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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First, according to Chartboost, Wednesday is actually the most popular release day, because it’s the day right before Apple updates their featured lists on the iPhone and iPad App Stores. In reality, what’s happening is that developers are scheduling releases for midnight (0:00) on Thursday, and because apps get released at that time worldwide, which winds up being 11pm eastern in North America due to the Atlantic Time Zone, these apps start appearing on Wednesday.

But here’s the thing: that Thursday is actually a lousy day to be promoting apps.

First, there’s actually no spike in install rate on Thursday, despite it being the biggest day for hype – just see all the media sites that post weekly release lists every Wendesday, after all. In fact, traffic is at its worst on Thursday, being 7 percent below average in terms of impressions, and install rate is 3% below average, which is the worst of the week. This is despite cost per click cost bids increasing to 3% above average.

The big days for app downloads are the weekend: Friday upticks from Thursday up to average, Saturday is 7 percent above average, and Sunday is 4 percent above average. Real-world customers are downloading games on the weekend. Ad impressions increase during this Friday-Sunday period, too, from 2% on Friday, to 14% on Saturday, to 10% on Sunday, all above average. The bid prices do not necessarily increase all that much: 2% on Friday, 4% on Saturday, and 0% on Sunday.

Thus, Saturday might be the best day to promote an app: the increased costs are offset by dramatic increases in installs and impressions. Sunday may be the best bang for the buck, with mean and median bid prices, but the second-best impressions and install rate. Monday through Wednesday present value propositions as well: lower impression and installation rates are also offset by lower costs, and Chartboost says to developers that “you can capture a larger portion of that traffic than you would with the same bid later in the week.”

So developers and publishers looking to get the word out about their app need to beware. Thursday will be the big hype day because it’s when Apple refreshes their features, and releasing in time for that is not a bad move. And iOS gamers should still be excited for the day. But when it comes to promoting an app, it might be the worst day of them all. Chartboost has more insights available on their blog as to what this data could just mean.

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The spotlight feature is the new featured video ad. It’s meant to guarantee completed video views, and has special offers available at the end of the video so users can engage right away. For example, an ad for a company can offer incentives for liking their Facebook page immediately after watching the video. The standard display ads have been enhanced as well to use up more screen space and easier user engagement.

Daily Rewards are another major feature implemented through Tapjoy. This is something that apps have added to help promote users coming back on a regular basis. Now these can be implemented directly through Tapjoy, awarding in-game currency for coming back on consecutive days, for example.

On iOS, the OpenUDID system for tracking individual devices has been replaced with advertisingIdentifier, the tracking number introduced in iOS 6. This will ensure that Tapjoy ads are in compliance with the Apple terms of service, as in the future this will be necessary to serve targeted ads to users. However, this provides users with an easy way to opt out of ads without having to reach out to individual services like Tapjoy, and the anonymized device identifier should provide users with an additional layer of privacy.

These features come along with tweaks and improvements to impression and conversion tracking through Tapjoy. Version 9.0 of the SDK is available now for both iOS and Android. Users of the multiplatform frameworks Unity, Phonegap, and Adobe AIR will find plugins that support version 9.0 available now.

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App downloads were only up on a marginal basis from August, increasing to 4.07 million downloads of the top 200 ranked free iPhone apps in the US from 4.05 million. However, that doesn’t tell the whole story: downloads dipped before the iPhone 5 launch, and once it was released, the total number of downloads increased by 33 percent for the rest of the month. So October could prove to be a bigger boon for developers that released their apps with the iPhone 5′s continued rollout and the iPod touch 5th generation’s release, and November similarly with iPad Mini sales.

While the downloads were largely stagnant, app marketing costs took a downward turn as well. Fiksu’s cost per loyal user index indicates that the cost of acquiring a user who opens an app three or more times fell to $1.13 in September from $1.34 the month before. In fact, this is the lowest total since January 2012′s $1.14 total, and is just above the May 2011 amount of $1.10, after incentivized installs were banned by Apple. This price decrease should continue through October, as from September to November 2011, this CPLU went from $1.64 to $1.47 to $1.43.

In fact, this seems to show that there is a seasonal effect in app marketing costs: when a new iPhone comes out, the demand for new apps to use on the phone makes it easier to acquire new users who will return to the app. Fiksu also claims that one developer using their analytics saw an increase in organic downloads by 20% coupled with a revenue gain of 35%.

