The App Scores use AppGenome, an app metadata engine that Appsfire has been building for the last two years. The engine aggregates hundreds of millions of data points on apps per week, helping power the Appsfire App Score. The App Score comes from three basic components, Rankings Score, Ratings Score, and Developer Score. Rankings deals with how an app sustains its spot in the rankings, Ratings keeps track of the consistency, frequency, and quality of rankings, and Developer ranks the reputation and success of the developer in question. The score also uses data from other review sites and publications as well as mentions on Twitter and Facebook.

Appsfire has created the App Score to because they feel that the current rankings and ratings systems are flawed and aren’t always completely honest. The rankings in the App Store only rank the top 200 apps (while 630,000 others are ignored), the rankings can easily be played with by marketers, new app ratings aren’t accurate, and even some reviews on iTunes are created by third-party services. The Appsfire App Score should be a great way to sort out to great from the good and the good from the complete junk in the App Store.

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Why is it that smartphones are suddenly increasing in social networking apps usage? Well, the growth of Twitter could be a huge part of this – in about a year, the service went from 140 million tweets per day to 340 million. That Apple integrated Twitter into iOS 5 couldn’t have hurt. Pinterest has become the third most-used social network on the internet behind Facebook and Twitter, yet doesn’t have an official mobile app. If they ever got on that, the number could go up. Perhaps even Google+ is contributing to the increase, if only slightly as it’s the eighth-ranked social network in the US.

As well, while Flurry posits that perhaps the gaming market has become saturated, and games are now competing for a set of users, the thing that needs to be remembered is that the overall number of users of smartphones is increasing. Dumbphone users who are transitioning to low-cost smartphones may not be as interested in games. As well, because these numbers are for smartphones only, there’s the potential that increased tablet usage could be cutting in to the desire to play smartphone games, even as overall usage of them increases.

So, with this release of information from Flurry, there’s only more questions that come up. What is the future of app usage? Is game usage truly on the decline? Time will tell if this is a down slope for gaming, or just a blip on the radar.

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MocoSpace has announced the results of their new “Y U Play?” study that tries to answer the question of just why people play mobile games, anyway? The answer for the majority of people appears to be just pure entertainment. 34% of people like to play mobile games because “the games are fun,” and 32% do it because they are bored, or want to kill time.

The interesting part of the data here is the way that a significant portion of the mobile gaming audience considers mobile games a distraction from boredom, more so than as a kind of entertainment source.

This may be why games that encourage short-term play sessions tend to do well on mobile in particular: because people are just looking for something to enjoy just when they’re trying to pass time, as much as a source of entertainment.

However, the number of people that are playing games for more pure gaming reasons still comprise a significant part as well, with an additional 10% playing games for the purpose of competition. So, the market of mobile gamers who want intense experiences should not be neglected either, because they do exist.

A variety of other responses were listed for why people play mobile games. 9% play to meet new people. 3% even play to flirt in the games, which is not something that most people would realize that is happening. Only 3% play because they are always on the go, though 6% play to try something new. Mobile gaming may not be a replacement for traditional gaming for those who are on the go, but does appear to represnet a significant concern for players.

As well, with about 25% of players enjoying mobile games because they can play with other people, social features may need to be something that game developers put an emphasis on – a lot of people enjoy games primarily to compete and communicate with other people, as much as they enjoy playing the games themselves.

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The numbers don’t lie: GAMEVIL is growing massively, having made 16.6 billion KRW ($14.3 million USD) in revenue, and a net profit of 5.2 billion KRW ($4.5 million USD) for the first quarter of 2012. Their income grew 160% from the past year’s same quarter, and net profit grew 105%.

In-app purchases were a large part of their revenue: 91% of revenue was from these purchases, especially as their flagship franchises like Zenonia and Baseball Superstars have gone from being paid titles supported by in-app purchases, to being entirely funded by them. Third party titles published by GAMEVIL, such as IDEABOX’s Plants War, are also a fundamental part of their business, and many of them are free to play as well. In fact, 11 of GAMEVIL’s 16 games scheduled to be released in the second quarter of 2012 are going to be developed by third-parties. They have a $10 million Partner Fund to help finance the development of these third-party titles.

