1）据venturebeat报道，移动分析公司Flurry首席执行官Simon Khalaf在最近的Flurry Source 13大会上发言表示，美国目前的iOS和Android用户已达1.81亿，中国则是1.67亿，英国为3500万，日本为2800万。虽然美国iOS和Android设备激活量仍然最为领先，但中国在去年的设备激活量也已增长至293%，越南增幅达269%，哥伦比亚达260%。

从平均每天的使用时长来看，美国用户对应用程序的使用时间达127分钟，而看电视时间为168分钟，上网时间为70分钟。在2010年美国用户平均每天上网时间为70分钟，应用程序使用时间为66分钟，看电视时间为162分钟。

smartphones(from smaato.com)

自2008年以来，应用收益复合年增长率已达129%，原先是应用广告收益居于首位，其次是虚拟商品，第三是免费增值游戏。但现在虚拟商品收益已经远超广告收益；2012年移动应用收益已达180亿美元。

人们在智能手机游戏上的投入时间占比43%，在社交网络上的投入时间占比26%，在娱乐内容上的投入时间占10%，在实用工具上的投入时间为10%。在2012年，用户对移动社交应用的访问量增长了387%，对媒体娱乐内容的访问量增长268%，对游戏访问量增长107%。

微交易是应用收益增长的主要动力。在2012年9月份，在iOS收益前1000名的免费游戏中，有53%交易量的日活跃用户平均收益低于25美分（在一年之前，这一比例高达82%）；有32%交易量的这一数值介于25-75美分（一年前这一比例为15%）；目前有15%交易量的这一数值低于75美分（一年前为3%）。

在用户投入移动社交应用的时间中，Facebook等社交网络占比47%；有29%时间投入通信应用，19%投入视频和照片分享应用，5%投入约会应用；媒体娱乐应用的使用高峰期则与晚间电视黄金时段相似。

2）据Techcrunch报道，洛杉矶初创公司Scopely（计划打造一个移动游戏平台及发行网络）日前聘请前Zynga总经理、前Playdom和迪士尼元老Andy Kleinman任公司首席商务官，后者将负责监管公司业务发展事务，以及公司同第三方及媒体品牌的合作伙伴关系。在此之前，Kleinman还是拉美社交游戏公司Vostu联合创始人，后来曾加入Three Melons（后被Playdom所收购）。

scopely-logo(from summit)

Scopely最近推出了一个支持外部开发者使用Scopely发行网络推出游戏的项目，其服务将面临DeNA、GREE等强大的竞争对手。据其首席执行官Walter Driver所称，公司目前已有500万MAU，并且已经处于盈利状态，现有员工超过40人。

3）据Techcrunch报道，应用搜索引擎公司Quixey最近聘请前Zynga高管Guru Gowrappan任公司产品执行副总裁，后者在Zynga曾有“协调者”的美称，主导了Newtoy以及OMGPOP的收购交易。

Guru Gowrappan(from thunderfeeds.com)

此外，Gowrappan在Zynga日本业务运营中也同样发挥了作用，曾任Zynga日本工作室首席运营官，并面向日本市场发布了三款游戏，并在2011年与Zynga首席执行官和首席技术官共同主导公司IPO过程。在此之前，Gowrappan还曾在雅虎就职。

4）据gamasutra报道，索尼打算出售位于纽约的美国总部，售价为11亿美元。索尼表示扣除偿还与该大楼有关的债务之后，公司将可通过这笔交易获得7.7亿美元的现金，其中有6.85亿美元将记录为营业收入，预计这次出售将于三月份结束。

sony-building(from slashgear.com)

5）据Techcruch报道，ABI Research最近预测苹果iPhone今年智能手机市场份额将超过五分之一（22%），三星市场份额则从原来的8%增长至30%以上（目前Android设备在三星所有智能手机出货量中占比90%）。

smartphones(from cnet.com)

预计到2014年，智能手机在所有移动设备出货量中将占据半数市场份额；预计到2018年，智能手机设备出货量将达24亿美元，在所有手机出货量中占比69%；届时售价低于250美元的低端智能手机出货量所占市场份额将达62%。

预计到2018年，LTE移动设备在所有手机出货量中占比将超过三分之一（35%），在所有智能手机出货量中将占半数市场份额，使LTE成为史上发展最迅速的WWAN技术。（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）The mobile app economy is exploding (so, what else is new?)

