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Sky Gamblers party mode, Infinity Blade Dungeons, Star Academy, Nike+ Training and more on the way to iPhone and iPad

Apple is expected to unveil the iOS 6 software at its WWDC conference in June, and while proprietary maps, Siri APIs for developers and a revamped App Store have been rumoured, the exact details won’t be known until the event.

However, Apple is showing off some of the apps that it expects to be big summer hits on its iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices. The company’s senior director of iPhone product marketing, Stan Ng, sat down with The Guardian this morning for an “iOS momentum” briefing.

The choice of apps offers some clues about Apple’s priorities for its platform, and how it’s positioning iOS against competition from Android in particular.

The figures are familiar from Apple’s most recent quarterly financials call: more than 365m iOS devices shipped so far, more than 600,000 apps in its App Store, 25bn downloads so far and a current run-rate of 1bn a month.

(Google, meanwhile, said in February that 300m Android devices had been activated, while in May it reported that its Google Play Store had passed the 15bn downloads milestone, also running at around 1bn a month.)

Not-so-throwaway references to the lack of iOS malware, developers making money from paid apps, and OS fragmentation during the briefing also show where Apple is looking to pitch the battle for developer mindshare this summer. With WWDC coming just a couple of weeks before Google’s own I/O developer event, expect more barbs ahead.

Exclusivity on the rise

Ng and his colleagues showed me nine apps and one iBook during the briefing, although he had a number of meetings and the selection of apps may have varied from journalist to journalist – in other words, this isn’t the definitive list of the apps that Apple is showing off.

All of them are iOS exclusives, for now at least. This seems to be where the battleground is heading between iOS and Android, as Apple ramps up its backing for apps that aren’t available on other platforms.

See also the three exclusive apps shown at the unveiling of the company’s new iPad in March, and senior vice president of worldwide marketing Philip Schiller’s public abandonment of Instagram when it “jumped the shark” by being ported to Android.

But yes, the apps. Namco’s Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy is already out – and was one of those iPad-event demos – but its publisher is adding a party-play multiplayer mode designed to be used with iOS’ AirPlay feature and a TV.

I watched NG and two colleagues play from a mixture of iPads and iPhones, all wirelessly connected to an Apple TV set-top box, with the TV screen split between their views. Essentially the same thing that games consoles have been doing for years.

That’s important in itself, since it’s a sign that developers are already looking at Apple TV as… Well, as a stealth console. The action was pretty jerky, but the feature is apparently still in development.

I also got a closer look at Infinity Blade Dungeons from Epic Games’ Chair Entertainment studio, which was also shown at the iPad launch. The version shown off today was running on an iPhone 4S, and while the bubbling lava and blowing leaves are nice in a processor-showing-off way, I was more impressed by the developers’ decision to shun a virtual D-pad and buttons in favour of touchscreen gestures.

Independent spotlight

The third game Apple talked up was a different kettle of fish: SpellTower, a word game by independent developer Zach Gage, who recently generated some canny social media buzz with a “Holy Crap, I’m Near the Top, This is Crazy! Help an Indie Take On Rovio+Zynga!” price-cut promotion.

Singling out a game like this to show to journalists is telling, and not just because it showcases the more casual side of iOS gaming. With no shortage of games that have crashed and burned on the App Store, Apple is clearly aware of the need to keep the dream of iOS riches alive for the indie community.

Armed with its featured slots on the App Store, I’ll be interested to see if Apple turns SpellTower into the next Tiny Wings, in terms of a one-man success story.

Also interesting from the demo: Ng’s reminder of Apple’s claim that the iPod touch is the best-selling handheld games device in the world. It’s been easy to forget about the iPod touch in recent times – it hasn’t been updated since September 2010.

If it does get refreshed this summer (or more likely, Autumn), perhaps it will have even more of a focus on gaming, and a continued challenge to Sony’s PS Vita and Nintendo’s 3DS. That’s my reading, rather than anything specific said by Ng, though.

Book-apps and iBooks

Also shown this morning was a succession of reading/book apps, including two existing titles from Touch Press: Barefoot World Atlas and Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomy.

There was also an iBook – George Harrison: Living in a Material World by the late Beatle’s widow Olivia – showcasing its use of photos and audio alongside the text.

I’ve heard from several book publishers lately that Apple is taking a pro-active approach when it comes to separating iBooks from iOS apps – those who are simply looking to add more photos, video and audio to a print text are being encouraged down the iBooks route, with apps left for those with grander interactive ambitions.

