These microtransactions, in the $0.99 to $1.99 range, only represented about 6% of total game revenue. This is despite $1.99 purchases representing 17% of individual transactions. $9.99 purchases represented 16%. The number one most common transaction? $2.99 purchases represented 35% of transactions, and 15% of revenue, which was third among price points for revenue generation. Number one and two were $19.99 (24% of revenue) and $9.99 (23% of revenue). For extremely expensive transactions, the sweet spot may be $49.99: it generated more revenue than any other price point above $24.99.

In a way, this data makes sense: ‘whales’ have traditionally made up the dominant portion of in-app purchase revenue. Now we’re seeing that it’s true for purchase sizes too: purchases totaling $9.99 to $19.99 make up 47% of total in-app purchase revenue. The whales aren’t just making repeated small purchases, they’re making repeated medium-to-big purchases in these apps.

Robert Weber, co-founder of W3i, says “Although the U.S. learned about freemium gaming from Asia, it’s apparent that Americans are taking their own approach to it. Where mobile games in Asia still depend on microstransactions, U.S. gamers play more like whales- spending larger amounts of money in mobile games.” Data varied around the world: the United Arab Emirates had 77% of its transactions be $9.99 and $19.99 ones. The UK had 8% of its revenue come from $49.99 transactions. China and Canada each were the biggest source of $0.99 transactions, representing 3% of transactions.

The lesson for developers to take from this is to prepare accordingly. Focus may need to be led away from entry-level pricepoints: customers generally avoid them and they don’t make that much money. Enticing people to spend more money, to get value out of bigger transactions, is the key to success, and W3i’s info shows why those small purchases are not worth focusing on as revenue drivers at all.

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Android users may know Heyzap as a service for game recommendations and social sharing, but now the service is adding leaderboards to its portfolio. Now integrated as part of their SDK, this allows games to let Heyzap users automatically post their high scores to a leaderboard, and to see hwo their friends on Heyzap are doing. Most importantly, these leaderboards will work on both iOS and Android, sharing the same lists across both platforms. Heyzap is shooting to be more about social leaderboards, with the primary display being friends scores, not just the global leaderboards.

This is the key for Heyzap’s service to work: adoption by games developers who work on both platforms. Just on iOS, it’s a bit redundant (and lacks features beyond what Game Center offers), and there’s plenty of services trying to get their start up on Android: Scoreloop is still kicking after their RIM acquisition, and Swarm is trying to be an Android-only social gaming option. However, by being on cross-platform games, particularly with gamers that may own an iOS and an Android device, like an iPhone and a Nexus 7, this kind of exposure will help to get more users. And for developers, having a solution that could be implemented easily across both platforms, and allow them to work through that instead of worrying about implementing different services on each platform.

Where the real benefit for Heyzap comes in is quite simple: expanding their userbase. Yes, they will be providing value with these cross-platform leaderboards. But they will also be gaining users, not just on the Android side, but on the iOS side, with valuable analytics and data to be gathered for their recommendations service. And a desire for tracking high scores could be the trojan horse that gets them in the door.

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MirrorLink uses a variety of standardized protocols to bring phone features to a dashboard display simply by connecting a cable or through wireless connectivity. VNC is used for transmitting the phone display and commands. Bluetooth can be used to transmit audio, along with the RTP protocol. These are designed so that many devices will be compatible with the standard, not just certain phones.

MirrorLink was originally introduced as a limited-access protocol for certified developers, but in 2013, the opening of the protocol will allow for any app that wishes to interface with a car to work without explicit approval. This means that hypotheetically, an app like *Spotify* could allow users to skip tracks and play/pause simply from the steering wheel controls.

According to Mika Rytkonen, chairman and president of the CCC, “Availability of apps is also a critical validating component for the standard as more product manufacturers deploy MirrorLink in cars, phones and aftermarket head units. Equally important, the milestone signals to mobile carriers and OS vendors that MirrorLink’s footprint will only continue its exponential growth and is on track to become the dominant global connected-car platform.”

