The French publisher BulkyPix has announced the launch of a new indie developer support program. A special fund ($3 million) will be in operation for three years to finance teams engaged in multiplatform gaming projects.

Based on the trends of the mini-tablet market, Barnes & Noble announced its intentions to release a tablet that could compete with Google and Amazon devices both in terms of price category and technological features.

By the end of 2012, Intel Corporation plans to launch 20 tablet models running Microsoft Windows 8. The devices will be equipped with Intel Atom processors (Clover Trail platform). This was stated today as part of a report to investors by Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel.

In the latest update of the My Xbox Live iOS app (v. 1.6), an interesting feature has appeared that turns the iPad into a kind of remote control for the Xbox 360 game console.

In order to strengthen its mobile division, Facebook bought the service Spool, a startup from San Francisco. Spool has been developing free Android and iOS applications that allow you to save your favorite materials in a desktop browser for future use on a tablet or smartphone.

Alex Patsay, Head of the mobile direction Mail.Ru Group, after his speech at the White Nights: Mobile Games Conference, talked about how often updates should be released, which channels of promotion of mobile games are most important, how much you need to spend to earn a million, etc.

The leading mobile operator Verizon Wireless has announced a partnership agreement with Exent, under which its subscribers with Android devices will receive unlimited access to a number of popular mobile games.

The passions around hacking the In-App Purchase In-App Purchase system do not subside. Over the weekend, Apple blocked the IP addresses of the server that hacker Alexey Borodin, known by the nickname ZonD80, used to hack. The company turned to the hosting provider of the server with a request to stop its work.

Yesterday Apple released iOS 6 beta 3, which is currently available exclusively for developers. What’s new?

The popular mobile hit Fruit Ninja serves as an excellent example of how the free version of the application can earn very impressive amounts due to in-game advertising. According to Phil Larsen, the CMO of the Halfbrick studio that developed it, “Fruit Ninja” brings in over $400,000 monthly.However, according to Larsen, with such a high popularity of this game, the income could be higher.

The developer of am games for Windows Phone, who has not yet been among the Xbox Live-certified developers, has the courage to pay attention to the OpenXLive social gaming platform. By the way, not so long ago a new version (0.9.9) of its SDK arrived.

Samsung Electronics invites developers of mobile games and applications to participate in the Samsung Smart App Challenge 2012 international competition. The prize fund of the contest is more than $4 million. This amount will be divided among the authors of the 80 best games and applications.

About whether it is possible to earn money in China, there are disputes quite often. There are publishers who claim that it is simply “necessary to be able”, there are those who say that it is not even worth trying. According to the data published on the Chinese portal tech.sina.com The latter are right: on average, a developer receives only $0.03 (i.e. only 3 cents) from each download of an iOS application in China.

According to a study by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, for the first time the share of Android devices occupied more than half of the markets of major countries in Europe, Australia and the USA: it ranges from 49.6% in Italy to a record 84.1% in Spain.

The other day, Autodesk announced a new version of its Scaleform framework for developing user interfaces (UI), which was used by the creators of many hit “AAA” class games. Now it is equipped with tools that are designed to “make life easier” for mobile developers, in particular those who make applications for iOS and Android.

According to the Euroset report, in the first half of 2012, 4.9 million smartphones were sold in Russia at an average price of 10.2 thousand rubles. Thus, the market in monetary terms amounted to about 49.4 billion rubles.

PapayaMobile, the creator and operator of the eponymous mobile social gaming network for Android users, has announced the launch of a new service for application developers under this OC. It is called AppFlood and is a free network for cross-promotion.

Today, Facebook announced the release of a completely redesigned new version of the SDK 3.0 for iOS, including support for iOS 6 and iOS Dev Center (the new Development Center for iOS), which stores documentation and links to resources for developers.

Two-thirds of mobile phones purchased in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2012 were smartphones. This is one of the results of the latest study of the American smartphone market conducted by Nielsen – see the rest inside.