GAMEVIL is making this transition as their business has seen a massive transition in the past few years. Where their games were once originating on feature phones in Asian markets, now 92% of their revenue comes from iOS and Android. As well, they’re shifting into the global market in a big way, as revenue from outside Korea grew by 473% year over year.

GAMEVIL has shown an ability to transition well in a market that is shifting regularly – and they have done this while simultaneously expanding their operation internationally. Other publishers have had difficulty shifting into the free-to-play space alone, while GAMEVIL is growing and adapting to multiple challenges at once.

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Of mobile gamers in the U.S., Newzoo reported that 69% played on smartphones while 21% played on tablets. The total of mobile gamers in the U.S. has increased from 75 million to 101 million (about a 35% increase). Within that American mobile gaming group, it’s clear that iOS gamers are significantly more profitable.

Paying American mobile gamers has gone up 35% to 37 million gamers. 36% of all mobile gamers are paying gamers. In America, gamers spend five times more money on iOS games than Android games. 28% of all smartphone gamers in America play on iPhones and another 18% play on the iPod Touch. The iPad has a huge portion of the tablet gamer’s space at 60% (12.7 million Americans). iOS accounted for 84% of the total mobile revenue for mobile games on iOS and Android. For both platforms, the majority of that money is coming from in-app purchases, not the purchases of the games themselves. 91% for both iOS and Android’s game revenue was from in-app.

Newzoo CEO, Peter Warman, attributes Apple’s successful monetization to the mandatory linking of credit card information to iTunes/App Store accounts,

“Apple requires users to connect their credit card information directly to their account, thus creating a seamless purchase experience. I can hardly imagine any other company in the world that would be able to get away with this…”

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The iPhone grew 88% year over year compared to Q4 2011, selling 35.1 million units in the quarter worldwide. The iPad in particular grew year over year compared to last year’s quarter by 151%. In fact, the iPad has now officially overtaken the iPod line as Apple’s second-biggest product. The initial sales of the third-generation iPad helped these numbers, and the price drop on the iPad 2 may have helped as well. Revenue from the iPad (and accessories) grew 132%.

iTunes as a whole, including the App Store, grew 35% from Q1 2011 to $1.9 billion. While the ratio of revenue from apps compared to other media types is unknown, there is evidence that the store is still growing, and that either more people are spending money, and/or that users are spending more money. Either is a good proposition for iOS developers.

While investors may be skeptical about the future of AAPL, what developers need to know is that people are still buying iPads and iPhones. They’re buying them more than they did a year ago. The market is still growing. As well, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer claims that Apple is selling iPads as fast as they can make them, so skepticism about the stock may be misplaced. Evidence is also out there that these iPad buyers aren’t just repeat buyers upgrading their old hardware – 25% of iPad buyers are actually buying their very first Apple device!

The iPod line, which includes iPod touches, was down 15% year-over-year. This decline could reverse next year if Apple winds up introducing a fifth-generation iPod touch, as they did not release a new model last year as they did with the iPhone. Or perhaps with the availability of cheaper iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 models, along with low-cost Android phones, the iPod touch is becoming a less desirable product. Of course, without knowing specific iPod touch numbers compared to the entire iPod sales numbers, the possibility also exists that the decline has been spurred on by the iPod nano and iPod Classic models.

Even as the iPad and tablets continue to change the computing world, Macs aren’t going away, as Mac sales were up 7% compared to last quarter. While this means that the Mac App Store is not likely going to be the kind of potential revenue generator that the iOS App Stores are, there are still people buying Macs.

All in all, Apple results paint a rosy picture for the company and for those who are trying to sell to new Apple users, as that population continues to increase.

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Phoenix Guild will be focused on creating multiplayer games in a post-PC world. Think MMOs on your iPhone and iPad. He plans on focusing on games that would appeal to core gamers. Sounds like just what we need in a world that has nearly reached the saturation point with variations on Farmville.

