Viet Son Net

US-based social gaming company Zynga announced its entrance into Asia on May 20 with the acquisition of XPD Media, a Beijing-based social gaming company. Zynga did not disclose the terms of the acquisition.

Zynga operates social games including FarmVille and Mafia Wars on Facebook, MySpace, the Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL) iPhone and other platforms, and has more than 230 million monthly active users. Facebook and Zynga announced May 18 that they had entered a five-year strategic partnership for social gaming on Facebook.

Launched in early 2008, XPD Media currently has 40 employees and has received investment from True Ventures and Pilot Group, the announcement said. Under the terms of the partnership, XPD Media CEO Robin Chan will become Zynga’s general manager of Asian business development, and XPD Media Co-Founder Andy Tian will lead Zynga’s Beijing studio.

Zygna said in December 2009 that it had sold roughly $180 million of its securities to Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian global internet investment group that received investment from Tencent (0700.HK) last month. Tencent announced April 12 that it would invest approximately $300 million for a 10.26% stake in DST.

LAS VEGAS–Yahoo announced the introduction of Yahoo Sketch-a-Search and Yahoo Search, two new applications optimized for Apple’s iPhone. Sketch-a-Search enables users to draw a boundary on the device’s map to discover local businesses with the established area–the app initially covers U.S. restaurants, complete with ratings, reviews and directions, but additional merchant verticals and markets are in the works.

The new Yahoo Search iPhone App promises an interface that delivers contextually relevant results  bolstered by embedded maps, localized query suggestions, search history, voice-enabled search and related content from Yahoo and its partners. The search app will debut in 22 international markets across North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia.

For more on the new Yahoo apps:
- read this release

iPhone application prices decreased an average of 15 percent worldwide between Dec. 1, 2009 and Feb. 28, 2010 according to a new report issued by app store analytics firm Distimo. Average iPhone application prices are lowest in North America ($2.43), where games represent 51 percent of the most downloaded apps, and highest in Europe ($3.86), due in large part to costs associated with turn-by-turn navigation solutions.

Among paid App Store downloads in North America last month, App.mobiler’s Live Messenger led the way, followed by Tapulous’ Tap Tap Revenge 2.6, Global Agent’s Live Messenger (MSN Messenger, Windows Live ID), Lima Sky’s Doodle Jump and PopCap Games’ Plants vs. Zombies. In the free apps category, Global Agent’s Live Messenger Free (MSN Messenger, Windows Live ID) topped Distimo’s rankings, followed by Facebook, Activision’s Call of Duty: World at War–Zombies Lite, Donut Games’ Sunday Lawn and IA Interactive’s Cinepolis.

For more on App Store pricing trends:
- read the Distimo report

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded Apple a new patent that outlines a location-based social networking application for its iPhone platform. According to PatentlyApple, which first discovered the patent filing (originally submitted in Q3 2008), Apple is at work on a solution dubbed ‘iGroups” that allows friends or colleagues attending group events like concerts, weddings and trade shows to share information or reactions to live events as they unfold; the service leverages a cryptographic key generation system to guarantee communications security and privacy. The patent adds that in the event a particular device within a group does not support geolocation technology, Apple’s MobileMe service can provide “virtual GPS” capabilities to that user in order to interact with their contacts.

PatentlyApple adds that iGroups represents the fourth Apple social networking application made public in 2010, indicating the company is intensely focused on the segment.

For more on iGroups:
- read this PatentlyApple article

Digital commerce solutions provider PayPal announced the introduction of PayPal Send Money version 2.0, an iPhone application enabling consumers to transfer and collect funds from fellow users. The free Send Money app features include Bump transfers, which enables iPhone and iPod touch users to touch their devices together to exchange funds between their PayPal accounts, as well as Split Check, which allows up to 20 people to divide the cost of a meal, including tip and tax. Another feature, Collect Money, facilitates payment requests from multiple people for a joint gift, team dues, concert tickets, and more. Users can also send monetary gifts on birthdays, anniversaries or any other occasion.

PayPal Send Money requires a PIN or password for each transaction to combat unauthorized use. According to PayPal, its mobile transactions have grown nearly six-fold from $25 million in 2008 to $141 million in 2009.

For more on PayPal Send Money:
- read this release

Youth-focused development studio Lima Sky announced its Doodle Jump game has now sold more than 3 million copies via Apple’s App Store. The game–priced at 99 cents–has sold over 1.6 million units in 2010 alone, topping the App Store’s paid apps countdown in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Australia along the way. According to Lima Sky, Doodle Jump is now played 5 million times each day.

Optimized for users age four and up, Doodle Jump features the character Doodle the Doodler–players guide him on his journey up a sheet of graph player via the iPhone’s tilt controls, acquiring jet packs, avoiding black holes and fending off enemies as they jump from platform to platform. Lima Sky issued the latest update to the title last week.

