1）AppNation最近发布报告预测，2013年应用市场规模将达720亿美元，2017年增长至1510亿美元。

报告指出除了利润之外，所有年龄段的用户使用率以及总体下载量也在不断增长。口头传播已成为60%平板电脑用户了解新应用的主要渠道，其次是应用商店评价（40%），第三是应用下载量排行榜（35%）。

多数45岁以下的移动设备用户每周都会多次使用视频应用，但音乐和游戏应用使用率仍然高于视频应用。

70%用户每天都会多次查看电子邮件，其他使用率较高的分别是浏览器、通信应用和社交网络。

chart_1(from Appnation)

chart_2(from Appnation)

chart_3(from Appnation)

chart_4(from Appnation)

2）CB Insights最近报告指出，风险投资者对手机应用开发公司兴趣增长，仅2013年就已在36项交易中就投入2.62亿美元，这一数据在2012全年整个移动开发领域融资占比59%左右。仅在6月份，就有6家手机应用开发公司获得较大数额的资金。

除此之外，风投在去年向开发工具领域注入6.46亿美元，同比上年增长77%。

3）据pocketgamer报道，Distimo最近发布的6月份报告显示，《Clash of Clans》最近在日本App Store营收榜单位居前列，该游戏与日本iOS游戏收益冠军《Puzzle & Dragons》展开交叉推广合作之后，收益增加了3倍左右。

clash-of-clans-japan-2013(from distimo)

Distimo指出在7月份头6天中，《Clash of Clans》在日本收益已经相当于6月份收益的61%。在2013年6月期间，该游戏位居全球iOS游戏收益榜单第二名，仅次于King游戏《Candy Crush Saga》。

4）据gamasutra报道，社交游戏公司Kabam日前宣布其市值达7亿美元（游戏邦注：《华尔街日报》报道称该公司最近出售了价值3850万美元的私人股票，这些股票原先由公司高级管理层等员工持有，所以本次交易受益者是员工而非公司）。该公司在2012年凭借其手机游戏战略取得不俗成就，总收益超过1.8亿美元，同比上年增长70%，计划在2013年实现3亿美元收益。

Kabam(from jobs.github.com)

5）据gamezebo报道，Rovio日前宣布将于9月19日推出《愤怒的小鸟：星球大战2》，该版游戏将包括一系列取材于The Phantom Menace、Attack of the Clones以及Revenge of the Sith的场景和角色。

ab-star-wars-ii-1(from pocketgamer)

该公司游戏执行副总裁Jami Laes表示，《愤怒的小鸟：星球大战》自发布以来下载量已超过1亿次；新版游戏还将为玩家引进孩之宝的Telepods技术，支持玩家使用《Skylanders>实体玩具以及智能手机/平板电脑上的摄像头将角色和道具“传送”到《愤怒的小鸟：星球大战2》游戏世界中。

6）市场调研公司Appinions最近发布调查结果显示，微软是本届E3展会上最受关注的主机制造商（游戏邦注：其调查结果取自4月27日至6月27日的互联网会话，以及600万个数据源的分析）。

xbox-wins(from appinions)

Appinions发现微软Xbox One在该时期是占主导地位的网络话题，其次是索尼，之后是任天堂。

top-three(from appinions)

Xbox的媒体曝光度远超过索尼PS 4，在2788发布来源中，50%独家报道微软产品，仅有10%专门提到了索尼，还有41%均提到了索尼和微软。但索尼在DRM（数字版权管理）领域方面的得分略高于微软。

调查还发现，游戏行业最有影响力的人物是博客主，在十大最具影响力人物中，博客主占据7个席位。Jack Tretton（索尼电脑娱乐美国）是最具影响力的行业高管（排名第四），而Don Mattrick（前微软游戏业务主管）排名第六，Michael Pachter（Wedbush Securities分析师）则排名第七，他是这十大人物中唯一的分析师。

前十大最具影响力的公司分别是微软、索尼、EA、任天堂和Konami，前十大高管分别是Jack Tretton、Don Mattrick、Mark Pincus、岩田聪、Larry Hryb（微软Xbox Live编程主管）。（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）App economy to double from $72bn to $151bn in the next four years

by Phil Tottman

Email, browser and social networks lead the charge for mobile app usage.

AppNation’s State of the App Economy report claims the app economy will double from around $72 billion in 2013 to $151 billion in 2017.