The George Harrison iBook is a good example of the former, but another app demonstrated today – a still-in-development book-app called Star Academy from developer Monster Costume – illustrated the latter.

No virtual page-turns here: instead it offers parallax-scrolling scenes, visuals from artist Dylan Cole (whose CV includes Avatar, Tron Legacy and Lord of the Rings) and the promise of games and puzzles.

Ng offered up panoramic-photography app TourWrist and polished city-guide Cool Cities Collection as current cutting-edge travel apps – both are already available – before donning a pair of Nike trainers to show off the sportswear firm’s upcoming Nike+ Training and Nike+ basketball apps.

The trainers contain sensors to measure the movements of their wearer, transmitting the data wirelessly to the iPhone apps for interpretation. The apps also include workouts from famous athletes, while tying into the NikeFuel community – a bit like Xbox Live with less sitting on the sofa.

The interface between apps and third-party hardware (or, indeed, leisurewear in this case) has plenty more mileage, and for now it’s an area dominated by iOS. So-called appcessories may be plentiful at WWDC, or looking further ahead, at the CES consumer electronics show in January 2013.

All eyes on WWDC

In summary, then: More developers and brands are shifting towards a dual iOS/Android publishing strategy in 2012. Grumbles about Android fragmentation and the appetite of its users for paid apps continue, but the platform’s sheer scale is counterbalancing that, especially for certain app genres like freemium games and social apps.

From today’s admittedly-small selection of apps being talked up by Apple to journalists, my takeaway is that the company’s strategy is a mixture of: doubling down on genres it’s stronger in, like console-quality games, book-apps and appcessories; reminding developers of the promotion it can put behind iOS exclusives, and also highlighting some of those Android negatives.

That said, June’s conferences will give us a much better picture of how the next generation of iOS and Android software and stores will shape up for developers.

What’s new on the app stores on Thursday 10 May 2012

A selection of 19 new and notable apps for you today:

N.O.V.A. 3

Gameloft’s N.O.V.A. series started as a homage to Xbox’s Halo franchise. Now in its third incarnation, the graphics have been pumped up even more for its first-person shooter action, with a mixture of solo and multiplayer deathmatch modes.
iPhone / iPad

CoPilot GPS

CoPilot Live is one of the more established navigation apps, but now its maker ALK has launched a new version designed for offline use only – promising it “gets you everywhere you need to go without relying on your mobile data connection”. The app is free, although an in-app purchase is required to upgrade to actual voice navigation.
Android / iPhone / iPad

Damien Hirst

Tate Gallery has launched an official iPhone app for the Tate Modern museum’s 2012 Damien Hirst exhibition. The app includes interviews with Hirst about his work, as well as curator Ann Gallagher. There are commentaries on his most famous pieces, and virtual galleries to explore. Tate worked with Antenna International on the app.
iPhone

Tap Dragon Park

Pocket Gems has been one of the more successful social mobile games publishers in the West. Its new game, Tap Dragon Park, is launching as an Android-exclusive. It’s a wizardy tale of dragon-taming and trolls.
Android

CloudOn

Android tablet owners keen to do some editing of Microsoft Office files have a new option in the form of CloudOn, which promises that it “makes your Android tablet do some real work”. Box, Dropbox and Google Drive support is included.
Android

TVcheck

Orange has brought its social TV iPhone app from France to the UK, helping couch potatoes check in to shows, chat to friends and compete in quizzes. The check-ins use “image recognition technology” to identify what you’re watching.
iPhone

Louis Vuitton 100 Legendary Trunks

Love cases, trunks and suitcases? This iPad app may be your friend, if you don’t mind the £13.49 price. It includes text from the 100 Legendary Trunks book, as well as videos, sound clips and the obligatory 360-degree spinning objects.
iPad

The North Face

This US-only app focuses on outdoor-fashion brand The North Face, with an in-app shop, social features and the ability to scan product barcodes in real stores to get more information and alternative sizes and colours.
iPhone

San Francisco Chronicle’s Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants

Time Out has a foody app for New York, but here’s another print publisher with a similar idea. Hearst has launched a restaurant guide iPhone app for the Bay Area, under its San Francisco Chronicle brand.
iPhone

LostWinds2: Winter of the Melodias

Console game LostWinds wafted onto iOS in 2011, but now it has a sequel with new levels, characters and storytelling to explore. This time, you’re switching between seasons as well as blowing wind to help hero Toku in his quest.
iPhone / iPad

ShoeBox

1000memories has ported its ShoeBox app to Android smartphones, helping you scan old printed photographs to make them digital, then share them with friends and family.
Android

Dark Shadows: Photo Filter App

Warner Bros has launched an app to promote Tim Burton’s new film Dark Shadows, riffing off the Instagram template to apply filters, frames and overlays from the film onto your iPhone photos.
iPhone

Squiggles!