So far, it does appear that the iPhone 5′s release is having the kind of impact that Fiksu predicted it would have, with an increase an app downloads and decreases in marketing costs. For developers looking to strike it rich with their apps, this is the prime time to strike.

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Average revenue per conversion on W3i’s network between the two platforms was nearly equal at just under $0.90 in August 2012; in September 2012 the ARPC went up to $0.90 on Android and reached $1.10 on iOS; a device called the iPhone 5 may have helped those totals. While iOS ARPC costs are steadily increasing, Android totals spiked during the summer, and continued growing.

As well, what helps out is that Android offers more opportunities for marketers, and one big-name title is starting to take advantage of what W3i’s offering. Temple Run developers Imangi Studios has partnered up with W3i to bring its offerwall service to the app. Users can take part in incentivized downloads and offers to gain more coins in Temple Run. This way, Imangi drives additional revenue through driving downloads to other games, and those publishers gain the likelihood of more users through those that take advantage of offers.

Imangi has shown a proclivity for incentivized advertising before: Temple Run at one point was pulled from the App Store for letting users watch videos to receive coins. Changes in Apple policy caused the app to be removed, however with Android’s more lax approval process, incentivized installs and offerwalls like W3i and Tapjoy can thrive on Android. W3i is claiming that for Imangi, they could be making seven-figure revenue off of this deal, especially if the ARPC figures hold. Even for smaller developers, if it’s possible to launch on Android, this is more evidence suggesting that launching over there may not be the revenue wasteland that some perceive it to be.

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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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Eros Resmini, SVP of Developer Relations and Marketing at GREE commented, “GREE is a strong supporter of independent developers. They are responsible for pushing the limits of creativity and driving innovation within the mobile industry and I feel we have a responsibility to give them the tools and knowledge they need to work their magic.”

Check below for the full press release.

GREE LOVES INDIES THROUGH LAUNCH AND BEYOND

New Program Provides Access to Tools and Resources for Independent Developers to Launch and Support their Titles Long-term

San Francisco, CA — October 08, 2012— GREE, a leading social mobile gaming content and platform provider, today announced GREE Loves Indies, a brand-new program focused on recognizing and supporting the efforts of independent developers and small studios across the United States. GREE Loves Indies will build on GREE’s ongoing commitment to independent developers, by offering them access to GREE’s worldwide resources and in-depth expertise. As a part of GREE Loves Indies, GREE will work with an “Indie of the Month” to launch the selected title to worldwide audiences on GREE Platform.

“GREE is a strong supporter of independent developers. They are responsible for pushing the limits of creativity and driving innovation within the mobile industry and I feel we have a responsibility to give them the tools and knowledge they need to work their magic,” says Eros Resmini, SVP of Developer Relations and Marketing, GREE International, Inc.

The “Indie of the Month” contest invites independent developers to submit new games to be considered for a 4-6 week launch and release support campaign. The winning title will launch on GREE Platform and receive in-depth benefits including public relations resources, game review and optimization, integration support, and post-launch support. Each eligible game submitted will be reviewed on several criteria including creativity, user experience, and innovation. The website, which also includes official contest rules, is open for submissions today at greelovesindies.com. GREE expects to release the first game this holiday season.

Developers attending GDC Online at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas from October 9-11, 2012, can visit GREE on the show floor to ask questions about the company or the GREE Loves Indies program. Other GREE activities at GDC Online this year include a roundtable discussion with developer partners on Tuesday, October 9th at 2pm, and sponsorship of the official closing party at Austin’s historic Maggie Mae’s on Wednesday, October 10th.

Please visit greelovesindies.com for eligibility requirements, official rules, and program details. For more information about GREE Platform and development resources, visit developer.gree.net.

For more information about GREE, visit www.gree-corp.com.

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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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Social media is often an enigma to developers looking to promote their apps. It’s a tool that can be incredibly powerful for getting more downloads and driving revenue, but just how to succeed with it is a mystery to many. Facebook integration, especially with the App Store, has been anticipated by developers as a way to help their games spread through social media, but these features won’t be doing all the work to make an app gain users through social media usage. However, David Murdico has written an interesting blog post for Supercool Creative entitled “5 Ways to Promote Mobile Apps and Games with Social Media” that covers many ways to best utilize social media to developers’ advantage.

