Millennial Media today released its 2012 year in review Mobile Mix Report, which showed Apple and Samsung remaining the top device manufacturers on its platform.

Apple remained the No. 1 OEM manufacturer on the mobile ad network’s platform in 2012, increasing its impressions share 5 percent year-over-year from 26 percent to 31 percent of the total impressions on Millennial Media’s top 15 device manufactures list. Samsung also maintained its No. 2 spot on the top 15 device manufactures list, thanks to a 5 percent growth in impressions since 2011 from 17 percent of total impressions on Millennial’s platform to 22 percent. The most notable newcomer to the ad network’s top 15 manufacturers list for 2012 was Amazon, landing at the No. 11.

Apple’s suite of iPhone devices — including the 4S, 5, etc. — also remained the top device on Millennial Media’s network in 2012, accounting for 15.59 percent of impressions, a 72 percent increase year-over-year. Impressions for Samsung’s flagship smartphone device, the Galaxy S, grew 182 percent in 2012, moving the device up five spots to the No. 2 position on Millennial Media’s top 20 mobile phones list. Tablet-wise, the Apple iPad stood pat as the No. 1 tablet on Millennial’s platform for 2012.

Based on ad impressions on Millennial’s network, smartphones were once again the leading device in 2012, increasing 7 percent for a 75 percent share of the total platform impressions. In second were non-phone connected devices — tablets, e-readers, etc. –, increasing 5 percent year-over-year to 20 of impressions in the ad network’s platform. Millennial Media attributed the majority of the growth of that category to the adoption rate increase of tablets. The feature phone category, as expected, fell from 17 percent in 2011 to 5 percent in 2012.

Now the breakdown for the operating systems on devices was stagnant year-over-year. Android was once again the top OS on Millennial’s platform at 48 percent, which was only a 1 percent increase since 2011. iOS was the second largest OS, with 32 percent of the impression share, down one percent year-over-year. Millennial also broke down OS share for tablets, with iOS taking a 58 percent impression share among all tablet OS. Android took a 41 percent share, with Samsung as the leading Android tablet manufacture with a 45 percent share.

CEO Tim Cook said during a Goldman Sachs conference that Apple has now paid out $8 billion to developers, up $1 billion from the $7 billion payout figure Apple reported in late January.

In October 2012, Cook announced that Apple had paid out $6.5 billion to developers, and in January Apple announced that the figure had increased to $7 billion, an increase of $500 million in a three month span. From January to February, Apple’s payout to developers increased by $1 billion in only a month, with sales most likely driven by the holiday season.

Apple’s SEC filing for its Q4 2012 earnings showed that 775,000 apps were on the Apple App Store, a number the corporation had already reported in early January. Although, in the Q&A part of the earnings call in late January, Cook said there were 800,000 apps on the App Store. About 300,000 of the 800,000 apps are native iPad apps as well.

“We have over 300,000 apps custom designed for the tablet,” Cook says. “The other guys have a few hundred.”

Although Apple remained the top smartphone OEM, Samsung showed the most growth, moving the needle 2.3 percent for a 21 percent share of the smartphone OEM market, according to ComScore’s new Mobile Subscriber Market Share report.

The Reston, Va.-based analytics company reported that Apple once again took the top spot among smartphone OEMs, with a 36.3 percent share of the U.S. smartphone market, up two percent from Sept. 2012. Samsung, which ranked second, showed the most growth, up 2.3 percent to 21 percent. Taiwan-based HTC’s smartphone OEM market share dropped 1.8 percent to 10.2 percent. Microsoft was the other OEM to show a drop, falling 0.7 percent to 9.1 percent. Finally, LG grew 0.5 percent, grabbing a 7.1 percent share of the smartphone OEM market.

The U.S. continued to show no signs of slowing down when it came to smartphone ownership, with 125.9 million people owning smartphones, up five percentfrom Sept. 2012 to Dec. 2012. As expected, more than half of those handsets people own in the U.S. ran Google’s Android platform. Android phones racked up 53.4 percent of the smartphone market share, up 0.9 percent. To no one’s surprise, Apple was the second leading smartphone platform, showing a 2 percent increase in market share to 36.3 percent. BlackBerry, which recently lifted the lid off BlackBerry 10 and changed its name from RIM to BlackBerry, saw a 2 percent decline in its platform market share to 6.5 percent. Lastly, Microsoft’s market share fell 0.7 percent and Symbian remained the same with a 0.6 percent share.