The latest innovative drawing app for kids on the iPad is Squiggles, launched by developer Lazoo. It gets children to doodle on the screen, then animates their creations, while helping them to share them with family and friends.
iPad

Shopmox

Another US-only app – for now at least – is Shopmox, which pitches itself as a “personalised shopping catalogue”. That means browsing digital catalogues from retailers including Gap, Banana Republic, Urban Outfitters, Old Navy and Fossil.
iPad

BBC Knowledge Magazine

The Beeb’s “magazine for young inquisitive minds” gets an iOS version, with science, history and nature articles to “empower a generation of young readers”.
iPhone / iPad

The Caddie +

We’re unsure whether this is US-only or global, but golfers with a Nokia Windows Phone will be chuffed with The Caddie + – the latest Lumia exclusive. It keeps track of your score, offers leaderboards for you and your friends, and “group heckling” features.
Windows Phone

The Daily Beast

Newsweek has launched a Windows Phone app for its Daily Beast website, offering its politics, entertainment, culture and books stories, as well as its Cheat Sheet aggregation of other breaking news from other websites.
Windows Phone

Titanic Belfast – Acoustiguide App

Whether you’re visiting the Titanic Belfast exhibition or not, this app provides an audio-tour around the centre, which sites next to the docks where the ill-fated ship was built.
iPhone

Albert and the Alphabetimals

The App Store is stuffed with ABC educational apps for kids, and most of them are rubbish. Albert and the Alphabetimals looks like one of the good ones though: 26 animals shaped like letters to introduce the alphabet, with a neat tie-in website.
iPad

Japanese publishers rack up £676m of combined revenues in first three months of 2012 alone

Japan’s two largest social mobile games firms, GREE and DeNA, have reported strong financial results for the first quarter of 2012, although regulatory scrutiny could rein in their growth in the months ahead.

GREE generated revenues of $560m (around £348m) during the quarter, posting a net profit of $162m (around £101m). That’s up 182% and 186% respectively year-on-year.

The company says it has 234m members worldwide for its social mobile games community, although the bulk of its revenues come from the 30m in Japan. 93% of GREE’s revenues come from in-app purchases, versus 7% for advertising.

Meanwhile, DeNA reported revenues of $529m for the first three months of 2012, up 32% year-on-year. Its operating income rose 19% to $234m in the same period. The company has so far made $640m from its Moba-coin virtual currency alone.

To put these numbers into perspective, Electronic Arts’ latest set of financial results reveal its mobile revenues were $87m in the first quarter of 2012, while its traditional Western rival Gameloft generated $58.9m.

Zynga, meanwhile, generated $321m of revenues from its entire business – web and mobile – in the same quarter.

GREE and DeNA are giants in the social mobile gaming world, then, but their revenues and profits remain rooted in their Japanese homeland. Both companies have aggressive global expansion plans though.

DeNA launched its Mobage social gaming network in the West in 2011, starting on Android before releasing a few Mobage-enabled games on iOS. Its $403m acquisition of Western firm ngmoco in October 2010 has been at the heart of this, but DeNA has also snapped up indie developers like Rough Cookie, Gameview, Atakama Labs and Astro Ape, while inking partnerships with other Western publishers.

For its part, GREE is planning to launch its social platform worldwide by the end of May 2012. It too has been acquiring – most recently paying $180m for US developer Funzio, but also ngmoco’s rival OpenFeint for $104m in April 2011.

In fact, its financial results reveal more details about Funzio’s business: the company made $12m of revenues from its Modern War and Crime City social mobile games in the first quarter of 2012, then $5m in April alone as it launched a third title, Kingdom Age.

With lucrative profits in Japan fuelling this global expansion, the cloud hanging over both GREE and DeNA is fresh regulatory scrutiny on one aspect of their domestic businesses: “Kompu Gacha” games.

These are titles where players can enter sweepstakes for prizes if they buy a certain number of virtual items. Following unrest from parents about children’s spending habits as a result of these offers – an intriguing mirror of the “bait apps” debate currently causing a rumpus in the US – the Japanese government is expected to crack down on their use.

Both companies’ share prices dived following the first reports of the likely regulation, showing investors’ confidence wobbling in their business models. GREE has already said it will stop offering the offending games at the end of May.