You may remember that Jason Citron with partner Danielle Cassley originally launched a few games under the Aurora Feint name on the App Store. Quickly extracting the multiplayer and social features of those games and expanding the company into the social gaming network space with OpenFeint. Aurora Feint was one of the apps available on the App Store on launch day and was the first review we published on 148Apps way back in July, 2008.

OpenFeint grew and grew and became the biggest third party social game service now with over 200 million users. It’s that network that attracted the attention of GREE. OpenFeint is expected to be the core piece of the GREE social game system currently under development.

Phoenix Guild is just now looking for $1M in initial funding and currently exists of just Mr. Citron. Though with funding he will likely add a few more passionate people to the company which he hopes to grow considerably. In his vision of a post-PC world, he believes that his company has the possibility to grow to be the biggest games company around. Big words from Mr. Citron, but perhaps this is the time for disruption of just this sort in the gaming space.

No timeline from Phoenix Guild on their first release. But if funding is secured quickly, I would hope to see it before the end of the year.

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AppStori is a community and funding platform for crowd funding resources for new apps. Current app projects already featured on the site range from games to health apps to politics. The AppStoris are set up quite similar to Kickstarter projects with tiers of rewards to pledgers, funding goals, developer blog, and comments.

Unlike Kickstarter, submitted apps go through a screening process with the AppStori Review Board. This system keeps scams and unwanted apps (porn, gambling, etc) from being posted on the site. The FAQ page explains all of the higher level requirements for creating an AppStori on the site.

Developers should understand that, like Kickstarter, AppStori takes a fee when a project has reached its funding goal. AppStori’s cut is slighty more than Kickstarter’s at 7% (Kickstarter takes 5%). Both sites use Amazon Payments which will take an additional fee of about 3%.

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The Fiksu App Store Competitive Index, which measures the volume of daily downloads of the Top 200 ranked free iPhone apps (U.S.), was down by almost two million downloads at 4.45 million. February had 6.35 million downloads and January had 6.79 million (a record high).

The Fiksu Cost per Loyal User Index, which tracks the cost of obtaining loyal users (users who open an app three times or more), remained steady between February and March. For March, the index was $1.30, slightly down from $1.31 in February. In January, it was cheaper at $1.14.

Fiksu CEO, Micah Adler, explained that the dip in downloads in March was to be expected,

“With the novelty factor of the iPhone 4S launch and the holidays well behind us, and no other events in March to spark discovery, March’s download dip was expected,”

He also believes a decline in robotic install tactics may be to blame,

“An unexpected contributing factor could be the decline in the use of robotic install tactics by app marketers responding to Apple’s new policy. The decline in competition and steady costs definitely presented app marketers with a ranking opportunity in March, driven largely through the cost-effective conversion of organic users into loyal users.”

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The new Titanium 2.0 platform allows developers to create native iOS and Android apps. It also creates web apps that can run on a smartphone browser while using Javascript and other web-based tech.

The Appcelerator Cloud Services can be used by developers who’ve already built apps outside of their Titanium software. Developers no long have to set up servers and write code for cloud servers, the Appcelerator Cloud Services have pre-built APIs that developers can use. The technology comes from Cocoafish, the app infrastructure company that Appcelerator bought earlier in the year.

The APIs that Appcelerator offers are based on a freemium model that scales depending on how much the services are used. APIs that Appcelerator currently provides includes photo sharing, push notifications, check-ins, status updates, chat, and more.

Over 300,000 app developers are registered with Appcelerator with a total of 40,000 built apps.

[via Inside Mobile Apps]

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We kept in touch with Gage throughout his sale and discussed the factors and strategies that helped make SpellTower such a successful app. First, let’s take a look at some numbers.

• In Top Paid Apps, SpellTower went from 93rd to 13th.
• In Top Paid Games, the app went from 44th to 11th.
• In Top Paid iPad Apps and Top Paid iPad Games, the app reached 3rd (previously being 7th and 4th). Both ranks were right under Angry Birds Space and Draw Something.
• In Top iPhone Paid Apps, it went from 93th to 13th (the same increase as overall paid apps).

