1）据pocketgamer报道，Zynga日前完成了最近13个月中的第15笔收购交易，将加拿大手机应用开发商Five Mobile收入囊中，成立了Zynga多伦多工作室。

Zynga acquired Five Mobile(from iphoneincanada.ca)

双方均未公布有关协议内容，现在仅知Five Mobile团队以及四名联合创始人都将加入Zynga，此外还有部分资产和知识产权也将并入Zynga。据Zynga所称，他们收购该公司主要看中对方在北美的跨平台开发能力。

2）id Software联合创始人John Carmack在最近的媒体采访中称，手机在未来两年内将成为比下一代掌机更为强大的游戏设备。但他也同时指出，人们现在还是夸大了移动技术的力量，iPad 2其实并不比Xbox 360更强大，它比起后者仍然较为逊色。不过在今后两年中，移动设备有可能成为更为出色的游戏机。

John_Carmack(from pcgamer.com)

3）据techcrunch报道，韩国游戏发行商Nexon也正准备进行IPO（游戏邦注：该公司最先成立于韩国，但最近已将总部迁至日本东京）。值得注意的是，尽管这家亚洲公司并不为一般西方投资者所熟知，但它的营收、利润和用户粘性甚至比Zynga更胜一筹。

Nexon是一家成立已有17年之久的公司，累计注册用户已达11.4亿，现有员工3000多人。该公司在2009年收益为6.43亿美元，超过了Zynga去年的6亿美元收益。据称Nexon在过去5年中，每年的收益增幅大约30%，如此推算该公司去年收益约为9亿美元，今年收益或突破10亿美元，Nexon每名员工所创造收益几乎是Zynga的两倍。

另外值得一提的是，由于不需要向Facebook支付30%的Facebook Credits抽成费用，Nexon利润远高于Zynga。据称该公司的利润与其最大竞争对手中国腾讯相差无几（游戏邦注：腾讯在2010年利润率达50%）。但由于税收和市场营销成本增长，该公司在今年3月财报指出，其利润率已下降至46.3%。

MapleStory Adventures(from maplefreak26.wordpress.com)

与腾讯一样，Nexon也刚在北美和西欧市场起步，它最大的市场在韩国，其次就是中国，但发展速度最快的却是北美市场。Nexon在不久前发布了首款Facebook游戏《MapleStory Adventures》，在测试阶段约有3万1千名玩家购买了36.3万件游戏道具（游戏邦注：该游戏在测试阶段并未使用Facebook Credits系统，玩家主要通过游戏积分来购得道具，实际金钱交易数量应该更少，所以这里的数据仅能反映其用户粘性）。

4）据DigiTimes报道，亚马逊准备在今年第三季度发布一款未知名的平板电脑。知情者透露该公司将在首发季度推出100万至120万部设备，虽然该设备的型号仍是个未解之谜，但外观很可能与Nook Color更为接近，而非与iPad相似。

amazon tablet(from intomobile)

DigiTimes指出，非iPad的平板电脑出货量将从今年第二季度的300万至350万部，增加至第三季度的700万至720万部，而苹果在同一时期将向富士康下单制造1400万1500万部iPad。

5）据《华尔街日报》报道，苹果日前又针对“App Store”一词的使用权向独立应用商店GetJar发出通知，要求对方停止使用该词汇。而GetJar则于近日发表博文指出，苹果这一要求明显缺乏根据，理由包括：

GetJar(from blog.rightmobilephone.com)

·苹果是否拥有“App Store”商标所有权这一点仍然存疑。苹果在2008年向USPTO（美国专利商标局）申请注册该商标但却被后者驳回。

·苹果一向难以接受他人的拒绝，所以不停地提交注册申请，只要没有其他人反对这一申请，他们就可以造成一种“先入为主”的注册假象。但实际上微软等公司已经反对苹果这一行为。

·GetJar自2009年初期以来就一直在新闻稿、与用户打交道、交易、分析等情况下使用“App Store”一词汇，而苹果直到现在才给GetJar发出通知。另外GetJar也并没有在自己的品牌和标语上使用“App Store”。

6）据彭博社报道，在AdMob、Millennial Media和Greystripe等价格更为低廉的移动广告服务的竞争之下，苹果iAd正逐渐失势，打算将原来的最高收费标准下调70%，即把原先的100万美元广告交易费用降至30万美元左右。

Apple-iAd(from geeky-gadgets.com)

