our offices in Bangalore , India to hedge our position in the long term.

We’ve identified key new products from third parties such as Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime , Shove Prod and Music Invaders in which we are starting business contacts to buy these IP for transaction value of approximately 20 million.

We strongly believe we will conclude these deals this month and compete with this titles against mobile competitors with ease.

Our business continues to evolve and we must evolve with it. We operate in a exciting and challenging industry and I am very pleased that our senior leadership team continue to strengthen and develop with us.

Here are the documents it mentions:

http://www.multiupload.nl/DELBKM7I2I mazyngaop_docs.zip (36.41 MB)

http://www.multiupload.nl/WV48I345JM ANON_MA_ZYNGA.7z (412.59 MB)

The files have been removed for “copyright infringement” already, and we have reached out to Zynga for comment.

Here’s an excerpt from one of the documents that Anonymous claims to be real, reportedly showing off Zynga’s business “strategy”:

Following the preliminary announced of this week the final strategy for the next two quarters has been successfully set to delivery by november 23 an additional but of 800 jobs with further raising of new capital from the market to support businesses.

We’ve identified our global gambling strategy with bwin.party and as we speak discussions are progressing with a partner to cover the US market.

Work is focused and on-going to completely outsource our development teams in our offices in Bangalore , India to hedge our position in the long term.

We’ve identified key new products from third parties such as Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime , Shove Prod and Music Invaders in which we are starting business contacts to buy these IP for transaction value of approximately 20 million.

We strongly believe we will conclude these deals this month and compete with this titles against mobile competitors with ease.

Our business continues to evolve and we must evolve with it. We operate in a exciting and challenging industry and I am very pleased that our senior leadership team continue to strengthen and develop with us.

If this is real, and to be honest, the language used above and in the transcript are similar…so one can’t be sure, Anonymous isn’t playing around. We’ll keep tracking this story for you.

UPDATE: We were able to reach Zynga, but a spokesperson declined to comment at this time.（source：techcrunch）

5）Expect higher-quality Facebook games–the network depends on it

by Joe Osborne

Now that Facebook is a public company, one of its prime missions is to make money. (That’s not necessarily a knock–it’s the goal of every public company.) And the seemingly most proven method it has to do so is games. Social games make up an enormous portion of the company’s revenue, so it’s definitely in Facebook’s best interest to have the best games possible … and more of them.

“We need to make sure we have a greater set of games for a greater set of people,” Alex Schultz, who works on user growth at Facebook, said to reporters recently at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, according to GigaOm. “It’s from users to gamers to payers. So how do we optimize that funnel?”

In other words, the future of Facebook in part depends upon whether its games are of the highest quality, and hopefully as a result, make the highest amount of money possible. To that end, Schultz pointed to App Center as being huge for Facebook’s gaming growth, but that doesn’t solve the quality problem.

That’s up to the game makers, and it looks like the network is as interested in ensuring that developers focused on console-like game experiences for Facebook succeed as the developers themselves are. For those still waiting to see the experience they have been waiting for to hit Facebook, fret not, it just might be coming. Facebook’s bottom line depends on it.（source：games）