The benefits extend beyond just creating new markets for developers. Consumers will benefit as well: many in-car dashboard systems are proprietary, and interoperability is hindering much innovation and usability in this space. If MirrorLink increases in value, then it may become a wider standard, and such functionality could be in greater demand from car buyers. Users who don’t have cars with pre-installed dashboard systems will be glad to know that Pioneer has an after-market dashboard system that is compatible with MirrorLink coming in 2013.

The CCC will release version 1.0.1 of MirrorLink to all developers starting in early 2013. iOS doesn’t appear to be supported yet, though many of the core technologies in use could eventually be part of iOS apps, especially as developers get their hands on it.

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There are three countries where English is not king: Japan, China, and South Korea. In these countries, apps that use the native tongue are the greatest revenue generators, though English generates the most downloads in those countries except for China. Japan and South Korea have been part of the smartphone culture for a long time now, even before the US, and as such may be more willing to spend money in applications that cater to their native language.

That China is the only country with the most downloads being in their native language does show how much of a lucrative opportunity that market is: they have over 1.3 billion people, or a billion more than the United States. They’re still an emerging market, but they’re showing a desire for localized content in a way that bucks the trends of the rest of the world. Non-native content still makes up a sizable chunk of downloads and revenue, but there is a definite demand for that content. This is something for developers to consider when looking to localize their game: China and these other Asian markets may be the top target, instead of the standard EFIGS.

For developers who add new localizations to their apps, what kind of impact can they expect to see? Well, Distimo says that downloads increase by 128%, and revenue by 26%. This is only on iPhone, as iPad showed minimal increases: 0% in downloads, 5% in revenue.

As an interesting side note, in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia, German is actually the second most popular language for generating revenue, beating even French in Canada. While this is really just a blip on the radar in these territories, it may say something that Spanish is not a decided #2 in these territories. Countries in the west where they speak a language other than English showed a higher proportion of downloads in their native language versus English than English-native territories.

This report is an interesting look into how the world is downloading and consuming their apps based on the languages they speak, and with app stores ecoming more international, multi-language localization is becoming more important. Distimo’s full free report is available from its website.

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Yann Seznec is the founder and director of Lucky Frame, a three-man studio based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Lucky Frame’s latest game is Bad Hotel, which hit the App Store in August 2012.

Releasing an app is actually rather relaxing, because no one cares.

Your app is one of 700,000 on the market. Even reaching the top 100 means your app has to approach the 99.99th percentile, which is fairly unlikely.

Once you’ve tempered your expectations (trust me, you won’t have a hit) and realised that your app won’t make you rich, you can relax. No one cares.

That said, no one releases an app without hoping that it will get some attention and downloads. So, here are three tips for releasing an app, based on the lessons we learned from our experience with Bad Hotel.

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For more than four years 148Apps has covered the world of iOS apps and games. It started as a passion of mine and has now expanded to include the best writers this side of Mars. Now along with the Steel Media portfolio of sites, we have mobile apps and games covered from every angle.

Full details are available at the 148Apps post on the subject. We are so excited to get things going. Onward and upward!

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So, what’s the upgrade market going to look like? Well, 74% of iPhone 4 owners, many of whom are just coming off of the end of their 2-year contracts from when it was released (at least in the USA), are planning on upgrading to the iPhone 5. 71% of iPhone 3GS owners are planning to upgrade, which could include those still happy with the device purchased in 2009, or those who jumped on it in the past couple years when it was a cheaper option. Even 64% of iPhone 4 S owners are planning to upgrade, so those looking to snatch up used iPhones might be able to find a year-old device at a good price. 38% of BlackBerry owners plan to switch, and 22% of Android users plan to switch. All in all, this could entail 10 million new iPhones being sold by the end of September, depending on Apple’s plans. While not all of these will be new users per se, there are benefits to those marketing their apps.