不过苹果iAd市场行情依旧高涨，在第一年共在7个国家推出了100多个广告项目，未来数月还将开展50项广告推广活动。

7）YouGov最新的平板电脑市场调查结果表明，苹果iPad在用户期望值、品牌知名度、价格方面的表现仍然最为强势，其他竞争者需在定价等方面重新调整策略，方有望与iPad一决高下。

iPad(from recombu.com)

调查发现有些平板电脑售价与iPad 2相当，有些产品定价甚至高于入门级的iPad 2（游戏邦注：即16 GB，仅限WiFi模式的iPad 2），例如HTC的Flyer、LG的Optimus Pad。YouGov技术及通信副总监Russell Feldman表示，其他平板电脑要与iPad竞争，就必须认真考虑产品定价策略，而零售商也应该向制造商传达这一信息——假如产品售价高于iPad，那就只会给苹果加分而已。

77%的自称想买一部平板电脑的受访者表示，他们最想要的是iPad 2；居于其次的是iPad 1，然后才是三星的首款Android平板电脑Galaxy Tab。HTC Flyer的支持率为3%，黑莓PlayBook则是2%。

8）美国手机应用盈利解决方案供应商W3i日前推出一项新型每日免费应用推广服务（游戏邦注：它是一个手机应用广告网络，简称MAAP），支持开发者在自己的游戏中展示W3i每日推荐的免费应用，然后根据用户的下载量抽成一定比例的费用。开发者可自主控制是否在游戏中展示这些条幅广告、插播式广告或者其他类型的广告。

W3i Free App Promotion(from insidemobileapps)

该公司联合创始人Ryan Weber表示，这是W3i应对苹果限制App Store非自然下载行为所推出的新措施，这些广告价格具有可协商的灵活性，价格可能在2500美元左右，比另一项类似服务Free App A Day略低（游戏邦注：据称Free App A Day上的一项广告推广活动费用约5000美元）。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）Zynga’s latest acquisition is mobile enterprise and services outfit Five Mobile

by Jon Jordan

A week on from its IPO registration, it’s business as usual for Zynga when it comes to acquiring more studios.

After all, even pre-IPO, it has almost $1 billion in cash and equivalents, and had pointed to expansion of its mobile expertise as a key future strategy.

Northern exposure

In this context, Zynga’s 15th acquisition in 13 months is Toronto-based app developer Five Mobile, now known as Zynga Toronto.

Terms of the deal weren’t revealed, but as well as the team, including the four co-founders – Ameet Shah, Jeff Zakrzewski, Oliver Tabay, and Troy Hubman – Zynga is acquiring some of the company’sassets and IP.

Zynga says it’s bought the company because of its work across a multitude of platforms and handsets for ‘some of the largest media and technology companies in North America’.

“As a key component of our mobile efforts moving forward, Zynga Toronto will help position us in a hotbed of mobile development talent,” it explained.（source:pocketgamer）

2）Mobile tech to overtake PS3, 360 soon

by Wesley Yin-Poole

Mobile phones will in two years be more powerful than the current generation of consoles, programming legend John Carmack has said.

But, as of now, the power of mobile tech is “exaggerated”, the id Software co-founder told IndustryGamers.

“It’s unquestionable that within a very short time, we’re going to have portable cell phones that are more powerful than the current-gen consoles,” Carmack predicted “People have exaggerated the relative powers – the iPad2 is not more powerful than the 360. It’s still a factor of a couple weaker.

“But the fact that it’s gotten that close that fast – that means that almost certainly, two years from now, there will be mobile devices more powerful than what we’re doing all these fabulous games on right now.” （source:eurogamer）

3）Excited about Zynga’s IPO? Get Ready for Korea’s Nexon

Sarah Lacy

Silicon Valley loves to dismiss Asian companies as nothing more than copycats who thrive, particularly in China, because the government protects them and punishes Western competitors. Even when the businesses in question are dramatically different in practice and scale, they are described as the “eBay of China”, “The Google of China” and “the YouTube of China,” not Alibaba, Baidu and YouKu. I’ve argued why this is mostly nonsense before.

But the starkest argument that Asia does indeed innovate may be found in the world of free-to-play games and virtual goods. This is a new market we’re in a lather about here with the impending $1 billion IPO of Zynga, but one that is much larger and more than ten years old in Asia.