Murdico first says that the idea with content should be to not try to explicitly ‘sell’ one’s app in every single social media dispatch, but to actually try to be interesting while also promoting the app as a secondary objective. Content has a greater chance to go viral when it is meant to be entertaining. It can also serve as a way to keep in users’ minds. Get a user to follow a Twitter account for a game, and it may remind them to play it when they see a post from that account they follow.

Next, when it comes to social media channels, Murdico recommends being proficient and consistent. Reach out through many channels. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, heck, there’s people on Google+ to reach out to. Then, once on there, find a consistent voice that matches well with the style of the app. If the app is comical in nature, then that should be reflected in the tone of social media posts. If it’s serious, then it should follow a similar tone. But most importantly, make sure it’s consistent.

Murdico preaches that interaction is important: when people respond to a post, respond back! This helps to build the connections necessary to get people to care about an app and share it.

Murdico comments that giveaways are a great way to build a loyal following, and to also help increase reach on social media, as users will often share news about giveaways and pay attention for the next one. The giveaways don’t have to be big, small prizes will do.

Finally, Murdico says that it should always be easy for people who want to download the promoted app to go and download it with one click. Have links handy when necessary. People on social media have short attention spans. Make sure that all this work promoting apps isn’t for naught!

While these tips are not guarantees to success, much like releasing an app, doing the right things can go a long way toward making it successful.

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Great! However, this scenario is the same as starting to build a house without a blueprint. Wireframes are like blueprints and visual design is like interior decoration for an app.

So before you start writing code, work on a blueprint — this includes writing down the features/user stories, designing the flow charts, defining the primary & secondary action and designing the wireframes. These sounds like a lot but I’ll walk you through each step to show you how simple it can be.

A weather app is a great example for me to demonstrate these ideas. It is simple, people use it everyday, it has primary & secondary actions, and it has a couple of screens. In the next few steps we will design a weather app, and I will show you how to think your app through before you start writing code.

Step 1. Define the features or user story

1. User should be able to see 1 day of weather for their current location
2. User should be able to see 7 days of weather for their current location
3. User should be able to see 1 day of weather for additional locations
4. User should be able to see 7 days of weather for additional locations
5. User should be able to add new locations
6. User should be able to edit/delete locations

Step 2. Design the flowchart
This can be simple (or extensive). The idea is to lay down all possible screens and user flows. Here is a simple flowchart for our Weather app.

Step 3. Design the wireframes
This is an extremely important step, and it is a tempting one to skip. A wireframe is an outline, blueprint or low-fidelity visual representation of your mobile app. It represents a basic layout structure (without colors) of each screen and navigation scheme. The benefits of designing wireframes are:

1. Determining how much development/programming is needed.
2. Testing the navigation.
3. Making sure no functionality is missed out.
4. Testing and refining the design & usability.

Primary & Secondary Actions
When designing a mobile screen it is good practice to limit the number of actions a user can take. This helps to keep the app simple and easy to learn. I personally try to limit each screen to 3 actions.

In our Weather App, the primary action would be “seeing weather for 7 days” or “seeing weather for another location”. A secondary action would be, i.e. “adding a new location”, because a user typically only does this every once in a while.

Here are wireframes for our Weather App.

The design/layout of information presented on the wireframes could vary. It depends on your creativity. Interactions like a button press vs. swipe can vary for actions. For example, in this app there are button press and swipe actions. To switch locations, the user swipes left to right, and to view the 7-day weather the user swipes up. I could use a ‘swipe down’ gesture to change locations, but that could cause issues on the iPhone since a ‘swipe down’ gesture near the top will pull down the iOS Notifications screen. These are things one should think when they are thinking of interaction design.

Next Steps:
The next steps from here are to test these wireframes with at least 5 users before starting development. You can learn a lot from 5 users – either confirm you have designed a good app or fix the issues before spending too much time in development.

Hope this articles helps. Please reach out to me or share your comments below.

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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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Fiksu has released its latest Indexes tracking how much it costs for brands to acquire loyal users, and how many downloads the top free iPhone apps are getting.

