1）CrowdStar刚推出的首款iOS游戏《Top Girl》在App Store发布10天下载量已超100万次，现已打败《愤怒的小鸟》成为iOS平台头号热门游戏。该公司移动总监Blair Hamilton指出，《愤怒的小鸟》指向的是更为广泛的用户群体，而《Top Girl》却只是一款锁定女性玩家的角色扮演游戏，可见《Top Girl》确实表现不俗。

App Store Ranking(from venturebeat.com)

2）Pew research最新调查报告表明，拥有电子阅读器的美国成人用户比例已达12%，比六个月前增加了两倍。电子阅读器的拥有率持续超越iPad和摩托罗拉Xoom等平板电脑，仅有8%的受访者自称拥有一部平板电脑，六个月前的这一比例更是只有5%，可见平板电脑的拥有率增长速度仍不甚理想。

e-reader and tablet ownership(from Pew Research)

不过平板电脑与电子阅读器之间的界线也已经日趋模糊，例如运行Android系统的Color Nook的功能就已经十分接近平板电脑，而且今天的平板电脑几乎都有来自Kindle、苹果等品牌的电子书应用程序。

e-reader and tablet ownership far behind others(from Pew Research)

电子阅读器和平板电脑的拥有率均低于其他数码产品：MP3播放器拥有率达44%，DVR也有52%，笔记本电脑则是56%，台式电脑达57%，手机是83%。

3）谷歌Android Market网页版最近又推新功能，添加了每款应用的评分级别显示系统，以便用户看到应用获得了多少个5星评价，或多少个1星评价。

user reviews(from insidemobileapps)

Android Market曾于5月份推出一系列重大调整，添加了新的热门应用排行榜，开发者推荐展位等新功能。在今年2月份，谷歌推出了一个新的网页客户端，支持用户无线下载应用程序。

4）芬兰开发商Rovio最近聘请Marvel Studios前董事长David Maisel担任《愤怒的小鸟》电影执行制片人，如果再联系Rovio不久前收购芬兰动画工作室Kombo一事，我们就不难推测《愤怒的小鸟》电影作品有可能在不久的将来面世。

David Maisel(from latimes.com)

David Maisel曾负责成立Marvel Studios，该工作室后来制作了《钢铁侠》和《Thor》等电影；Rovio的投资者Accel Partners的合伙人之一Jim Breyer过去也曾是Marvel董事会成员。

5）Bungie在开发第一人称射击游戏《光晕》并被微软收购之前曾是一家Mac游戏开发商，最近该工作室又重返苹果大本营，决定面向iPad移植1994年的Mac第一人称射击游戏《Marathon》。该游戏移植版本完全出自Daniel Blezek这名单人开发者之手，该iPad版本将向用户提供免费下载服务。

Marathon for iPad(from toucharcade.com)

Bungie不久前发布了一款非游戏iPhone应用Bungie Mobile，支持粉丝通过该应用了解公司动态，并查看他们在《光晕：致远星》中的状态。

6）据读写网报道，苹果iOS 5第二轮测试公布的一项新功能或许暗藏一个信号，开发者将可通过一个新的CSS属性将类似于原生应用的滚动效果引进Mobile Safari。网页开发者可将类似于原生应用的滚动效果植入网页中，使网页应用的运行性能与原生应用更为接近。

7）地理定位服务应用Foursquare宣布完成5000万美元融资，公司目前估值达到6亿美元。本轮融资以之前的投资者Andreessen Horowitz为主导（游戏邦注：本轮融资均为旧面孔，没有新的支持者），他的合伙人Ben Horowitz宣称目前有许多公司有意高价收购Foursquare。但据TechCrunch去年的报道所称，有些潜在投资者因担忧该公司无法盈利而不敢参与融资，Foursquare至今所得收益也非常有限。

Foursquare(from sev7en.com)

8）据Economic Times报道，台湾有关部门负责人曾于6月初责令苹果和谷歌在各自应用商店采用七天试用及退款政策，否则就属于违反台湾消费者保护法的行为，必须接受罚款。在规定的15天落实期限之后，苹果终于妥协并让当地的App Store推出7天试用及退款服务，但谷歌却并无退步之意。

据称谷歌的15分钟退款政策已因违反当地法规而被罚3万4600美元，美国官员也将于近日飞往台湾商讨谷歌违规一事，后者很可能面临进一步处罚。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）Top Girl is top app in App Store

Regina Hope Sinsky

Let’s see… what shall Top Girl wear to announce her game has surpassed one million downloads after only 10 days in the App Store?

