Thursday Mobile Roundup: Upcoming Games, Franchise Expansion, Patents & More

"Developers, Not Carriers, Can Now Make or Break" RIM: This was one of the more revealing lines from an open letter a high-ranking Research in Motion employee supposedly made to management, urging serious changes in the company in order to catch up with Google's Android and Apple's iOS platforms. EggDrop Tries to Break Into Mobile Classifieds With $1 Million Round: Co-founded by former Google engineer Dan Zheng, the app makes it easy for people to snap a few pictures of things they want to sell with their iPhone or Android device. The parent company EggCartel raised $1 million in seed funding from BlueRun Ventures and SV Angel. Gameloft Unveils New Game Lineup: Gameloft has announced the list of new titles slated for release in the second half of 2011. In addition to "new" IPs, the company has noted several franchised titles as well. Here is the list: Asphalt 6: Adrenaline, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Driver San Francisco, Gangstar Rio: City of Saints, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2, Immortals, Lego Batman: The Mobile Game, Midnight Pool 3, Real Football 2012, Sid Meier's Civilization V: The Mobile Game, Where's Wally?, and Wild West Guns. Angry Birds Strikes Windows Phone: Rovio Mobile is moving onto Windows Phone with its Angry Birds franchise, says Pocket Gamer. However, the game is priced higher than other platforms at £2.49 ($2.99). Outfit7 Partners With Beanstalk: Outfit7, the mobile developer behind digital talking characters such as Talking Tom Cat, is partnering with licensing agency, Beanstalk, says VentureBeat. Beanstalk will be launching a global licencing program for Outfit7 which will allow them to expand to toys, games, books, and so on for children. Last week, Outfit7 partnered with William Morris Entertainment to begin this expansion. Google Sites Adds Mobile Support: Google has expanding its Google Sites service -- the service that allows users with little technical capability to build a web page with greater ease -- to include mobile. Now, users can build mobile landing pages for free, using templates. AddThis Optimized for Mobile Apps: AddThis, the social sharing platform from Clearspring Technologies that allows users to share web content across various social feeds, has been enhanced for applications on the iPhone and Android, says TechCrunch, AddThis is optimized specifically for the noted mobile operating systems, and thus noted as easy to implement in apps, while still being capable of being used on mobile web. [image via TechCrunch] Two More Android Developers Pay Microsoft Over Patents: Microsoft has entered into yet another agreement with two more Android makers, Velocity Micro and General Dynamics, in which the two will pay undisclosed sums in patent royalties. Curiously, a report from May notes that Microsoft is making five times as much money from Android than its own Windows Phone. Apple Expected to Offer Free iPhone 3GS with 2-Year Contract: According to AppleInsider, RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky expects that the iPhone 3GS will be offered for free, with a two-year mobile contract, when the iPhone 5 launches. The idea behind the offer would be to help Apple compete with mid-market consumers against the growing Android market. Consumers Spend More Time on Mobile Apps than On Web: A new report from analytics firm Flurry, and reported by Mashable, compares mobile data statistics from both comScore and Alexa and found that in the month of June, users spent more time on mobile apps than on web surfing. Users were noted at spending 81 minutes per day using mobile applications as compared to 75 minutes surfing the web. Joystick Labs Looks to Seed Gaming Startups With $20,000 A Piece: The Durham, North Carolina-based accelerator will give two to five-person studios $20,000 each in seed capital during a 12-week program. iPhone Hits its 4th Anniversary: It has been four years since Apple released its first iPhone, and since then, the mobile space has changed dramatically. In order to highlight the evolution of the smartphone, Mashable.com has composed a lovely infographic of iPhone statistics, pricing, downloads, and more. As a quick stat, the iPhone has hosted over 14,000,000,000 downloads.

Social Pro Daily

Thursday Mobile Roundup: Upcoming Games, Franchise Expansion, Patents & More

Kim-Mai Cutler

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Kim-Mai Cutler