The Fiksu App Store Competitive Index tracks the average combined volume of the top 200 free iPhone apps. For July, the Index indicates that daily downloads decreased month-over-month by 5.6%, down to 4.37 million downloads from 4.63 million in June. The number has remained relatively stable after a drop from 6.35 million in February. This may be due to a residual after-effect of the holiday season, which saw steady increases after the launch of the iPhone 4S.

The Cost Per Loyal User Index tracks how much it costs “for brands who proactively market their apps” to acquire a “loyal user” – defined by a user that opens up an app 3 or more times. The July average increased by 7% to $1.54 after an average cost of $1.44 in June. This is the highest average cost in 2012, and the highest average since December 2011’s $1.81 figure.

Why are these numbers going in opposite directions? The average daily downloads may be due to people using their phones less after the holiday rush, which appeared to have an effect on downloads for 2 months. There’s also the possibility that some kind of change on Apple’s end with allowed methods for driving app installations affected the numbers. The Competitive Index charts out just the free iPhone download numbers, so while the 3rd generation iPad released in March, it seems unlikely that its release caused the massive drop, especially as holiday iPad sales also have to be factored in.

Interestingly, charting out the numbers shows that the two Indexes don’t have much correlation. For the past 9 months, as the Competitive Index increases, the Loyal User Index tends to decrease, but the correlation is very small, with many outliers in the data (the coefficient is -.1262, specifically), such as the July data where the Index decreased but costs went up. So each Index should best be taken individually.

It remains to see that with the next iPhone rumored to be announced in September or October, how each Index will react. Will free downloads spike again? If so, will it be easier to acquire loyal users? Time will tell, especially with so many external factors potentially impacting each Index.

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Mobile advertising service Chartboost has launched a new feature that will allow developers using their service to make money by way of helping to promote games from big developers using the Kiosks feature. Normally, the service allows developers to directly negotiate cross-promotions, or even paid promotions, with other developers. Now, even independent developers can make money off of promotions with some of the giants of the mobile industry.

What Kiosks enables develoeprs to do is to partner up with companies like GREE, Crowdstar, and Booyah to advertise their games with lucrative deals. For example, GREE is offering up to $3.50 per install of games like Zombie Jombie and Modern War. Crowdstar is doing something different: they’re going to offer prizes of up to $50,000 for the top 20 developers that drive installations to their games like Top Girl. Pocket Gems is offering developers up to $50,000 for driving installations to their games.

What this appears to let developers do is to have control over the publishers that they want to promote and make revenue off of. Developers who would prefer to promote one publisher’s titles can choose to do that, or they can find the best deal for them. It gives them more control over what their title’s interstitial ads are doing for them.

Gavin Bowman of Retro Dreamer has been using the service in some of his studio’s free titles. He says that “the level of customization and control you have over the ads that run is great, it gives it a lot of potential for doing cross promotions, and it’s cool that you can manage direct deals with advertisers through the service.” As well, developer Kiloo, known for Bullet Time HD and Frisbee Forever, reports having made $3,000 per day at one point through Chartboost alone. Chartboost’s Kiosks are available now for Chartboost members from their website.

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Apsalar has compiled some interesting data on who is more likely to spend money in apps based on app buying habits – or lack thereof, based on a report by TechCrunch.

Essentially, the higher percentage of paid apps that a user has, the less likely that they are to spend money on in-app purchases in free apps. In particular, of users with a ratio of 0–20% paid apps compared to all apps, 52% of those users have spent money on in-app purchases. It steadily declines to 6% of users with a ratio of 60–100% paid apps on their device.

In a way, this makes sense as to why an app like Temple Run really took off after going free. Users who are used to “free” apps appear to be more likely to then spend their money inside the app. And because inside the app, the economy of purchases is different ($9.99 may be a tall mountain to climb in the App Store, but for a bunch of virtual currency in an app, it may be no big deal), it’s how these games can pull down massive amounts of revenue. For users who are used to paying a “premium” price for an app, they may be hesitant to then spend extra money on top of it, possibly because they feel like they should be getting their value from the entry price.

But, there’s another factor in play regulating how likely a user is willing to spend money inside a free app: how many apps and games they have installed. 64% of users with 6+ games installed have spent money on IAP in free apps, compared to 10% of users with just 1 game installed. However, these users who have a lot of apps installed also spend less time in each app.