Perhaps a red-feathered boa, since three days after CrowdStar launched the game it passed Angry Birds, becoming the top-grossing game in the App Store. That’s quite an achievement, considering, as CrowdStar’s director of mobile Blair Hamilton points out, that “compared to other top-grossing games like Angry Birds, which targets all players, we really only target half the equivalent audience because it’s a female friendly role-playing game.”（source:venturebeat）

2）Pew: Adoption Of E-Readers Doubles In 6 Months, Bigger Than Tablets

Erick Schonfeld

A new Pew research survey of U.S. adults conducted in May, 2011 shows that ownership of electronic readers such as the Amazon Kindle or The Barnes & Noble Nook is now at 12 percent. The ownership of e-readers doubled from six months prior when it was 6 percent.

The adoption of e-readers continues to outpace tablets such as the iPad and Motorola Xoom. Only 8 percent of respondents said they won a tablet, compared to 5 percent six months earlier. So tablet ownership seems to be growing at a slower pace.

However, the line between an e-reader and tablet is beginning to blur. The Color Nook runs on a version of Android (albeit not as fully functional as the latest tablets). And of course,

every tablet now has e-book apps from Kindle, Apple, and others.

Three percent of U.S. adults own both a tablet and an e-reader. (You early adopters will buy anything).

Both tablets and e-readers still trail well behind ownership of other digita devices such as MP3 players (44 percent), DVRs (52 percent), laptops (56 percent), desktops (57 percent), and cell phones (83 percent). This is also the first time in this survey that laptop and desktop ownership reached parity.（source:techcrunch）

3）Android Market Adds App Rating Distributions

By Kim-Mai Cutler

In a continuing series of small upgrades to Android Market, Google added ratings distributions for individual apps.

It’s not available on mobile devices quite yet, but the new addition makes it easier for consumers to see how many 5-star and 1-star ratings a particular app received. So if an app has a three-star rating, not necessarily because it’s mediocre but because it’s polarizing for whatever reason, consumers will be able to tell.

Google has gradually been improving the store, most recently with a big overhaul in May that brought new top-grossing charts for apps and new featured slots highlighting specific developers. Before that, Google launched a new web client for the app store back in February that allowed over-the-air downloads of apps.

Android Market has long used a slightly more complex ranking system than Apple’s app store. While Google has never explicitly said what those extra factors are for the ranking algorithms, they could include the long install rate or whether consumers have actually kept the app after downloading it.（source:insidemobileapps）

4）Looking to Break Into Hollywood, Rovio Adds Former Chairman of Marvel as an Advisor

By Kim-Mai Cutler

Angry Birds-maker Rovio Mobile has been quite forward with its ambitions to branch out beyond gaming into books, movies and other types of entertainment.

So it should be no surprise that the Finnish gaming company picked up the former chairman of Marvel Studios David Maisel to help guide the company into film-making.

Given that Jim Breyer, one of the partners at Rovio’s venture investor Accel Partners, once served on the board of Marvel, we wouldn’t be surprised if he made the intro. Maisel was responsible for launching Marvel Studios, which went on to create films like Iron Man and Thor, and for the $4 billion sale of the company to Disney.

Maisel will serve as an executive producer for future Angry Birds films. One other asset that should help with Rovio with its ambitions is Kombo, the Finnish animation studio the company recently acquired. Kombo had been producing Angry Birds-themed shorts along with doing contract work for other companies up until the acquisition. Now it will be doing exclusively Rovio-commissioned work. With the combination of these two moves, perhaps a feature-length animated film won’t be too far off in the future.（source:insidemobileapps）

5）Halo developer Bungie bringing its 1994 game Marathon to iPad

by Stuart Dredge

Working with individual developer Daniel Blezek on the iOS port.