Commerce-enabled apps will be the largest driver of the figures, followed by revenue from downloads, in-app ads and purchase of virtual goods.

The app analyst’s data displays how the app market growth is accelerating, not just in profit, but also in usage from all age ranges and general downloads.

Word of mouth has proven to be the top way that tablet owners learn about new apps, according to 60 per cent of consumers, with app store reviews in second at 40 per cent and around 35 per cent getting apps that are in the download chart.

The majority of mobile device owners under 45 use video apps at least a few times a week, however, music and games apps are still ahead of video. Video is on the rise on smartphones and tablets due to improvements in mobile broadband speeds as well as the improvement of better video experiences.

Devices are most used for emails with 70 per cent of users checking at least a few times a day, closely followed by using a browser, messaging, surfing the web and social networking.

Have a look at the charts below for full breakdowns.（source：mobile-ent）

2）VCs invest $226 million in mobile app developers since beginning of 2013

Jonathan Espinosa

Venture capitalists are looking toward mobile app development start-ups as their next saving grace. The rapidly growing space of mobile app development is leading to race to find and boost funding for the companies that develop these apps.

CB Insights has found that mobile app development companies have invested $262 million across 36 deals in 2013 alone. The pace seems to be picking up quickly as this accounts for 59 percent of the funding in the overall mobile development space in 2012. Just in June, six mobile app development companies received significant rounds of financing.

Venture capitalists aren’t the only people looking to make an impact in the space. The acquisition of Parse by Facebook and IBM’s acquisition of Worklight mark strategic interest in the space by many different companies. It is not just app development that is seeing a significant boost, but venture capital funding to the broader developer tools category hit $646M in the last year, jumping 77% year-over-year. This growth looks to be part of a larger trend and increased interest in the developer tools space.（source：insidemobileapps）

3）Chart of the Week: How localisation tripled Clash of Clans’ Japanese revenue

by Jon Jordan

As listed in Distimo’s app store roundup for June, Clash of Clans is doing even better than before.

Part of this is because it’s leaping up the Japanese top grossing charts.

The game was updated on 17 June with support for the Japanese language.

This came on top of a cross promotion with Puzzle & Dragons – Japan’s top grossing iOS game during 2013.

The end result has been a tripling of revenue.

Tokyo riser

As Distimo says ‘During the first six days of July, Clash of Clans already generated 61% of the total revenue it generated in June in Japan’.

It will be interesting to see what impact this has on Clash of Clans’ global iOS revenue ranking when it’s had a full month of revenue.

During June 2013, it was the #2 top grossing iOS game globally, just beaten by King’s Candy Crush Saga.（source：pocketgamer）

4）Social games company Kabam valued at $700M

By Mike Rose

Newsbrief: As a small group of investors moves in to launch a secondary offering for common stock for social games company Kabam, the company says it is now valued at $700 million.

Kabam had a great 2012, thanks to its mobile game focus, making more than $180 million in gross revenue — up 70 percent compared to the previous year.

And Kabam’s CEO Kevin Chou said that the company is currently beating its 2013 fiscal targets, thanks to successes such as the recently-released Fast and Furious 6 for mobile.（source：
gamasutra）

5）Rovio announces Angry Birds Star Wars II and Skylanders-style physical toys

by Anthony Usher

On Friday, Finnish developer Rovio teased a brand-new Angry Birds title set – once again – in George Lucas’s infamous Star Wars galaxy.

A few minutes ago, Rovio announced Angry Birds Star Wars II, which – as we expected – will feature plenty of locations and characters, ripped straight from The Phantom Menace, Attack of the
Clones, and Revenge of the Sith.

“Angry Birds Star Wars was a blockbuster hit for us and Lucasfilm with over 100 million downloads since its release. We are thrilled to be able to introduce the exciting next chapter in the

Angry Birds Star Wars saga to our fans around the world,” Jami Laes, Rovio’s executive VP of Games, said.

“Some of the most amazing character additions are versions of young Anakin, Mace Windu, and Darth Maul. Hasbro’s Telepods technology also provides a great way to extend the experience
beyond the app and bring a whole new dimension to the gameplay.”

Hasbro’s Telepods technology, which works like the Portal that comes packaged with the Skylanders games, will allow you to use physical toys and the camera on your smartphone or tablet to transport characters and power-ups into Angry Birds Star Wars II.

According to Rovio, over 30 different physical toys will be available at the game’s launch in September.