With users buying new phones and being anxious to use them, there will be more opportunities to advertise to users. Based on the launch of the iPhone 4S, Fiksu saw app downloads increase by 29%, due to what they call a “pent-up demand” for apps when a new phone releases. The best part is that the cost to acquire loyal users actually went down over this time by 10%. This may be a prime time for developers to market to users. People will want new apps for their new phones, and while Fiksu says that costs did spike at the launch of the iPhone 4S, there was a lift in downloads for even weeks afterward. Savvy marketing could lead to huge rewards, especially with the iPhone 5 being a brand new model, instead of a refresh of a previous year’s model, making it a potentially attractive option.

This means developers need to be ready. Their apps need to be ready for iOS 6. Any marketing plans should be fully formulated. This could be a golden opportunity to achieve app success.

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TeamPlay has created an SDK that will easily allow developers to add the TeamPlay group leaderboards as a built-in experience for gamers. The website promises that it takes minutes to get things up and running, as well as lower level API support to customize the integration.

If your app is TeamPlay enabled, you’ll be able to send your players’ score points, object collections, and other actions to the TeamPlay system in the cloud. These things are then added to the team totals. The concept here is simple – when people feel like part of a team, they’ll likely play longer and more intensely than they might as an individual.

This is a niche that’s been sorely needed since iOS gaming became a “thing.” The Portable Gamer (a 148Apps Network Site) put together something similar (yet horribly manual) back in 2009 with ClanWars, a way for players to sign up as a member of a competing website “clan” to compete as a team. It’s great to see something like TeamPlay now, as it will allow a much more user-friendly experience, handling all of the back end organization so developers and players don’t have to. While it’s surprising that Apple hasn’t added something similar into its own Game Center system, it does allow a third party like TeamPlay to come in and make some waves.

To sign up as a TeamPlay developer, head over to the TeamPlay website, or email developer@teamplaysdk.com for more details.

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I spoke with CEO Martin Wells and he believes that on mobile, browser-based gaming with HTML5 and JavaScript is still a long way away from prominence because of performance in mobile browsers. He says that “The canvas performance and draw performance of modern browsers is great. It’s as good as Flash or better, so that’s not really an issue. If we talk about HTML5 on mobile, then it is a serious issue. And up until iOS5, canvas draw calls on Mobile Safari performed at what 1/10 of what you would expect a desktop browser to do, because Apple hadn’t implemented any kind of hardware acceleration in the drawing, so it was going to be slow. Since iOS 5, they really fixed canvas drawing speed, so that’s now a much more viable platform for building an HTML5 game and having it run a mobile game.” Android is a completely different story with all the OS and browser fragmentation that exists there.

However, what Playcraft Labs is doing as a bridge until this point where mobile browsers could handle HTML5 games on their own is to package apps built in the engine as native apps for iOS and Android. “We provide an application framework…that you take your HTML5 game and you package that inside our framework, and then we intercept the canvas calls and the audio calls, and we implement those using native functionality…and we implement that using OpenGL.”

While no titles that use Playcraft are available on the App Store , I asked if getting Playcraft apps approved would be an issue. Wells claims that Playcraft Labs has discussed this issue with Apple, and that the word they’ve gotten was that as long as updates don’t fundamentally change the nature of the app, they’re good to go. Spacetime Studios’ Legends series of games do these kind of in-app updates without an update to the client app itself, so it is hypothetically allowable. He calls this “adaptive gameplay” where developers are “changing the game based on stats they’re getting from players, and even individually modifying the game on the fly.”

Martin Wells has a bold vision of the future of HTML5 gaming, and what Playcraft could eventually herald, of the browser being the app store as technology improves. “I think you’ll see the carriers on Android deploying their own app stores. And I think over time that’ll progress to HTML5 driving app stores spreading everywhere.” Will this happen? Who knows, but Playcraft Labs is trying to build the tools to help shepherd it along. The Playcraft beta can be signed up for now.