And one of the industry’s pioneers, Nexon, is also said to be readying itself for an IPO. Nexon was started in Korea, but more recently moved its headquarters to Tokyo. And get this: It has higher revenues, far better margins and dramatically better user engagement statistics than Zynga, even if most average Western investors have never heard of it. No big deal, because it’s likely to file somewhere in Asia according to sources familiar with the matter, not on the NYSE or the Nasdaq. And in Korea, China and Japan, Nexon most definitely doesn’t have the problem of being unknown.

Nexon is a 17-year-old company with 1.14 billion cumulative registered users and 3000 employees. In 2009, it reported revenues of $643 million– just north of Zynga’s 2010 revenues. And we hear from people close to the company, Nexon has been growing revenues at about 30% per year for the last five years. That would put 2010 revenues around $900 million, and revenues in 2011 on pace to comfortably break $1 billion. That’s impressive growth considering Nexon’s size, age and penetration in its home market, and it means Nexon’s revenue-per-employee is almost double Zynga’s.

What’s more: Nexon’s margins are far better than Zynga’s because they don’t have to pay the 30% Facebook Credits fee on purchases. Our source says the margins are in the range of their largest competitor, Chinese juggernaut Tencent which had 50% margins in 2010. Increased tax and marketing expenses caused margins to fall to 46.3% in its March 2011 earnings report. Still, for what’s essentially a media business, those margins are pretty enviable.

And like Tencent, Nexon is starting to eye North America and Western Europe for growth. Nexon’s biggest market is in Korea, closely followed by its business in China. But its fastest growing market is North America. Nexon is growing more than 50% a year here, albeit off a pretty small base. Nine days ago it launched a private beta on its first Facebook game, a version of its popular MapleStory Adventures. (Featuring that world-weary pig above.) Some 31,000 players have “purchased” 363,000 items over that period. Purchase is in quote marks because the company isn’t actually using Facebook Credits during the beta period, so the purchases are being made from game play points. Actual monetary purchases will almost certainly be less. Still, it gives you an idea of the engagement going on. The game opens to the public July 27.（source:techcrunch）

4）Amazon rumoured to be readying 1.2 million tablets for Q3 2011 launch

by Keith Andrew

Despite coverage suggesting the contrary when iPad was unveiled, there’s been little evidence to suggest the rise of the tablet has damaged eReader sales.

Indeed, if anything, the launch of an app store on Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color suggests there’s more chance of consumers heading the other way – a trend DigiTimes reports Amazon is looking to exploit.

eReading the market

The site reports Amazon is preparing to launch an unnamed tablet in Q3 2011, tying in with previous rumours pointing towards the release of an LCD Android device this August.

However, the headline news is that the company is preparing between 1 million and 1.2 million units for the tablet’s debut quarter.

“Among orders from non-iPad vendors, those from Amazon are said to be the most positive, with demand for touch panels likely to reach two million units for the August-September period,” DigiTimes states, citing an unnamed industry source.

It’s not known what form the device will take, though the suggestion is it will more closely resembled the Nook Color, rather than iPad.

DigiTimes adds that, as a whole, shipments of non-iPad tablets are likely to rise from 3-3.5 million units in Q2 2011 to 7-7.2 million in the following quarter, whilte Apple will take orders of 14-15 million iPad 2 manufacturer Foxconn across the same period.（source:pocketgamer）

5）Apple, GetJar fight over “App Store”

By: Marin Perez

Apple continues to try and keep other companies from using the term “App Store” and it just sent GetJar a cease-and-desist letter for using that term, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Apple has been quite successful with its App Store, as it just recently reached more than 15 billion downloads and has been raking in the cash (as well as giving developers a boatload of money).

The company is also determined to trademark “App Store” so that other companies can’t use it, which is why we’ve seen companies like RIM use BlackBerry World for its app distribution marketplace.

GetJar, the world’s largest independent app store, isn’t hearing that noise and it fired back in a blog post:

It’s questionable whether Apple even owns the term “App Store” to begin with. If you look at the case being battled out between Apple and other 3rd parties and really do some homework you’ll see that:

They filed to register App Store in 2008 with the USPTO and were denied the mark.

Since Apple has a tough time with the word “NO” they filed again and we’re given a “provisional” registration under the condition that they could TM App Store if nobody opposed the registration. Well it just so happens that Microsoft among others did oppose it.