SpellTower was a huge success on the iPhone during the sale. Gage believes $0.99 is a much more competitive price point on the iPhone, while iPad users are more willing to pay $1.99. He also mentioned that the iPhone is a more accessible device and people were more likely to just download the game to whatever device they had on them when they heard of the sale.

Gage attributes more than just the sale to the recent success,

“Well, I think the sale was helpful, but the community was amazing. So many tweets went out yesterday. My iPad was beeping off the hook. It was really overwhelming for me, to have so many people help me out. I think the reddit IAmA was pretty helpful too.”

On the reddit IAmA, Gage’s page received 156 points (247 up votes and 91 down). Gage thinks the support the community gave by tweeting and helping spread the word made a huge difference. The IAmA on reddit resulted in over 200 comments between Gage and readers. One of the most interesting comments on the reddit included a quick discussion about if Zynga offered Gage over $100M,

Original question: “If Zynga offers you > 100 million dollar, would you take it?
Gage: “not if they made me work for them”
Another commenter: “Hmm. That is either bull**** or commendable integrity, sir.”
Gage: “I’m not in this for the money. I’m here to make work I think is good and enjoy being alive. No amount of money would be worth working for Zynga for 5 years and not making any side projects.”

Gage also commented on the “garbage app” atmosphere of the App Store and how he believes the App Store is actually a great place for developers right now,

“I like the App Store. It’s true theres a lot of garbage out there, but Apple’s curation is quite good, and there are a lot of people who like those superficial games. At the end of the day, that audience is out there and you have to decide if you want to cater to it or not…I think the App Store is the best place right now to make a name for yourself with really unique and interesting apps/games.”

SpellTower had a previous surge in the rankings (April 11th through the 13th) prior to the sale.

“A big update hit and Apple featured it simultaneously. Plus, kind of market saturation from being in New York Times Magazine.”

He explained the update included a great website created by a friend of his, Chris Driscoll, a new icon that better displayed that it was a word game, and screenshots that include accolades (he doesn’t believe many people actually read the descriptive text).

SpellTower has been a huge hit. Gage believes the strategy element is one of the most unique parts of his game.

“SpellTower is pretty unique for a word game. It really forefronts strategy in a way that not a lot of word games do. Theres randomness, but it’s low. Most of your ability to do well comes from a combination of knowing words, being able to see words in advance, and making the right words, in the right places, at the right times.”

Gage plans to continue making challenging apps. He believes that challenging experience is part of what made SpellTower so successful.

“The major thing I’ve discovered is that people actually really like challenging games, if you approach them the right way. Its difficult to build them like that, but it’s not something I’d ever realized. A good example is Pacman. Pacman is super hard, but it’s fun for everyone because it’s easy to grab a power pellet and chomp ghosts. It builds on an accessible strategy.”

SpellTower may not have risen above the giants, Zynga and Rovio, but it’s equally impressive for a one-man indie development studio to be in the same league as the big name developers.

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The team of judges are mobile experts from leading publications including our very own Jeff Scott, Founder and Editor in Chief of the 148Apps Network. Other judges include Sara Perez from TechCrunch, Ryan Kim from GigaOM, Laurent Gatignol from iPhon.fr, Mahmoud Hafez from AppAdvice, Jon Jordan from PocketGamer.biz, @Zee from TheNextWeb, and Orli Yakuel from Go2Web20.

The winner of the awards will receive a free ad campaign and the new iPad. Developers can preregister for the contest here. The contest should go live next month and entrants only need to submit a video demonstration of the app being submitted. Any developers planning on releasing apps at the end of May or after should definitely give the App Star Awards a shot.

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Parents are the ones targeted by apps: only 29% of children (ages 4-8) download apps on their own. That leaves 71% of the apps being downloaded by adults. These apps are then heavily used by the children (60% use apps more than four times a week).

That 30%, though, is a significant number. According to the data, children don’t prioritize educational apps. The leading activities children performed on touch devices were playing games, watching videos, looking at pictures, and reading/listening to stories. So it appears that the best marketing for children’s apps will target the child’s interest while focusing on the 71% of parents who do the actual downloading. What do parents prefer?