What Apsalar’s data tells us is that while the free-to-play model is succeeding with users who are used to “free” games, it has yet to receive complete adoption. When 48% of users who have less than 20% paid apps on their devices aren’t spending any money at all in free apps, it shows that the model still has a long way to go for complete acceptance, and for free-to-play monetization to truly take hold.

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German studio elblabs is launching a new ad network, GameAdTrading. What elblabs is claiming that their network can do better than other networks is simple: adaptability to many different platforms.

This adaptability is largely because GameAdTrading is currently available as a plugin for Unity, the engine that’s primarily designed for 3D games, but often finds use simply as a cross-platform engine. For example, Cthulhu Saves the World, a 16-bit-inspired RPG that has pretty much nothing three-dimensional about it at all, was ported from XNA to Unity for the mobile versions. The ability to publish to iOS, Android, and PC/Mac makes it an attractive option for even simulation games that aren’t as graphically-demanding. elblabs is also taking requests via email for other engines, including Flash.

As well, the platform will offer developers choice in the kinds of ads that they display. Developers can choose which kinds of industries they wish to serve ads for, and what kinds of ads that will be displayed. Both banner and video ads are available, and developers will have control over when and where these are displayed, within some limits. Developers will also get 60% of the revenue of an ad campaign after it is over.

For advertising providers, GameAdTrading is claiming that ads from existing online formats will be adaptable to their service, allowing for the reuse of internet banner ads, for example. Apps that use the GameAdTrading SDK will display ads that conform to the standards set by the Interactive Advertising Bureau for in-game advertisements, that will help ensure that advertisers receive proper exposure and fair value for the ads they serve. As well, pricing is based off of what elblabs claims are “actual generated AdImpressions, AdClicks and AdLeads.”

It should not be forgotten amongst all the advertising information and jargon that the potential impact for developers is huge: having an easy-to-use advertising system that can be plugged into Unity games is something that could make sure that the engine is relevant for more developers. This is true even if their games aren’t meant to be pushing the 3D capabilities of the platforms they wish to release on. elblabs will be demonstrating GameAdTrading at gamescom in Cologne August 15th–17th.

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Flurry expects the total revenue for mobile applications on iOS and Android to increase from $5.4 billion in 2011 to an expected total of $8.7 billion in 2012. Interestingly, advertising revenue is expected to increase to $2 billion in 2012, from $980 million in 2011, representing a shift from 17% of app revenue to 23%. This may be fueled by the increasing number of free-to-play and freemium apps and games.

Next, Flurry shares data that seems to indicate that there may just be life outside of the top ranks. For revenue from premium and in-app purchasing, apps outside the top 100 are expected to make 68% of the revenue, compared to 45% in 2010. This is compared to the top 25 making 28% of the revenue in 2010, and an expected 15% in 2012. However, considering the increased number of apps on the various stores, this revenue is beig split among more developers.

Flurry also shows that the distribution of revenue within the top 100 is normalizing; while there’s still a tall drop from the top ranks compread to 2010, the drop is less steep now. Where the #6 app in 2010 was making just over 40% of the revenue of the #1 app, the #6 app is now expected to make 60-65% of the revenue of the #1 app, and apps all the way up to the low 20′s are making at least 40% of the revenue of the #1 app.

What Flurry posits is that this all points to the rise of the middle class app developer: there are those getting rich off of the store, but there is also room for comfortable success on the store with all the additional revenue being spread throughout the mobile market. However, with more customers and more revenue to be made, there are also more developers and publishers fighting for slices of the same pie. The money is increasing, but it’s not necessarily getting easy for developers looking to succeed on mobile.

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W3i places the onus for these increases on the big-name companies entering western markets, such as GREE and DeNA. With their desire to achieve the kind of success that they have had in the Japanese market, they’ve been pouring massive amounts of money into marketing to try and drive users to their apps, which has helped to drive up the price of advertising and other marketing tools.

As W3i points out, the challenge for smaller developers is that industry behemoths with deep pockets are essentially on a level playing field with them. While this means that small developers can have massive successes, the increasing difficulty in attracting new users makes having even modest successes that much more difficult, and much more expensive.

Alternative methods of app discovery are still relatively untested. Facebook’s App Center has yet to establish itself, being still new to the market. iOS 6′s feature to “Like’ apps on Facebook directly from the App Store could help with discovery, but that’s still months away.