So for Apple to be going around threatening or suing others on the basis of a tenuous “ownership” claim of a generic name that isn’t 100% theirs is seriously “taking-the-piss” as the English would say and we would probably use more colorful language here in the US.

GetJar has been using the term “App Store” in press releases and in it’s positioning with consumers, trade, analysts and press since early 2009 and it’s only now that Apple has decided to send us a C&D. That said, GetJar does not use the term in it’s brand/slogan or strapline.（source:intomobile）

6）Apple cuts iAd rates

by Tim Green

Slashes up to 70 per cent off in response to cheaper rivals.

Bloomberg has reported that Apple is losing out to other ad networks such as AdMob, Millennial Media and Greystripe, which address more devices and are starting to offer the kind of rich media options that iAd introduced.

Apple has certainly been expensive. It was widely reported a year ago when iAd launched that clients were being charged $1 million or more to run campaigns despite the limited reach of a single-device network.

Today it’s been reported that these campaigns are going for as little as $300,000.

Bloomberg says that the ad exchanges Mobclix disclosed that app makers are getting between five and 15 percent of their space filled by the Apple system.

Apple remains bullish, reminding that iAd launched more than 100 campaigns in seven countries in its first year, and that 50 campaigns will be joining the platform in the coming months.（source:mobile-ent）

7）YouGov Survey: iPad rivals ‘must rethink prices’ to beat tablet leader

By Mat Smith

Tablet entrants must readjust their pricing if they want to dethrone the iPad as best-selling tablet.

That’s according YouGov’s latest survey on tablets, where the iPad still dominates in buzzword categories like consumer awareness, and consideration.

Several tablets have matched the cost of the iPad 2, and some are priced significantly higher than the cheapest entry-level iPad 2, the 16GB WiFi-only model. This includes the likes of HTC’s Flyer, and LG’s Optimus Pad.

YouGov say that even matching the entry-level prices may not be enough, despite specification variations like storage space, 3G connectivity and screen-size. YouGov’s previous research put the ‘tipping point’ price of the tablet at around £250, less than most high-end smartphones.

Russell Feldman, Associate Director for Technology and Telecoms at YouGov said that: “Apple’s iPad leads the way in the tablet market and not just in terms of sales success but also in consumer expectation, awareness and consideration levels.

“So in order to successfully compete, brands need to seriously re-think price. Retailers also need to convince these manufacturers that outpricing the brand leader will not help their cause.”

Non-Apple brands fared badly in YouGov’s latest poll, with 77% of “those keen to buy a tablet” wanting an iPad 2.

Next, the second and third most popular tablets are its predecessor, the iPad 1 and Samsung’s first Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab. Other manufacturers were lucky to get a few percentage points, with 3% of prospective tablet customers wanting HTC’s Flyer, and 2% interested in BlackBerry’s PlayBook.

“Google (Android) also need to change their strategy in the tablet market. Google’s success in the smartphone market is in part due to the OS being available to both low and high end manufacturers meaning it is accessible to all,” said Feldman.（source:recombu）

8）W3i Bets on Free App Promotion as Developers Look Beyond Incentivized Installs

By Kim-Mai Cutler

After Apple cracked down on paying for downloads through offer walls in games, developers and monetization companies have been hunting for ways to make up for lost revenue.

W3i, a Minneapolis-based mobile app monetization company, is getting heavily into daily free app promotions. It launched its own free-app-a-day service earlier this year called AppAllStar, and now the company is trying to grow the project by federating free app promotions out into other games. They’re calling it the mobile app ad network (or MAAP for short).

Developers can show W3i’s daily offers for free apps in their games and earn a cut of revenue for every download they drive. W3i didn’t break out the revenue per install a publisher will make, except to say that it would be a “strong majority of the revenue share.” The company said they’re open to negotiating it, depending on the publisher. Developers can control whether they want to show banners, interstitials or other types of units.

“This is our response to the shutdown,” said Ryan Weber, the company’s co-founder. “Developers have had their monetization opportunities dry up as a result of Apple ban on incentivized installs and they’ve been calling us trying to figure out what to do instead. A lot of them are trying to do banner ads but that’s not performing at the level they were used to.”

On the advertising side, W3i also said prices are negotiable. In the beginning they did flat fees to get market traction, but now prices are a bit higher. The company said a ballpark range might run around $2,500, which is a bit less than Free App A Day, another similar service which we’ve heard costs about $5,000 to run a campaign with.（source:insidemobileapps）