A large percentage (60%) of parents have a significant amount of children’s apps on their mobile devices (more than five). And 39% of those parents have more than ten children’s apps. The parental preferences in their children’s apps hinges on a powerful priority – educational value. 88% of those parents are interested in the educational value of the apps.

70% of parents surveyed find apps through the App Store based on the apps claims of educational value. 72% of these parents aren’t convinced of that value, however. What educational factors are important to parents, then? The report states that problem-solving skills, creativity, topics in a subject area, and a focus on specific skills are all topics of interest to parents looking for educational apps. The factors that relatively few parents care about were things like multiple choice questions (29%), accreditation by teachers (22%), and a lack of games (only 4% of parents wanted educational apps that had absolutely no game or entertainment value).

The study states that parents are looking for interactive educational content (83% believe interactive content is important), even if it includes games and entertainment, as long as it meets those educational factors.

The research also looked into the guilt parents feel when letting their children use their mobile devices. And while 58% of parents feel guilty when their children use mobile devices (including tablets), that number reduces to 42% when the parent has ten or more educational apps on the device.

Ruckus Media Group has also made it a point to adhere to the Common Core Standards in their new line of Ruckus Reader book-apps. Apps adhering to these Common Core Educational Standards could be used by parents and educators as a standard of educational quality. At the very least, targeting the material in the Common Core Standards will make children’s educational app more suitable for a classroom environment.

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The panel will be moderated by Justin Winokur, founder of music management company, JWC Artist Group and currently manages Brainpool, gold record-winning Swedish band. The panelists include Claire Fennessey, Steve Horowitz, and Jeevan Padiyar. Fennessey, currently President of Palm Publishing, is a twenty year veteran of direct-to-consumer/digital product development and marketing in the educational and edutainment industry. Horowitz is the musician behind the original soundtrack of popular film Super Size Me and has extensively worked with Nickelodeon Digital. And Padiyar is an entrepreneur and product strategist that’s had a hand in several companies including Simply Blimps (founder), arena blimp manufacturer, and RawVoice (chairman and CFO), a podcasting network.

The panelists will be offering “tips and tricks” to potential business owners. The event is free and open to the public.

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Plans are for both companies to co-develop free-to-play games that uses proprietary technologies previously used by IUGO: the IUGO Games Library, IRender 3D Engine, and the IUGO Mesh Social Game Engine. GREE will also use that technology to enhance its own social games.

GREE is a global mobile company that has recently expanded into both Canada (through IUGO) and North America. The company released its first two games developed in its San Francisco studio just last year, Zombie Jombie and Alien Family.

IUGO has done more than release its own self-published games, but has also worked on big, AAA titles from major publishers. Their focus isn’t only on created games but also on developing mobile technologies to make their games and products look and play better.

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Developer War Balloon set a goal of $20,000 for their Kickstarter project for upcoming game Star Command. The project actually raised almost double in funding for the game at about $37,000. In a recent post on their Kickstarter page, War Balloon described where that money actually went and how the team is actually $50,000 in debt.

$2000 immediately didn’t happen because of transactions that didn’t go through, Kickstarter and Amazon Payments took about a $3000 cut, and $10,000 was spent on prize fulfillment for the pledgers. With the remaining $22,000 that was left after that, the team spent $6000 on music, $4000 on attorney fees, $2000 on poster art, $1000 on iPads, and $3000 for PAX East. Only about $6000 ended up as income for the team.

Some tips from War Balloon, “Keep the attorneys out of it.” They felt like the operating agreements were a waste of time and “a nice piece of napkin paper probably would have done just as well.”

Kickstarter was definitely a positive force for their development. But it isn’t always the the swimming pool of money that it seems to be for even the successful projects.

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ZSpawl explains that this increase in iAd revenue may have to do with previous feelings about how Apple charged for both ad impressions and clicks.

“…advertisers no longer have to pay Apple for clicks on Ads, only for displaying them (also known as impressions). This has been a common complaint against iAds, and other banner middlemen…To some, this feels like being charged twice.”