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However, Urban Airship is proposing that there’s a better way to do push notifications from games, to find ways to get players engaged in a way that will get them to come back more often. They have a partnered up with GamesAnalytics in order to analyze the way that players play, in order to tailor special offers via notifications to get players re-engaged with games.

For example, developers who use the platform can track player behavior in order to tailor messages and offers to them. For example, for users who might be at risk of churning out of the game, a bonus could be given to encourage them to play the game again. Or, for those who are likely to spend a lot of money, an offer could be pushed that would encourage them to spend more than they may have before. The platform will be available for both iOS and Android.

Urban Airship CEO Christopher Dean believes that this could be extremely beneficial to those in the mobile business to retain valuable users. “Push messaging can deliver a dramatic uplift in user engagement and retention, especially when context is considered to deliver truly relevant and targeted messages. Our partnership with GamesAnalytics helps streamline the triggering of messages that hit the mark from the user’s perspective and positively impact the publisher’s bottom-line.”

However, the concern is that at least on an anecdotal basis when communicating with mobile gamers, these push notifications are seen as potential annoyances to users, because they are inherently self-promotional, However, for developers willing to take the risk, enhancing the value of the notifications they do provide could prove to be beneficial to not just their bottom line, but also to users who want to find reasons to stay engaged with games.

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Specifically, tablet users are outspending their phone counterparts. The average paid tablet gamer spends $62 per year on tablet games, compared to $35 per year for phone users. Tablet users also are more likely to play games than their phone counterparts, with 61% of tablet users saying they regularly play games, compared to 43% of phone users.

The study also shows that there’s a reason why free-to-play is taking off: only 10-15% of tablet users paid for games or similar entertainment content. However, 25% of tablet users did buy in-app purchases in games. Interestingly, women make up a substantial part of the tablet gaming audience, with 57% of paid tablet gamers being of the fairer sex.

iOS users are generally more likely to play games than Android users are. Only 28% of iPad users didn’t download any games in the past year, compared to 32% of Android tablet users. As well, 5% of iPad users downloaded 31 or more games, compared to 1% of Android tablet users. Even on smartphones, iPhone users are more likely to play games than Android users, 52% to 42%.

What developers can take out of this is that the iPad needs to be a focus in releasing games. There’s no reason to not try to target the iPad in a game release because those users are more likely to be playing games – and to be spending money. There may be fewer users, but they can help make up for it in volume. As well, Android remains a risk because the users have less interest in gaming than iOS. It’s possible to succeed in Android gaming, it just takes a different approach, and it does appear to be riskier than on iOS.

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Where in 2010, 26% of users would open up an app once, and the same percentage would use it 11+ times, now only 22% launch an app just once, and 31% will use it 11+ times. This may show that users over time are either starting to find apps that they would show an interest in using long-term, or app quality is starting to increase. The long-term trend will be interesting to see: will users continue to come back to their apps? Or is this a temporary blip?

While this seems like a good thing for app developers on the surface, it could be interpreted as a dangerous sign for the app market at large. The increase in user retention could be because the number of new ideas for apps is shrinking, so users are settling in with the apps they know. As well, with mobile growing the way that it is, more developers could be competing over niches that are getting less crowded. Think about the Twitter landscape on iOS: it has stagnated extremely with the free official Twitter app, and Tweetbot available as the paid choice for advanced users.

There’s another part of this study too, as it reveals that Android users are less likely to return to apps than iOS users. Only 23% Android users in 2011 returned to an app 11+ times compared to 35% for iOS. As well, one-time-use rates on Android are 24% compared to iOS’ 21%.

Localytics speculates that this could be partially an issue with user registration, because iPhone users are more likely to stick with iPhone than Android users are to stick with Android, 94% to 47%, so some iPhone users could wind up being double-counted. Potentially, those buying new phones may be more likely to use apps frequently on their phones, and could be skewing the repeat user rate upwards.