On one hand, global expansion will reduce GREE and DeNA’s dependence on Kompu Gacha-related revenues. On the other, those games have been the cash cow base for the expansion overseas, so if sales take a hit, their ability to move fast to build their Western businesses against competition from Zynga, EA and others may be restricted.

Finnish developer’s earnings before tax for year top £38.7m thanks to 200m monthly active users

Angry Birds has generated hundreds of millions of downloads for Finnish mobile games firm Rovio Entertainment, but the company’s financial results for 2011 reveal just how lucrative the franchise was that year.

The company has reported total revenues of €75.4m (£60.8m) for 2011, with earnings before tax of €48m (£38.7m).

30% of Rovio’s revenues for the year came from its consumer products business, which includes merchandising and licensing income.

Rovio says that the total number of Angry Birds game downloads reached 648m by the end of 2011, with 200m monthly active users across all platforms. The company grew its headcount from 28 to 224 during the year.

“The strong growth in revenue clearly demonstrates the popularity of the Angry Birds brand,” said chief executive Mikael Hed in a statement.

“The heavy investments made in 2011 to all business areas will be seen in future products. To ensure continuous success we need to be creative and stay focused on entertaining our millions of fans by continuously developing new and innovative products and services.”

Hed added that Rovio is “very optimistic” about continuing its growth in 2012. The company launched the latest Angry Birds game, Angry Birds Space, in March. It proceeded to rack up 50m downloads in the next 35 days.

Rovio reaches milestone and releases new levels for iOS and Android versions of its latest game

Angry Birds Space, the latest mobile game from Finnish developer Rovio, has reached the 50m downloads mark just 35 days after its release on 22 March.

The publisher claims on its blog that this makes its tile “the fastest growing mobile game yet”, beating all previous records for the Angry Birds series.

The announcement may be a deliberate reminder to challengers like Draw Something of the scale of Angry Birds. Draw Something was released on 1 February, notched up 35m downloads in its first seven weeks – yes, a similar time period to that required for Rovio’s new milestone – and was promptly acquired by Zynga for $180m.

Draw Something passed 50m downloads in early April, while another recently-released game, Temple Run, is also past that milestone.

“While numbers like this certainly say something about the popularity of Angry Birds, for us the main goal is to keep creating fun new experiences that everybody can enjoy,” explains Rovio on its blog.

The company released updates to the iOS and Android versions of Angry Birds Space on 25 April with 10 new levels for free, as well as 20 free Space Eagles power-ups. Both may be responses to criticism from some quarters about Rovio’s greater use of in-app purchases in the new game.

“There’s only one conclusion to draw: something even bigger is on its way,” concludes the blog post. That something is likely to be a 1bn milestone for the entire Angry Birds series.

The public figure for overall downloads has remained at 700m for some time now, as the developer stopped providing updates in anticipation of cracking the 1bn mark. That can’t be far off now.

As a comparison, the original Angry Birds was released on 9 December 2009, and reached the 50m milestone exactly one year later.

An iPad app aimed at children allows vast amounts of money to be traded for virtual fruit and seeds – as we found to our cost

My seven-year-old sister Lily is scarily competent with technology; she can change my phone’s screensaver, send a text message and download apps. The flipside to this is that she is also a target for the games industry. It is easy to see why, considering she recently racked up a £200 bill feeding an imaginary animal apples and seeds on a supposedly free iPad app.

Having had his debit card blocked due to an uncharacteristic amount of spending (£200 had been spent on his iTunes account in a matter of days), my dad assumed that some kind of fraud had taken place; after numerous phone calls and emails to Apple, we found out that the money had all been charged to a game called Dream PetHouse. Once we established that my dad had not been indulging a penchant for animated companions, all eyes turned to my little sister, who promptly burst into tears.

Deciphering some sense through the sobs, we managed to work out what had happened. Lily often plays free games on my dad’s iPad, and as a busy father of five he hadn’t thought twice about downloading another free app to keep her amused. The app Dream PetHouse, is a cartoon simulation game which involves users feeding “the world’s cutest animals”, caring for them in a tree “staffed by Chipper and his group of adorable chipmunk friends”. What is not so cute, however, is that in order to progress at any meaningful rate, spending is required.

The concept is reliant on continually improving your pet in order to advance through the levels, and unless you are prepared to move at a snail’s pace, you need to spend. Prices vary, but some of the purchases are frighteningly expensive; a “ton of fruit” costs £20, while a “mountain of seeds” costs £40. All that is required to spend is for the user to enter their iTunes password; Lily had seen my dad put in his password and so thought nothing of entering it again and again when prompted by the game.