Apple also lowered the price for advertisers to buy into the program to $100k from the previous $500k (and $1M even farther back). Previously Apple asked for a minimum of $1M, then $500k to place an ad on iAds. It seems the lowering of the minimum buy-in for an ad and the removal of paying for clicks is a way to quell the complaints about some of the iAd policies. And since advertisers are no longer paying for clicks, developer ZSprawl believes that the 10% revenue hike is because developers will now no longer be paid for clicks.

[via 9 to 5 Mac]

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“Games are boring. People are interesting forever.”

That was one of the points that Machine Zone CEO Gabe Leydon said to me when I spoke with him about his company’s recent name change and announcement of funding. Their former name “Addmired” probably doesn’t sound familiar, though their titles should be. They’ve developed games like the iMob series, Global War, and Original Gangstaz that have been played by millions of players. Yet, their brand hasn’t been very well known.

This is because they hated the name Addmired. It was a relic of a past time in their history, when they were making dating and MySpace apps. They just never bothered changing their name. “Over the years, the logo got ridiculous, where it was this red heart with a bullet hole in it,” says Gabe Leydon of Addmired. I spoke with him recently about the company’s new direction as Machine Zone, and how they’re going to be pushing with additional press and branding efforts.

People knew the name only through their releases like iMob and Global War, from the seller’s name on the App Store – Gabe Leydon claims that the Addmired name and logo are never seen anywhere in the apps themselves.

So why “Machine Zone” exactly? Well, the company feels like the name is not only just a brand, but it’s a company identity. “We didn’t even have a sign on the office, we were just making games that we liked to make,” says Leydon. In particular, it’s designed to show that their company is attempting to do more than just create fun games, they’re trying to create immersive experiences on people’s devices. “It’s about the zone that you get in when you’re using your phone. You space out, and you’re in to it, and you’re one with it. Creating that kind of pull, that’s what we’re about.”

“We view ourselves as a technology company. We make really cool free to play technology…and we’re gonna make more games with it.” He describes their games as experiences, and as trying to compete with users for their time on their phone. In essence, they want to compete with even Twitter and Facebook for users’ time, in essentially designing their games and their technology around facilitating those connections. “It’s not just about playing the game itself. But the real reason people are still playing for so long is because they know everybody in there.”

Original Gangstaz has 1.5 billion friendships in the game. “That’s why that game works, because that game gets more and more connection…it gets harder and harder to leave because all your friends are there.” Machine Zone wants to make games that are attracting and trying to retain players because they can facilitate those friendships the way a social network would, or why a text chat service keeps getting people to use it. “The reason why people sleep next to their phone is the software in the phone, not just the phone itself.”

Between the company’s new funding and massive expansion, having gone from a dozen employees to 66 in a year’s time, they may just be poised to make these kinds of experiences happen.

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One small, and strange, tip was to release apps on Thursday. Apple picks featured apps that appear on that day. Being featured on the App Store is likely the best way to get an app discovered (and it’s free!).

Some advice was a bit vague and obvious like, “make a great app!” If apps are good enough to spread via word of mouth, they’re much easier to make money from. Adam Flanders of Glu Mobile explained that cost-per-install (CPI) needs to be measured in relation to lifetime value (LTV),

“If CPI is getting too expensive, the focus needs to move to engagement, retention, and monetization of your product to drive LTV up above CPI costs.”

Moving an app to Android is also a potential solution. Cost of user acquisition on Android has actually been dropping. But monetization is weaker on Android than it is on iOS; so it isn’t a perfect solution.

Sites like FreeAppADay and App-o-Day are also great ways to increase downloads of an app and bring down acquisition costs. FreeAppADay receives millions of users on a daily basis coming to download whatever app is free for the day.

Other strategies mentioned include cross-promotion, more intelligent targeting, and possible solutions from Apple.

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The problem: Twitter has a patent application for the function. Former Tweetie developer, Loren Brichter, is listed as the inventor of the function in a patent called “User Interface Mechanics.” When Twitter bought Tweetie a couple years ago, they also inherited the patent.

According to the application, it was filed back in April of 2011. I searched the patent for a description of pull-to-refresh with the least tech jargon,

“According to one or more additional aspects, a scrollable list of content items may be displayed. Input associated with a scroll command may be received. Then, based on the scroll command, a scrollable refresh trigger may be displayed.”