These high costs may explain why PapayaMobile and 6waves are launching app traffic exchange programs to try and get games to acquire users without taking up valuable ad inventory on other services, thus driving the CPI down to more reasonable levels. A rising tide sinks all boats, and extremely high user acquisition costs could keep games from being a worthwhile investment for all but the biggest players, flops could prove to be extremely devastating, and the independent developers who helped to form the foundation of the mobile gaming market could be all but shut out entirely if costs aren’t brought down to more reasonable levels.

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The most-searched criterion was age, with 50.2% of searches looking for apps for a particular age. Second was price at 40.6%, followed by platform at 31.8%, and the type of app was last at 30.2%.

Parents appear to be searching for apps for younger kids – age 3 is the most popular (37.7%), with decreasing popularity up to age 8 (14.0%).

As far as pricing goes, 3.1% of searches were for paid apps in particular. 37.5% of users were looking for free apps in particular. Interestingly, this is despite less than 10% of apps listed in KinderTown being free apps.

Platform may not be that important to users. 70% of KinderTown searches were from the iPad, but under 20% specified a platform. This could mean that users could be looking for apps from their iPad for their iPhones as well, or didn’t know about the platform difference. Or, they didn’t care, as KinderTown speculates. Also, universal apps were only searched specifically for by 3% of users looking for apps through KinderTown.

As far as the types of apps that parents wanted, language and math apps were the overwhelming favorite searches: 35.0% for language, 34.2% for math. Pre-reading and reading were 2 of the top 3 overall category searches. Science was the least popular (8%) but remember – math IS a science. As well, with the majority of searching being for young kids, it may make sense – parents might be more interested in developing core skills in their children.

This study shows to prospective developers of kids’ apps the areas that they may want to target when considering what to develop.

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This product is very similar to something PapayaMobile just launched on Android: AppFlood. While Papaya is trying to stick to just Android at the moment, 6waves’ system could have a leg up by being on iOS. However, the similarity of both products appears to be a targeted effort: they want to drive down the costs of user acquisition by essentially allowing developers to trade traffic for free when possible.

Driving the costs of user acquisition down may have positive benefits acrsoss the board. After all, if getting new users is expensive, then it gets harder to make money off of games. Lower costs mean that it’s easier to profit, and to get higher margins. For ad networks, this could tempt developers into implementing ads into their games where they may not have, if it can help bring new users into their game. More opportunities to sell ads means more room for inventory to be sold, which makes it easier for ad networks to then sell ad slots to clients.

Obviously, the benefit for users is that with an intelligent recommendation engine, they could find interesting new titles to play, and if developers don’t have to spend as much money on marketing, that could make games better.

Of course, the drawback isi that users may only be willing to tolerate so many advertisements, and if developers aren’t bringing in actual revenue with their advertisements, and possibly even sending users away, such programs could have minimal benefit. That is the question that WaveX will have to answer. Interested developers can sign up for WaveX at 6waves’ website.

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Kiip is trying to provide a new way for developers to make money off of advertising in a way that isn’t just a banner ad, and rewards players for playing their game. And they’re drawing serious investor interest as well.

What Kiip does is to essentially monetize in-game achievements. Sponsors can offer prizes for certain in-game achievements. For example, a brand could provide a free benefit, or an online retailer a valuable coupon, when an achievement is unlocked. The goal is to motivate players to keep playing to get these rewards for performing in-game actions, which will then lead to them interacting and possibly spending money with sponsors. Everyone wins, as users get more out of advertisements than just a blast of information at them, sponsors get possibly higher interaction rates, and developers possibly get higher engagement with their games while avoiding banner ads. Kiip currently claims to have over 400 titles using the service, with support for both iOS and Android.

This is a series B round of funding for Kiip, raising $11 million from various VC firms. Kiip been willing to spend money from the revenue it has generated in order to facilitate further development, as seen by its Build Fund, which used $100,000 to help create games that integrated Kiip. According to a report by PandoDaily, Brian Wong of Kiip has said that they will be running another fund to help make bring more projects that use Kiip to life.

Really, the long-term success of Kiip will be seen in if the service can draw in both more titles, and popular ones. Mobile gaming is a market where there is constant cycling of games due to the sheer number of developers releasing titles, but popular titles have a way of sticking around on the top charts. Kiip may need both to be in popular games as well as in numerous games to survive long-term.

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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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