Rovio will release Angry Birds Star Wars II into the wild on September 19th. Oh, and you can finally play as the evil pig empire. Did we mention that? Oink.（source：pocketgamer）

6）Did Microsoft lose the war of attention at E3? Think again (exclusive)

Dean Takahashi

In the press, Microsoft got clobbered at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) as critics said that Sony’s PlayStation 4 appeared to have a better show than Microsoft’s Xbox One game console. But a study of opinions on the Internet by market researcher Appinions shows that Microsoft came out of gaming’s biggest event as the most talked about console maker.

Appinions sifts through the Internet to discover the influential conversations on topics such as gaming. Based on an analysis of 60 days of Internet conversations and six million sources of data from April 27 to June 27, Microsoft dominated.

Influence of the top three console makers.

In some sense, this is not necessarily winning the war of opinion. It’s more like winning the war of attention. Microsoft generated a lot more opinions, but if those opinions were negative toward Microsoft, then it would in fact lose the war of favorable opinion. That’s a subtlety that Appinions didn’t measure in this particular study.

Microsoft grabbed a lot of attention simply by making a big announcement on May 21 — well before the show and long after Sony’s February announcement of the PlayStation 4. Appinions tracked the “net influence score” (or the aggregate score of influencers’ capability to influence opinions of others) of the Big Three (Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft) console makers during that time and found that Xbox One dominated the conversation, followed by Sony and then followed distantly by Nintendo. Microsoft maintained its leadership in influence through the end of June, but Sony had a sharper bounce during E3 itself.

“Influencers are so important to the buyer’s journey because they are trusted,” said Larry Levy, the cofounder and chief executive of Appinions. “The effect they have on decision-making, which impacts a company’s bottom line and is substantial, which is why we empower brands in this specific area. This study shows brands and executives, especially in the console area, where they are, perhaps where they want to be and reveals the types of opinions and people that are the most influential. There’s power in that information.”

The Xbox brand had five times more exclusive coverage than Sony’s PlayStation 4. Of 2,788 publishing sources, 50 percent mentioned Microsoft exclusively while 10 percent mentioned Sony exclusively. About 41 percent mentioned both Sony and Microsoft together.

However, Sony scored some points when Microsoft began the (mostly negative) conversation about digital rights management (DRM). On May 21, when Microsoft announced the Xbox One, it said it would restrict how gamers could buy and sell used games. Appinions said that Sony hijacked the discussion about DRM at E3 when it announced that it would permit consumers to buy and sell physical games just as they have been accustomed to in the past. After the show, Microsoft backed off on its stance and then returned to dominating the conversation.

Appinions defines an “influencer” as a person, brand, or company that expresses a contextually relevant opinion that is meaningful enough to get others to respond. Influence is calculated based on the frequency of actions the opinions generate, the credibility of the publications in which the opinions appear, and diversity of publications carrying the opinions.

Unfortunately for Nintendo, the Wii U and the Wii consoles were pretty much shut out of the conversation — both before E3 and afterward. Microsoft’s Xbox brand was part of 62 percent of the opinions related to consoles registered in the month before E3. PlayStation was about 30 percent of the opinions in the same time frame.

The Wii was part of just 6 percent of the conversations after E3. Sony’s PlayStation was part of 35 percent, and Microsoft’s Xbox was part of 58 percent. About 17 percent of the opinions directly compared the PlayStation and the Xbox brands, but very few mentioned the Wii brand.

Appinions found that people talk most about consoles and handhelds beyond the level of sales those products account for in the industry. For instance, consoles and handhelds have a net influence score of 1,633, accounting for 75 percent of the conversations around games, compared to 47 percent of industry sales. PC, mobile, and social games are vastly underrepresented, considering those sectors account for about half of industry sales and only 25 percent of the conversations.

The study also found that the most influential people in the gaming industry were bloggers, with seven out of 10 top influencers. Jack Tretton, head of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, was the top executive influencer, coming in at No. 4 overall while Don Mattrick (then-head of Microsoft’s game business) was No. 6. Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Securities, was the only analyst in the top 10 at No. 7.

The top five influencers among the industry were Microsoft, Sony, Electronic Arts, Nintendo, and Konami. The top five executives were Jack Tretton, Don Mattrick, Mark Pincus (chief executive of Zynga), Satoru Iwata (president of Nintendo), and Larry Hryb (director of programming for Xbox Live at Microsoft).（source：venturebeat）