Whether it’s a case of app quality, or just the characteristics of each userbase coming to light, there’s definitely something different in the way that iOS and Android users use their apps.

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The news comes with some possible explanations from TC sources including a developer of a parking app, BestParking and Matthäus Krzykowski from app search company Xyologic. Ben Sann, founder of BestParking, has noticed that the app has jumped to the top of various searches that previously used to bring up matches that were closer to the search term (like “chicago parking” or “dc parking”). Instead of those localized terms bringing up apps with titles that match closely with those the search, the App Store seems to be focusing more on what the apps actually do. Krzykowski believes Apple has gotten better at “topic detection,” displaying apps that match more with what the apps’ functions are instead of their names.

Chomp‘s description of its technology is “Chomp’s proprietary algorithm learns the functions and topics of apps, so you can search based on what apps do, not just what they’re called.” It seems that this may be exactly the difference we’re seeing in the search results. Check out the TechCrunch article for more details.

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Design: The New Battleground for Mobile

The most successful players are focusing on one thing: How to make products, services, and devices as compelling and delightful as possible – both visually, and experientially.

Under appreciated most of the time time, design truly is the way to make mobile experiences stand out and succeed. No exception this year, there are many big movers in the industry coming out to share their knowledge, including:

• Mark Pincus, Founder, CEO & CPO, Zynga
• Dave Morin, Co-Founder & CEO, Path
• Hill Ferguson, Head of Mobile, Paypal
• Mark Curtis, Founder, Fjord
• Chris Weber, President (US), Nokia
• Scott Dadich, VP Digital Development, Conde Nast
• Jason Spero, Head of Mobile, Google

Take a look at the conference site for more info as the agenda gets filled out.

148Apps readers register here with promo code “VB-148″ and get 20% off! 148Apps is proud to once again be a media sponsor of MobileBeat.

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The new publishing arm will be called Activision Mobile Publishing, and Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hishberg notes that “Activision and Flurry are uniquely qualified to provide mobile developers with funding, resources and unmatched marketing expertise, while also allowing them to retain their intellectual property. We are confident this relationship and our new platform will yield significant results and are excited to launch it.”

Essentially, it sounds like what Activision wants is a Chillingo of their own. Many of those functions are what Chillingo, who were acquired by EA, provide to developers. Beyond the many high-ranked titles that Chillingo has put out, they also published two of the biggest smash hits on the App Store: Angry Birds and Cut the Rope. It gives Chillingo a lot of clout, and makes those that cover the market pay attention to their games; any of them could easily be that next transcendent hit.

However, Chillingo is still a very independent arm of EA, as each label publishes their own titles. Activision Mobile Publishing would be the spearhead of Activision’s mobile efforts, and it seems as if they think that this would be the key to success, to get in on the ground with independent developers, the ones who know this market the best. By combining forces with Flurry to get their analytics and to try and figure out this market that they’re still inexperienced in, it may help lead Activision Mobile Publishing to potential success, even if that name is a mouthful.

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Yes, that’s a decimal in front. Despite the commonly-quoted average conversion rates of 1–5%, Ski Champion shows that not everything will fall in that range. Nicolas Godement-Berline of Majaka says that this may have been due to the flaws in the design that was intended to monetize the game. They used a mechanic similar to the ‘energy’ mechanic seen in many free-to-play games, that were called Ski Passes in this game. What happened was that they may have given out too many Ski Passes to start out, and automatically refilled Ski Passes at a rate that was too quick. As well, while they admit that they avoided some elements, such as player upgrades and consumable items, that may have helped increase the game’s ability to monetize.

David Ngo of Loqheart (Cannon Cat) reiterates that getting people to play a game is just the first step. “Gathering an audience is a whole different beast from monetization. You can’t just throw in IAP or copy someone else’s store, and hope people buy. You have to carefully consider the value proposition you’re offering for your specific audience and your specific game.”

