1）据insidesocialgames报道，独立手机游戏开发商Twyngo日前宣布其首款iOS游戏《Amazing Ants》自1月10日上线以来，一周内安装量突破100万次。

该游戏发行商是Pocket Gems公司，也是后者负责发行的第二款游戏（出自开发商dreamfab之手的Android游戏《Chasing Yello》，是Pocket Games发行的首款游戏）。

Amazing Ants(from blog.games.com)

据AppData数据显示，《Amazing Ants》目前在iPad免费应用榜单排名第四，本周一时还曾跻升至第二名。

2）据pocketgamer报道，King.com日前宣布《Candy Crush Saga》的iOS和Android版本现在日常下载量超过5500万次。

Candy Crush Saga(from insidesocialgames.com)

《Candy Crush Saga》最初发布于Facebook平台，获得成功后又向iOS和Android平台扩张，该游戏目前在社交网站和移动平台日均用户将近1000万。

3）尼尔森最近报告指出，金砖四国（巴西、俄罗斯、印度、中国）未来智能手机发展潜力巨大。在这四个国家中，目前只有中国的智能手机用户占比达三分之二（2012上半年），而其他三国市场才刚开始从功能性手机向智能手机市场过渡。

apple-store-china-line(from idownloadblog.com)

在印度，功能性手机仍占据80%的移动市场份额，俄罗斯市场的这一比例为51%，巴西为44%（游戏邦注：其智能手机占比36%，“多媒体”手机占比21%，尼尔森所谓的“多媒体”手机是指拥有触屏功能或者标准键盘功能，但却没有智能手机操作系统的移动设备）。

4）手机游戏开发商TinyCo最新数据指出，谷歌Nexus 7平板电脑所创造的ARPU值比一般Android平板电脑高多50%。

nexus 7 average revenue per user(from TinyCo)

nexus 7 in-app purchase rates(from TinyCo)

Android tablet revenue by device(from TinyCo)

除此之外，TinyCo还表示Nexus 7用户的IAP消费意愿也比一般Android平板电脑高50%，尽管该设备用户在TinyCo的Android平板电脑用户群体中仅占比15%，该公司有30%的Android平板电脑收益来自Nexus 7用户。另外，Nexus 7用户的7天和30天留存率也比普通用户高20%。

5）据gamezebo报道，King.com热门游戏《Candy Crush Saga》目前DAU已超过970万，在Facebook游戏DAU榜单上排名第一，而Zynga游戏《FarmVille 2》则位居第二，DAU为880万。

NO 1 facebook game(from gamezebo)

据该公司首席营销官Alex Dale所称，跨平台功能是《Candy Crush Saga》实现发展的关键，为该游戏引进更多新玩家，提升了玩家在游戏中的粘性。（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）Amazing Ants surpasses 1M installs in one week, ranks in the top 5 on the top free iPad apps chart

Scott Reyburn

Indie mobile game developer Twyngo revealed to Inside Mobile Apps that their first game, Amazing Ants for iOS, surpassed the 1 million install mark in one week since the title’s launch on Jan. 10.

“It’s been very gratifying to see the degree of enthusiasm and success about the game, Twyngo co-founder Unni Narayanan told Inside Mobile Apps. “We knew that we had built an atypically high quality product with a rich experience that appealed to a broad category of people.”

Twyngo is the second game published under mobile game developer Pocket Gems, a new business venture that Pocket Gems announced it was pursuing back in December 2012. Developer dreamfab’s Chasing Yello for Android was the first title published by Pocket Gems in late December 2012.

Narayanan says Pocket Gems was a great help to Twyngo by guiding his team through the process of creating a successful game based on a freemium model.

“There’s exceptional value delivered in the game for zero price,” Narayanan says. “Pocket Gems was instrumental in helping us see the benefit of the freemium model. The reason the game is a success is that the game is of high quality and a rich experience, but it’s also broadly accessible to a lot of people because we’re doing the freemium model.”

With more than 1.3 million installs and counting, Narayanan believes the potential for Amazing Ants to continue to grow is huge.

“The potential market is very, very large,” he says. “We’re going after the same demographic that an Angry Birds or a Cut the Rope reach out to. The market size is huge. As long as at the grassroots level people like the game and are enjoying it, we can see more growth.”

Narayanan emphasizes that Amazing Ants’ appeals to people who are looking for a wholesome experience.

“There’s an untapped opportunity for people to still develop family-friendly games that appeal across multiple age groups,” he says. “The reason our game is resonating with many folks is that people want that sensibility, that rich, immersive cartoon-like experience. They want that, but they want a different mechanic than what they’ve seen already out there. That’s a sentiment that we’re tapping into.”

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Amazing Ants is currently ranked No. 4 on the top free iPad apps chart, ranking as high as the No. 2 spot on Monday.

Check out our review of Amazing Ants on our sister site Inside Social Games here.（source：insidesocialgames）

2）King.com now a mobile master as Candy Crush Saga hits 55 million plays a day

by James Nouch

King.com has revealed that the iOS and Android versions Candy Crush Saga are currently being played more than 55 million times a day.

Said stat was released as part of a batch of figures designed to emphasise the importance of seamless cross-platform play to its business.

In all, King.com claims that its titles generate more than 5 billion ‘monthly game plays’ across all platforms.

Chocolate reign

“The transition to moving our popular games to mobile and making the playability both seamless and synchronised across multiple platforms has generated immediate interest from casual games players,” explained King.com CEO Riccardo Zacconi.

“We’ve seen tremendous growth across both social and mobile games charts.”

After a successful run on Facebook, Candy Crush Saga hit iOS back in November before launching on Android a month later.

