According to analysts from Gartner, global sales of smartphones to end users in the first quarter of 2013 reached 210 million units, which is 34.8% higher than in the same period last year (147 million) and 44% higher than in the fourth quarter of 2012.

 

May 15, Cosmos Hotel, the first day of the Eleventh Game Developers Conference, or, in short, KRI and our first impressions of it.

Rovio Entertainment yesterday announced the opening of a new division of Rovio Stars, which will be engaged in publishing third-party mobile projects.

Ninel Gruner from Room 8, during her report “What a publisher won’t do for you”, talked about the intricacies of promoting and marketing mobile games.

Sundar Pichai, head of Android and Chrome, gave his first interview since taking office. He talked about how he sees the future of Android, commented on the situation around Samsung and dispelled several rumors about the upcoming I/O.

The Electronic Arts company announced yesterday that the Frostbite Go mobile engine is in development.

Yesterday, a round table “Development and publication of mobile games” was held at FlashGAMM. It was moderated by Yulia Lebedeva from Nevosoft, who, after asking the participants “who are indie developers”, set the tone for the entire discussion.

The Japanese company Konami has released a report for the fiscal year ended March 31. Konami’s profit has almost halved, the company sees the reason for this in the cessation of the growth of the mobile market and its stabilization. 

Developers will soon have to focus on the emerging markets of Africa and Eastern Europe. What are the reasons, Pyramid Research analysts found out.

Moscow was greeted with the sun, the Cosmos Hotel with long–legged girls. We are currently at the FlashGAMM Moscow 2013 conference. There are dozens of developers and publishers around. The first materials about the reports are next in line.

Google announced yesterday that all Android app developers will now be able to respond to user reviews in the Google Play app store. 

Amazon is developing a new smartphone, the highlight of which will be the presence of a 3D screen. On top of everything else, Amazon promises to save us from having to use glasses for viewing. 

Yesterday, on May 13, Amazon officially “put into circulation” the virtual currency Amazon Coins, announced back in February.

In April, King company “captured” Facebook and mobile markets with the help of its latest hit Candy Crush Saga. At the same time, Zynga and Disney were losing their active users, according to VentureBeat with reference to Cowen and Co.

The other day, GungHo published its financial report for April. According to him, the company earned $113 million on Puzzle & Dragons in one month. After the publication of the report, the company’s value jumped to $15 billion.

There are very few days left before the Google I/O conference, at which the search giant is likely to make several high-profile announcements at once, so there is nothing surprising in the appearance of rumors about various new services. One of them will definitely be Google Play Games. 

The Japanese company Capcom reported on the results of the fiscal year ended March 31. Its mobile division contributed ¥11 billion ($117 million) to the total piggy bank, which is 74% higher than the previous year.