Here’s the actual patent application, from the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, for readers who want to beat themselves up reading technical documents.

[via iDownloadBlog]

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Fiksu’s App Store Competitive Index decreased by 6% in the month of February. That’s 6.35 million in February, down from 6.79 million in January (record high). The Fisku App Store Competitive Index measures the average daily download volume of the top 200 apps on iTunes Top Free iPhone app list.

Another of Fiksu’s indexes, the Cost per Loyal User Index, rose by 15% in February to $1.31 from January’s $1.14.

Fiksu analyzes these changes to be a result of new marketing campaigns in February after a period of their collective reduced spending in January. They also mention that the decline in overall app downloads may have been a result of Apple’s announcement on the 6th to crack down on robotic install tactics.

From Fiksu CEO, Micah Adler,

“…with plentiful volume at reasonable costs, our Indexes show that February presented another valuable opportunity for mobile marketers to acquire loyal app users.”

Click here for more information about Fiksu’s indexes. It explains the App Store Competitive Index, the Cost per Loyal User Index, and Fisku’s Analysis.

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ZooZ received $1.5 million in funding last year for its in-app payment SDK. Now that its beta period has ended, ZooZ has released its SDK. They boast the best rates in the industry at 2.8% plus a flat $0.19 fee for every transaction.

The most interesting thing about this in-app purchase setup is that it’s cross-platform. The SDK works on both iOS and Android. This should be incredibly attractive to developers that publish apps on both app stores. Payouts for the developers can be made via cashier’s check, PayPal, or a dedicated MasterCard.

Developers that are interested in using ZooZ for their apps, please let us know what you think in the comments.

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Developers can use this new function in various ways. The can send targeted ads to users based on behavior, discount purchases that users may be interested in, or make location-based suggestions.

While Apsalar competes with other analytics technologies like Flurry, they believe they offer more advanced analytics than their competitors currently offer. For example, they have something called cohort segmentation where developers can see how long users used an app or used it on a regular basis based on the time at which users first downloaded the app.

And even though Apple is starting blanket rejections of apps accessing the UDID of user’s devices, their solution will work anyway because they’ve created their own ID scheme for their technology.

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Kim-Mai Cutler from TechCrunch reports that while the UDID is used for many mobile ad networks for targeted ads, UDIDs pose real privacy issues.

“…there are very real privacy risks tied to the widespread use of UDIDs. They’re more sensitive than cookies on the web because they can’t be cleared or deleted. And they’re tied to the most personal of devices…”

According to Cutler’s information, Apple is starting with two of its app review teams and slowly working up to all ten of their review teams. These teams are starting to do blanket rejections of all apps that access UDIDs.

Back in August, VentureBeat’s Devindra Hardawar pointed out that Apple should just completely get rid of UDID access.

“Apple could avoid many privacy headaches by killing off UDID access entirely. The company was sued last year by a Los Angeles man specifically because UDIDs were so easily accessible by apps”

While there are obviously privacy concerns, this is going to be quite the problem for app developers that access UDIDs in their apps.

[Original source: Kevin Dent via Twitter]

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Concern for Apple customer’s privacy was initiated by the recent issue with Path when the app was uploading their users’ address books without the knowledge of the users.

Here’s the statement the committee made on the 22nd,

“Following recent reports that apps could collect address book information and photos without notice and consent from users of Apple’s mobile devices, the members are seeking to better understand what, if any, information these particular apps gather, what they do with it, and what notice they provide to app users. The members want the information to begin building a fact-based understanding of the privacy and security practices in the app marketplace. The apps were selected for the inquiry based on their inclusion in the “Social Networking” subcategory within the “iPhone Essentials” area of Apple’s App Store.”

Josh Lowensohn at CNET mentions that this isn’t the first time developers have been asked to participate in an investigation from Congress,

“This time last year, Apple, along with Google and Research in Motion were targeted for allowing applications that alerted users to the presence of police and other law enforcement checkpoints that had been set up to combat drunk driving.”

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