However, the impermanence of the App Store must also be kept in mind. The initial launch of an app isn’t necessarily the end. It’s possible to tweak a game after launch to try and change the monetization strategy. It’s something that Whale Trail has been well-publicized as doing, and Ski Champion plans on tweaking the game to try and improve its revenue. David Ngo adds: “In general though, we found one of the best ways to improve your monetization is to reduce the friction to purchase. This means keeping interfaces super simple and allowing one-click purchasing for impulse buys. Also, buyers either purchase a little or a whole lot. Not many people are in-between. So adjust your price points to match this behavior. Just keep iterating and looking at your numbers.”

So, it’s not inherently the end for Ski Champion if Majaka wishes to keep working on it. Thankfully for them this was not a mission-critical project, as they were not expecting the game to do extremely well. The game’s underwhelming performance is a lesson that all developers designing free-to-play games can heed: just having IAP is not enough. It still requires smart design to actually make money.

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Quickoffice has an established track record of enabling seamless interoperability with popular file formats, and we’ll be working on bringing their powerful technology to our Apps product suite.

In a statement released by Quickoffice CEO and Co-Founder, Alan Masarek, he stated his confidence in the acquisition and the shared vision of the two companies,

By combining the magic of Google’s intuitive solutions with Quickoffice‘s powerful products, our shared vision for anytime, anywhere productivity can only grow.

As a result of the acquisition, Quickoffice is shutting down its Connect by Quickoffice product (its document syncing solution). All paid users of the service will be refunded and will be able to migrate their data to either Google Drive or another provider of their choice.

It’s possible that Google made this move in anticipation of the Microsoft Office Suite coming to other platforms (specifically iOS) in the near future. The rumors and even screenshots of Office running on an iPad seem to signify that Microsoft’s release on iOS may be a solid leak.

The details about the deal were not made public by Google.

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Now, the new productivity app from Binary Hammer, 30/30, is trying something a bit different to try and make money. The app is entirely free to use. Users can set timers for various tasks, and be notified via push notifications when the timer is done. It’s intended to help users time their tasks, and figure out to stay on track with what they’re doing. It operates in a similar way to Clear in its relative minimalism. There are in-app purchases for $0.99, $1.99, and $2.99, but they don’t actually do anything. They’re just there to help support the developer.

The question is this: with this donationware model of where the only financial support is coming from users choosing to donate their money if they like the app, will it be able to support the app’s development if any money spent is not going toward features?

The problem is that free apps tend to monetize only a small percentage of their users. Published data, while possibly out of date, shows that about 3% of free-to-play games players will spend money in these games, and Temple Run, one of the most popular free-to-play titles, has been stated as getting 1% of users to pay. With no incentive for 30/30 users to pay, it may take massive download volume, or targeting of that specific set of users who would be willing to donate money for free apps they use, in order to properly support the app’s development.

Mobile Pie’s Will Luton has his doubts about Apple letting this sort of model catching on in a widespread way. He says, “I wouldn’t want to call a decision from Apple, but in my eyes a donation or shareware system goes against what Apple like, in spirit at least. We explored it as an option for monetizing a bundle of apps as part of Best of British, but decided it had a chance of getting pulled. Other apps exist with a ‘Thank Developer’ feature. But nothing of size.”

For other app developers looking to drive purchases by using this sort of donationware model, it may behoove them to have high value in-app purchases for these, instead of just the $0.99, $1.99, and $2.99 values. Having options for even double-digit dollar values may help drive more ‘donations’ to help support their app using this model.

It would be similar to a tactic that the Humble Bundle uses. They have listings for $15, $25, $50, and $100, along with the “Custom amount” button. While the averages are still below those amounts (the average was just under $8 as of publication), this provides a subtle suggestion to spend more money, which may be helping with keeping the average price of the bundle as high as possible. The 5th bundle is just under $8 as of publication – not in the double digits, but considering that many users may be spending just the dollar necessary to generate Steam codes, it’s clearly working.

