2012 was in many ways the year of Korea. Last year, the whole world sang a song by rapper PSY, after that I watched how the elections were going there, in which a woman won for the first time, and now Korea is one of the most profitable Google Play markets.

Linux fans will have a holiday in a couple of days, namely on February 21: a preliminary version of the Ubuntu mobile OS for Android devices will be released. 

The most significant materials of last week: the results of Winter Nights: Mobile Games Conference, everything about the most profitable genres, an exclusive interview with Supercell, development tips from W3i, a report by Euroset on the Russian smartphone market.

Game Closure has released its own toolkit that allows you to develop Javascript applications that are not inferior in performance to native programs.

Rovio has strengthened its advertising department with people from Apple, Millennial Media and InMobi. The plans are, at least, to conquer the world.

Scenarios are a sore spot in mobile games. Only giants like Rockstar Games and Square Enix, porting their hits to iOS and Android, manage to tell the story intelligently.

The popularity of crowdfunding did not come immediately. For a long time, few people knew about the Kickstarter service, and few people believed in it. Everything changed a year ago, when Tim Schafer collected more than $3 million for the development of his new game in a month. 

Which games top the charts of paid apps on the American App Store? If you don’t know, read our latest material about the best paid games.

W3i game producer Ben Sipe shared five tips on how not to do it if you don’t want to fail your free mobile project at the Casual Connect Europe conference currently taking place in Hamburg. 

The Applifter gaming cross-promotion network told a little about the dubious results of the Everyplay service, which records replays from mobile devices, and its new functionality. 

South Korean publisher and developer Wemade may well become one of the central stars of the mobile market this year. The company’s revenue from the native mobile market only for the 4th quarter of 2012 increased by 280% to $8.87 million.

In 2012, smartphone sales in Russia increased significantly. The main drivers of growth were Android and Windows Phone devices.

On March 22-23, the Mobilefest conference-festival for mobile application developers will be held in the Moscow region.

Two Supercell games earn more per month on the App Store than a thousand Electronic Arts mobile games. Many people know this, so we talked with Finnish developers about something else, about inspiration, promotion and the future of the market. 

The platform for the promotion of casual games WildTangent has agreed with Sony to integrate its own app store on smartphones and tablets of the Japanese company. 

Despite its strong position in the mobile market, Big Fish claims that it still earns much more on its web portal. 

GamesAnalytics has launched a free service designed to help developers evaluate monetization and retention levels in f2p games.