Dean Takahashi

SAN FRANCISCO – Simon Khalaf is a mobile believer. The Flurry chief executive built a case for the explosion in mobile devices and apps in a talk Thursday at the Flurry Source 13 conference in San Francisco. If your company hasn’t gotten on board the mobile bandwagon, then you’re pretty late, Khalaf argued.

The U.S. still leads in iOS and Android devices with 181 million units, compared to 167 million in China, 35 million in the United Kingdom, and 28 million in Japan. While still dominated by America, mobile is a global phenomenon, Khalaf said. China grew 293 percent in iOS and Android device activations in the last year. Vietnam grew 269 percent, and Colombia grew 260 percent.

“You go to any airport and any country,” Khalaf said. “It feels like the PC is gone.”

In terms of minutes of use per day, mobile app consumption in the U.S. has reach 127 minutes, compared to 168 minutes for TV and 70 minutes for web browsing. In 2010, it was 70 minutes for web browsing, 66 minutes for mobile apps, and 162 minutes for the TV.

“These apps are challenging television,” Khalaf said.

App revenues have grown at a 129 percent compound annual growth rate since 2008, starting first with ad revenue and then virtual goods purchases in free-to-play games. Now virtual goods revenue is significantly higher than ad revenue. That revenue ramp is steeper than the ramp in revenues for web sites (see graph at right).

“This industry did not exist in 2008, but in the last year, $18 billion in revenue was generated from mobile apps,” Khalaf said. “It’s taken the web about 16 years to get huge, but mobile is matching that in about four.”

People spend about 43 percent of their time with smartphones playing games. But social networking has come on strong, accounting for 26 percent of time spent. Entertainment accounts for 10 percent, while utilities are another 10 percent. In the past year, session time in social apps has increased 387 percent on mobile devices. Media and entertainment has grown 268 percent, and games have grown 107 percent.

Microtransactions are fueling the revenue growth. In September, 53 percent of transactions were under 25 cents in terms of average revenue per daily active user in the top 1,000 grossing iOS free-to-play games. A year ago, 82 percent of transactions were under 25 cents. About 32 percent of transactions are 25 cents to 75 cents, compared to 15 percent a year ago. And 15 percent of transactions are now above 75 cents, compared to 3 percent a year ago.

Social networks such as Facebook account for 47 percent of the time spent in mobile social apps. But 29 percent of the time is spent in messaging apps, 19 percent is video and photo sharing, and 5 percent is dating. For media and entertainment apps, prime time mirrors the prime time for television viewing in the early evening. In closing, Khalaf said, “Wake up and disrupt something.”（source：venturebeat）

2）Another Former Zynga GM, Andy Kleinman, Lands At Scopely As Chief Business Officer

Kim-Mai Cutler

With mid- and senior-level managers trickling out of Zynga over the past year, other startups — both inside and outside of the gaming world — have become beneficiaries.

Scopely, a Los Angeles-based startup that’s trying to build a mobile gaming platform and publishing network, just took on Andy Kleinman, a former Zynga general manager, Playdom and Disney veteran, to be its chief business officer. He’ll lead business and corporate development and pursue partnerships with third-party developers and brands.

Scopely recently launched a publishing program where outside developers can produce games alongside the company and use their distribution network. It faces an incredibly crowded field of well-capitalized competitors like DeNA and GREE along with several larger, mid-sized game developers that have started to get into publishing like Pocket Gems. CEO Walter Driver says that the company has 5 million monthly active users and it’s profitable with just over 40 employees.

Kleinman co-founded Vostu, a Latin American social gaming company, and later joined Three Melons, a studio that was acquired by Playdom (which was later acquired by Disney). He’s an active adviser and investor in several Latin American and Los Angeles-based startups like Radical Studios, Urbita, Ideame, Tactivos, Fanwards and others.

“At first after Zynga, I had wanted to take a break from gaming,” he said. “But I became an adviser to the company over the past six months and the more I got to know Walter and the team better, I started to be excited about the company. I started thinking that I wanted to get back into a startup environment after working for big companies for several years.”（source：techcrunch）

3）Former Zynga ‘Fixer’ Guru Gowrappan Heads To App Search Startup Quixey As EVP Of Products

Ryan Lawler

App search startup Quixey is bringing in some senior management help to grow its business. The company has hired former Zynga executive Guru Gowrappan as its new executive vice president of products.

Gowrappan held several roles at Zynga during his time there. Nicknamed “The Fixer,” he led M&A integration during purchases that included Newtoy, which brought Words With Friends to Zynga, as well as last spring’s acquisition of OMGPOP.