Most importantly,  the advantage that iOS donationware using this model (which Apple has approved, with 30/30 now available) has should not be discounted – that people can easily use their iTunes login details from within the app to pay. That alone may help it generate more donations than much donationware out there. If Binary Hammer shares their data on whether this business model is successful, it may help prove whether or not other developers try to adopt this model.

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The Fiksu App Store Competitive Index (daily download volumes of the top 200 free iPhone apps), dropped 4.9% to 4.23 million in April from March (4.45 million). This is after a high period in January and February (6.35 and 6.79 million respectively).

The Fiksu Cost per Loyal User Index, tracking the cost to obtain loyal users (users who open an app three or more times), increased 12.3% to $1.46 from $1.30 in March. The previous increase from February to March was minimal (a $0.01 increase).

Fiksu CEO, Micah Adler, sees no reason to be surprised at the downward trajectory in March and April,

“April’s continued downward trajectory of app downloads was expected, as no major events sparked discovery during the month. Additionally, app marketers continued to scale back their use of robotic install tactics in response to Apple’s policy on third-party marketing services.”

Although Fiksu did notice more aggressive advertising,

“…we observed more aggressive advertising spending as marketers moved out of the first quarter lull and began to seek new opportunities to compete for rank especially in the dynamic social networking and games categories, which experienced volatility during the month.”

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The infographic is filled with interesting information about the younger audiences of mobile devices. Not surprising, the highest usage task for children using tablets is playing games (at 77%). Other notable usage numbers include education (57%) and entertainment at restaurants and events (41%). Parents are also downloading apps specifically for their children (25% of parents).

The number of children using tablets is rising too. Numbers were taken between July and September of last year and October and December. Between those two periods, tablet usage in kids under 12 rose 7% from 61% to 70%. Parents even believe that tablet use is beneficial for their children. 77% believe they are beneficial and another 77% believe tablets help with creativity.

Educational use is also on the rise. There are now over 600 school districts implementing iPad programs. The infographics gives a quick look at some of the most popular educational apps. Most of those apps are free including Molecules and Today in History.

Take a look at the inforgraphic below. (Click on image for a larger view)

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The merchandise will be available to mass retailers in June but some items are already available at the Disney Store and its website. The line-up includes plush and novelty toys, consumer electronics accessories, apparel, and accessories by various retailers including Hasbro, Toys ‘R’ Us, JAKKS Pacific.

The popular game is also looking to expand to a video series, specifically a 12-episode web series titled “Wheres My Water? The Adventures of Swampy.” The web series is due later this year.

While other popular iOS games have looked to monetize by selling game-themed merchandise (like Angry Birds and others), Where’s My Water? may be at an advantage with the publisher of the game already owning a popular retail outlet, The Disney Store. Another wave of retail merchandise will follow in the fall that includes a face-to-face game, consumer electronics, stationary, home accessories, and Halloween costumes.

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COO of Digital Chocolate, Jason Loia, explained that Playspan’s intergration and payment methods were what led to the choice, “…decided on PlaySpan because of its superior coverage of payment methods and countries and its easy integration.”

PlaySpan provides services such as global payments processing, subscriptions, and microtransacations (for use with virtual goods). The platform includes fraud prevention, customer service tools, online reports, and analytics.

Digital Chocolate has well over 100 apps available on the App Store including favorites like Shaolin Jump and Chocolate Shop Frenzy. The company also works with 200 web and mobile channel partners in 80 different countries.

Playspan Inc., a subsidary of Visa, provides a monetization platform for content providers. UlimatePay also has a game card, the Ultimate Game Card, that can be used as a pre-paid card for Playspan’s supported games. The Ultimate Game Card is sold in over 50,000 locations in North America.

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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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