My dad was careless – he should have kept his password secure; but I feel the company behind the game have a case to answer too – not in law, but ethically. iTunes lists the game as appropriate for those over the age of four, and the cartoon animals are clearly designed to appeal to children. The tone of the customer support service demonstrates the extent to which the app is aimed at children; when I asked about the payments for “food”, I received an email addressed to “Pet Lover Harry” from a “friendly Chipmunk Nurse” named Joy.

Why, then, does a game so clearly designed for children allow such vast sums of money to be traded for virtual fruit and seeds? Small children are now incredibly skilled with technology, but they should not be encouraged to play a game where money beyond their comprehension is involved.

Analysis of the Google Play store’s chart shows free-to-play model taking hold

There are worse ways to spend an afternoon than perusing the Top Grossing charts of the big app stores, if you want to understand the dynamics of the apps market.

I wanted to crunch some data from the Google Play store for Android, to see what kind of apps are making the most money there, and particularly to look at what proportion of apps are paid versus free.

And? Here are the results of the analysis, based on the UK Google Play top grossing apps chart, as it stood in the afternoon of 20 April, with the data coming from the Google Play website.

The topline results: 75% of the 100 top grossing Android apps in the UK – on Google’s store at least – are free to install, and make their money from in-app purchases. Note, all these figures are based on consumer spending, rather than advertising.

But what’s even more clear is the dominance of one particular kind of free app within this, since 68 of the 100 apps are freemium games. In fact, 18 of the 20 top grossing Android apps in the UK were free games, led by Gameloft’s Ice Age Village, Zynga’s Zynga Poker and TinyCo’s Tiny Village.

Meanwhile, of the 25 paid apps in the chart, 13 were games, meaning that games accounted for 81% of the 100 top grossing apps at the time my analysis was performed.

Getting back to the freemium games, you can see some names familiar from the iOS world, like Gameloft (four free-to-play games in the 100 top grossing chart), Glu Mobile (seven), Storm8 (five) and Teamlava (five), along with Zynga (three, or four if you count newly-acquired Draw Something, which still lists OMGPOP as its publisher). Others, like Game Insight and Droidhen, are more prominent on Android than iOS.

When you browse the Google Play store, each app is assigned into a bucket of “Installs” – a very rough guide to how many times it’s been installed. The Installs figures are global rather than UK-specific, but they’re still useful.

The sweet spot for freemium games on Android seems to be the 1m-5m installs zone, with 32 games from the chart falling into this bucket. Another 13 have notched up 5m-10m installs, and a select group of six are into 10m-50m territory (Ant Smasher, Drag Racing, Live Holdem Poker Pro, Tap Fish, Temple Run and Draw Something Free).

When you look at the paid games that have made it into the top 100, it’s more usually 100k-500k installs for games like Cut the Rope: Experiments, Angry Birds Space Premium, Worms, Sonic CD and The Sims 3, although Where’s My Water, the paid version of Draw Something and Minecraft have all made it to 500k-1m installs, and the original Cut the Rope is in the 1m-5m bucket.

The common theme there? All trusted brands, either from console/PC, or from sheer popularity on Android and iOS. Football seems to be doing well, too: both FIFA 12 and Football Manager Handheld 2012 are in the 10k-50k global installs bucket, but are still on the chart – the latter in 11th place with a £6.99 price.

Outside games, there are less obvious lessons. To get into the 100 top grossing chart, you can charge £20 or more if you have a certain kind of app, like navigation (CoPilot Live), sports (Golfshot: Golf GPS, F1 2012 Timing App) or medical (Anesthesia Central at a whopping £93.28, and 100-500 installs).

DocumentsToGo and Quickoffice Pro have been doing good business at just under £10 each too, with 500k-1m and 100k-500k installs respectively.

It’s just a snapshot, and a snapshot of one country at that. But a useful one for gauging the evolving character of Google’s store. It also shows why freemium games publishers are moving fastest from iOS-only to iOS+Android strategies.

What about Apple though? I fired up iTunes on my desktop and checked the iPhone Top Grossing chart in the UK, and found that 45 of the top 100 apps were freemium games, with another 22 being paid games – 67% overall.

Less than Google’s store, then, but still a sign that a lot of the money being made from the world’s two biggest app stores is coming from games, and free-to-play games in particular.

Here’s the core data that I used for the analysis, if it’s of use.