Gowrappan was also instrumental in Zynga’s Japan operations, where he held the title of COO for that international division and helped launch three new games in the market. He also worked with the CEO and CFO during Zynga’s IPO process in 2011.

Prior to Zynga, Gowrappan had worked on several monetization and global initiatives at Yahoo. He joined the web giant as part of its acquisition of Overture and worked on more than 500 projects and launches through Yahoo Media, Listings, and various regional products. At Yahoo he held various roles in operations, M&A, strategy and product execution.

With all that experience at firms like Zynga and Yahoo, what attracted him to becoming a part of Quixey?

Gowrappan compared today’s app search world to where web search was before Google took over. That is, most app search and discovery is done through directory structures by navigating through various categories on Google Play and the Apple App Store to find what you want. This is akin to the directory structure of the web that Yahoo and others envisioned before Google made full web search better. According to Gowrappan, Quixey wants to be the Google of app search, as that becomes ever more important.

Quixey CEO Tomer Kagan says the company is nearing 100 million queries a month. It also has a number of partners that are providing valuable data points to improve its algorithm. Those include Ask.com, Singapore-based carrier Starhub, Chinese mobile browsers Maxthon and Boat Browser, Applorer, and the Skyfire Horizon browser toolbar that is preloaded on AT&T phones. The result is that Quixey has a lot more data to go on, according to Gowrappan.

With him on board, look for Quixey to boost monetization over the next few months. We’ll keep you posted on new developments.（source：techcrunch）

4）Sony sells its U.S. headquarters for $1.1 billion

By Mike Rose

As part of its efforts to turn its ongoing money troubles around, Sony has sold its New York City-based U.S. headquarters to a commercial properties consortium for $1.1 billion.

After repaying any debt related to the Madison Avenue Building, Sony says that it will receive around $770 million in cash proceeds from the sale, with about $685 million of that recorded as operating income. The sale is expected to close in March.

This follows the news that credit rating agency Fitch Ratings downgraded Sony to “junk” just before the holidays, as the company continues to rack up notable fiscal losses, due in part to its PlayStation business. （source：gamasutra）

5）Apple’s Smartphone Marketshare Expected To Peak At 22% In 2013, Says ABI Research

Natasha Lomas

iPhone-maker Apple’s share of the smartphone market will peak this year — at just over a fifth (22 per cent) of the global market, says analyst ABI Research. Apple’s share will then remain flat through to 2018 as mobile maker Samsung continues to dominate.  The prediction comes from ABI’s latest Mobile Handset Markets report.

“Barring an unlikely collapse in Samsung’s business, even Apple will be chasing Samsung’s technology, software, and device leadership in 2013 through the foreseeable future,” commented senior analyst Michael Morgan in a statement.

ABI notes that Samsung has grown its share of the global smartphone market from eight per cent to more than 30 per cent in 2012. The Korean mobile maker has leaned very heavily on Google’s Android OS thus far — Android currently accounts for 90 per cent of its smartphone shipments — but the analyst points out that the future smartphone OS landscape will likely be “heavily influenced” by how much Samsung decides to focus on other elements in its OS portfolio: namely its homegrown OS Bada; its open source collaboration with Intel Tizen; and Microsoft’s Windows Phone.

Samsung has recently been showing signs of wanting to diversify its OS distribution to reduce its reliance on Android. Earlier this month it confirmed it will be launching Tizen-based devices this year.

Elsewhere in the report, ABI notes that smartphone shipments will account for half of all mobile handset shipments by 2014 — going on to become the largest handset segment in the world. By 2018, the analyst predicts that 2.4 billion smartphone handset shipments will account for 69 per cent of all handset shipments. It says growth in smartphone shipment penetration will be driven by the “rapidly growing low-cost smartphone segment” — aka low-cost Androids — and forecasts that smartphones with wholesale ASPs under $250 will account for 62 per cent of smartphone shipments by 2018.

Meanwhile LTE handsets will account for just over a third (35 per cent) of all handset shipments and half of smartphone shipments in 2018 — making LTE the fastest-growing WWAN technology in history, according to ABI.

That’s not necessarily a sign of user adoption of LTE though; ABI observes that just because a phone has an LTE chip in it, does not mean its owner is making use of LTE. “With the successful launch of the iPhone 5 and competing LTE handsets from other leading OEMs, LTE handsets will be found in the hands of many consumers who do not even have access to LTE networks,” says senior practice director Jeff Orr in a statement. “Apple is demonstrating to the market that LTE is not the only reason to buy a premium handset.”（source：techcrunch）