For more on Doodle Jump‘s download milestone:
- read this release

A new Juniper Research report found that the number of enterprise customers using mobile cloud-based applications will increase to more than 130 million by 2014.

Platform as a service (PaaS) deployments from companies such as Google and Microsoft are expected to be the catalyst for growth. Juniper Research found that the market for connected enterprise applications benefits from Apple’s iPhone and App Store as the number of enterprise apps available to end users grew significantly.

In addition, Juniper’s Mobile Cloud Applications research has found that as cloud providers open up their APIs for application developers looking to build browser-based or thin-client applications, a bigger opportunity and incentive is created for developers looking to drive down costs associated with porting applications across multiple platforms.

“A cloud-based ecosystem for enterprise apps will be attractive both for developers and enterprises alike. For developers, cloud opens up a far wider potential audience for their products; for enterprise customers, outsourcing application management to a remote third-party, costed on a scalable, pay-per-use basis, offers far more flexibility combined with a significant reduction in capital expenditure,” said report author Dr. Windsor Holden.

For more:
- check out this Mobile Europe article

With the 2010 Winter Olympics now in the books, NBC announced that mobile page views across its WAP site and iPhone application reached 87.1 million over all 17 days of the games–according to the Peacock Network, that’s 52 million more mobile views than the Beijing Summer Olympics generated in 2008. In addition, the Vancouver games yielded more than 2 million mobile video streams, over six times greater than the 301,0000 streams Olympics fans consumed two years ago.

In addition, the NBC Olympics Mobile App ranked as the number one free sports application in Apple’s App Store throughout the first weekend of the games and again on the final day. The 2010 Winter Olympics concluded with the instant-classic USA vs. Canada gold medal hockey game, which drew an average television viewership of 27.6 million, making it the most watched hockey broadcast of any kind since the upstart Team USA defeated Finland to win the gold in 1980. NBC adds that 190 million Americans watched the 2010 Olympics across all of its broadcast networks–the second most-watched winter games ever, behind Lillehammer in 1994.

For more on the NBC Olympics Mobile numbers:
- read this release

The Android operating system’s share of total North American mobile web consumption increased 8.3 percent month-over-month in February to grow to 15.2 percent, according to new data released by web analytics firm Quantcast–Android’s growth came at the expense of Apple’s iPhone OS, which slipped 3.2 percent to 6.7 percent. Research In Motion’s BlackBerry platform also picked up steam last month, rising 13.8 percent over January totals to command 9.2 percent of North American mobile web consumption. Rival operating systems comprise the remaining 11.8 percent, Quantcast adds.

Over the past 12 months, Android’s mobile web consumption share jumped 95.3 percent, Quantcast reports. The BlackBerry OS grew 7.5 percent over the same period, and the iPhone OS fell 10.2 percent. Competing platforms dropped 6.9 percent. Quantcast nevertheless adds that iPhone continues to make the biggest strides in respect to absolute mobile web consumption, commenting “the competition have a long way to go before there’s a real fight on their hands.”

For more on the Feb. 2010 mobile web consumption breakdown:
- read this Quantcast Blog entry

Consumers on the iPhone and Android platforms exhibit similar activity levels, downloading roughly the same total number of applications and spending about the same amount of time using them, according to mobile advertising firm AdMob’s January 2010 Mobile Metrics Report. However, AdMob reports that iPhone users continue to download more paid apps than other smartphone users, with 50 percent of iPhone owners purchasing at least one premium app per month, compared to 21 percent of Android users.

iPod touch owners download an average of 12 applications a month, 37 percent more than iPhone and Android users who download roughly nine new apps each, AdMob notes. By comparison, Palm webOS users downloaded an average of six applications per month. While iPod touch users devote an average of 100 minutes per day to using applications, webOS users spend an average of 87 minutes per day, followed by Android users at 80 minutes and iPhone users at 79 minutes per day. Seventy-three percent of Android users are male, compared to 56 percent of iPhone OS users; the average iPhone user is 14 years older than the average iPod touch user, 78 percent of whom are under age 24.

The iPhone represented 47 percent of U.S. smartphone usage across the AdMob network in January, followed by Android (39 percent), BlackBerry (7 percent) and webOS (3 percent). The AdMob report also notes the growth of web-enabled hardware, stating that about 17 percent of January’s mobile ad requests originated via non-phone devices, compared to 12 percent in July 2009. Among consumers asked if they own a mobile Internet device or plan to purchase one within the next six months, iPhone users showed the highest level of interest in purchasing an iPad at 16 percent, compared to 11 percent of webOS users and just 6 percent of Android users–about the same percentage who expressed interest in buying an Amazon Kindle ereader.

For more on the AdMob January 2010 Mobile Metrics Report:
- read this release