Combined, the title attracts almost 10 million players per day across social networks and mobile devices.

“We are looking forward to launching more of our Saga titles onto mobile this year,” Zacconi concluded.（source：pocketgamer）

3）Nielsen: Smartphone Battle Ready To Rage In Brazil, Russia, India

Sarah Perez

In a research note released today, Nielsen examines the potential for smartphone growth in the BRIC region (Brazil, Russia, India, China), where, in many cases, feature phones still dominate. According to the firm’s findings, only in China are smartphones predominant, where they’re now owned by two-thirds of mobile subscribers, as of the first half of 2012. However, in India, Russia and Brazil, users are only beginning to transition away from feature phones to newer, app-capable devices.

In India, feature phones account for 80 percent of the mobile market, Nielsen says, followed by Russa at 51 percent, and Brazil at 44 percent. In Brazil, there’s more of an even split between feature phones, smartphones (36 percent) and a third category Nielsen dubs “multimedia” phones (21 percent). These multimedia phones have a touchscreen and/or a QWERTY keypad, but no smartphone operating system installed. They’re basically a better feature phone, if you had to classify them one way or the other.

The data provided by Nielsen was a bit old (first half 2012), and perhaps also somewhat obvious to those who are tracking the industry closely. For example, in December 2011, mobile measurement firm Flurry listed India, China, Russia, India (and others) as some of the largest addressable markets for 2012. And around a year later, it also listed Russia and China among the fastest-growing iOS and Android markets by active devices, and noted that China in particular, was on track to top the U.S. iOS/Android install base by Q1 of 2013.（source：techcrunch）

4）Exclusive: Nexus 7 monetizes better than other Android tablets, says TinyCo

Scott Reyburn

Mobile game developer TinyCo’s monetization data finds that Google’s Nexus 7 tablet generates 50 percent higher ARPU than the average Android tablet.

“It’s encouraging for us,” says Mike Sandwick, TinyCo’s manager of strategic partnerships. “We have a reputation that’s pretty unique in terms of our commitment to Android. It’s continuing to pay off for us and Google is making these really great devices that have great user experiences like the Nexus 7 in terms of hardware. Jellybean is just awesome. We’re very, very pro everything that’s happening on Android right now, and we’re very psyched to be able to keep developing for the platform.”

Not only that, TinyCo says users are 50 percent more likely to make in-app purchases on the Nexus 7 compared to users of other Android tablets. Although the Nexus 7 only represents 15 percent of TinyCo’s Android tablet user base, 30 percent of TinyCo’s Android tablet revenue is generated by Nexus 7 users. Lastly, Nexus 7 users tend to demonstrate about 20 percent higher 7- and 30-day retention rates.

TinyCo didn’t take into account Kindle Fire data, which is a device that’s powered by the Android operating system, because there’s monetization system differences between the Amazon Appstore for Android and Google Play that affect metrics such as ARPU on TinyCo’s end.

There is the common thought in the industry that iOS monetizes better than Android, but that hasn’t always been the case for TinyCo, previously citing free-to-play game Tiny Village as an example of seeing higher levels of monetization on Android versus iOS.

“We see monetization that’s surprisingly similar,” says Nick Ross, TinyCo director of analytics and user acquisition. “If you just look at it across everything, there probably are some slight differences, but those are all due to known factors like the number of Singaporean users is different from one platform to the next.”

Google manufacturing it’s own first-party tablet allows developers to test and monetize better, Ross adds.

“It’s going to encourage other people to develop on the platform, which is awesome,” he says. “We’re pro more games on the platform.”

In a recent Q & A, W3i’s general manager Erik Lundberg told Inside Mobile Apps that since tablets are a luxury item, consumers monetize on tablet better than they do on smartphones. Google itself is even helping developers create better Android tablet apps, with Google’s Tablet App Quality Checklist, seeing as it’s in Google’s best interest to push Android tablet development now that they have their own tablet device on the market.（source：insidemobileapps）

5）Candy Crush Saga becomes top Facebook game in terms of DAU

By Dant Rambo

After years of Zynga sitting comfortably atop the daily active user (DAU) charts for Facebook games, King.com’s Candy Crush Saga has taken the lead, boasting over 9.7 million daily players. FarmVille 2,  in comparison, is currently in second place with 8.8 million DAUs.

King.com’s Bubble Witch Saga was one of the first games to offer cross-platform functionality between social and mobile. Later releases Pet Rescue Saga and Candy Rescue Saga featured this same synchronization, which played a big role in the company’s incredible success on Facebook. In fact, as far as Chief Marketing Officer Alex Dale is concerned, Candy Crush Saga most certainly wouldn’t be where it is without it.

“The cross-platform functionality of Candy Crush Saga has been key to the growth of the game. This is both in terms of bringing new players to the game through mobile, but also enabling fans of the game to increase the frequency with which they play,” Dale told us in an interview.

This isn’t a luxury every Facebook game is capable of enjoying, but the mechanically simple nature of the Saga games makes them the perfect candidates for cross-platform synchronization.

King.com knows this quite well, and as Dale made clear to me, this ubiquity makes for very happy customers.

“We get lots of positive feedback on the fan pages about the benefits of being able to play anywhere (on the bus, in their beds), anytime, while also being able to move from platform-to-platform without losing progress or any virtual goods,” said Dale.

When asked what King.com intended to do to keep Candy Crush Saga the #1 Facebook game in terms of DAU, Dale informed us they’ll be adding new levels and features, and intend to host competitions between players. It’s unclear as to whether or not they’ll make more cat images like the one above, but we certainly hope.（source：gamezebo）