Bungie was once known as one of the key games developers for Macs, before developing a little-known first-person shooter franchise called Halo and being bought by Microsoft.

Now independent again, Bungie is returning to its Apple roots with an iPad port of Marathon, an FPS first released for the Mac in 1994, with its code later made available on an open-source basis for developers.

The port is actually the work of a single developer, Daniel Blezek, who according to Bungie spent more than a year working on the iPad version, which will be free to download.

“I hope all players appreciate Bungie’s commitment to their fans. It’s not every company who would support bringing a 16 year old game back to life!” says Blezek in an interview posted on Bungie’s website.

The news comes shortly after Bungie launched its own (non-game) iPhone app, Bungie Mobile, which lets fans keep up with the company’s news, and also check their stats on the Halo: Reach challenge.（source:mobile-ent）

6）iOS 5 Brings Native-Style Scrolling to Web Apps

By Sarah Perez

A new feature uncovered in the second beta release of iOS 5 is great news for Web developers. It seems that native-style scrolling will be made available to Mobile Safari through a new CSS property. When used, Web developers will be able to implement native-style momentum scroll in Web pages, allowing Web apps to function more like native applications do today.（source:readwriteweb）

7）Foursquare closes $50 million funding round on $600 million valuation

by Keith Andrew

It was no coincidence that location-based service Foursquare announced its userbase has surpassed 10 million just as the company was closing a $50 million strong funding round.

This latest injection has been amassed from familiar sources – previous investor Andreessen Horowitz leading a round that, though pitched at newcomers, failed to attract any fresh backers.

Nonetheless, the $600 million valuation attributed to the company as a result represents some leap from the $120 million figure that was touted after the company’s last investment round.

Funding Foursquare

As a result, Andreessen Horowitz general partner Ben Horowitz has claimed that outside interest in Foursquare is soaring, with plenty of buyers looking to snap up the company.

“They’ve already had acquisition offers for more than the valuation,” Horowitz told the Wall Street Journal.

“The number of companies that want a product like this is large.”

Last year it was reported that Facebook was interested in making a move for Foursquare as a precursor to its own location offering.

In contrast, however, TechCrunch reports that potential new investors shied away from funding Fourquare in the latest round owing to what’s perceived as a problem with monetising the firm’s business.

Revenues taken by the company to date are reportedly slim.

Nonetheless, the $50 million Foursquare has secured will be used to fund the company’s expansion overseas, cement its San Francisco base and – crucially for doubters – build up the service’s merchant platform for future success.（source:pocketgamer）

8）Apple adopts 7 day refund policy for App Store titles in Taiwan

by Keith Andrew

At the start of June, officials in the Taiwanese capital of Taipei City ordered both Apple and Google to implement a seven day trial periods for apps sold on their respective marketplaces.

Reports from within the country stated law and regulation commission director Yeh Ching-yuan had claimed both companies were guilty of operating “an irresponsible business practice”, and needed to comply with Taiwan’s consumer protection act or face a fine.

With the allotted 15 days response time over, it appears Apple has bent to the director’s will and is now offering refunds for up to seven days after an app is purchased.

Google, however, is not.

Fine, and not so fine

According to the Economic Times, Google has been fined a total of $34,600 for breaching the act, with the company holding its worldwide policy of offering consumers 15 minutes for a refund.

“Google refused to change its rules,” Government consumer protection head Betty Chen told the site, branding the firm’s decision as “unfriendly”.

In comparison, Chen claims Apple has changed its rules, though naturally said refunds are only available for Taiwanese consumers.

It’s not clear how said refunds are implemented, though Chen did add that rival Google is not off the hook yet.

US officials are reportedly set to make the trip to Taiwan to discuss the company’s violation of the island’s law, with further fines on the cards as a result.（source:pocketgamer）