The mobile push notification service Urban Airship today announced that it raised $25 million in another round of funding. The latest funding round was led by August Capital, which joined as the newest investor. Existing investors including Intel Capital, True Ventures, Foundry Group and Verizon also joined in on the new funding round.

The Portland-based mobile push messaging provider’s last round of funding came in late 2011, raising $15.1 million from Salesforce and Verizon. Urban Airship’s total funding now stands at $46.6 million.

The new influx in cash flow will be used to expand its existing teams, especially marketing, in the company’s various offices and to speed up the launch of its mobile push messaging and Apple Passbook management services to major brands. Urban Airship will also use the new funds to grow its push notification platforms and expand its operations internationally.

Urban Airtship co-founder and CEO Scott Kventon said in a statement that the company quadrupled both its revenue and push volumes in 2012.

Lastly, August Capital’s co-founder John Johnston will join Urban Airship’s board of directors.

A new report by Distimo finds that dropping the price of an iPhone app increased revenue by 95 percent three days after the price drop, while lowering the price of an iPad app increased revenue by 51 percent. Distimo’s debuted its analytics product AppIQ in October 2012, which allows its customers to see how many downloads and how much money almost any Android or iOS app makes, aiding in the pricing strategy process most mobile app developers deal with.

Distimo said that the effect of a price drop on revenue is significant, amplifying the longer iPhone and iPad apps remain on sale in the Apple App Store. Seven days after a price drop, revenue increased by 159 percent for iPhone apps, and by 71 percent for iPad apps. Distimo also cited increased revenue from one-off fees and in-app purchases as contributors to the increase in revenue in the long run.

On the other hand, when the price of an iPhone app was increased, download volumes fell 46 percent over five days, with download volumes dropping by 57 percent on iPad. Dropping the price of an app not only effects revenue, it effects downloads. Dropping the price of an iPhone app increased downloads by 1665 percent five days after the price drop, while lowering the price of an iPad app increased downloads by 871 percent.

Distimo then took a look at price elasticity, a number that stands for the change in revenue caused by a one percent price change. The Dutch firm found that iPhone apps show the lowest price elasticity on revenue, meaning that revenue reacted most heavily on any price change of a particular app in the Apple App Store. A one percent price drop for an iPhone app led to a 1.2 percent increase in revenue within five days. On iPad, price elasticity is -0.07 percent, indicating that a one percent price drop caused a 0.7 percent increase in revenue.

After noting that 850 apps for iPhone and 930 apps for iPad changed its prices at least once in the Apple App Store in December 2012, Distimo discovered that the majority of price changes fall within the $1 to $3 range, with the largest price changes occurring on iPad apps where 20 percent of all price changes moved the needle more than $4 in the Apple App Store.

The effects of price changes on download volumes and revenue for apps in the Apple App Store is similar on Google Play. However, Distimo said the effect in the app store for Android devices was less powerful compared to the Apple App Store. Distimo cited the higher difficulty to reach the top of the Google Play charts as the explanation for the difference between the two stores. Distimo also listed the top 10 iPhone and iPad apps that benefited from price drops by revenue, in which the majority of apps on both lists were games.

All the data from this report came from the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad during December 2012, in the 10 largest countries consisting of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S. This report is only based on mobile apps that have reached the top 400 overall and had at least one price change in the month of December last year. Also, keep in mind that all this data was collected in December, a time when the holidays dramatically boost app downloads as noted by Fiksu, Flurry and others.

Distimo will host a free webinar on the impact of price changes subject, which this report analyzed, on Feb. 7 at 5:00 p.m. CET. For those interested, register here.

The Federal Trade Commission today released a new report, which outlines recommendations for mobile platforms and mobile app developers across the country to better inform its users what personal data is being collected and how the data is being used. The report comes less than a month after the California Attorney General’s office released its own privacy guidelines for mobile app developers in the state.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, who yesterday announced his resignation, said in a statement, “the mobile world is expanding and innovating at breathtaking speed, allowing consumers to do things that would have been hard to imagine only a few years ago. These best practices will help to safeguard consumer privacy and build trust in the mobile marketplace, ensuring that the market can continue to thrive.”

The FTC, the federal agency that oversees business practices, stated that mobile devices “facilitate unprecedented amounts of data collection” because users, for the most part, have their mobile device on and with them at most times. In an effort to improve mobile privacy disclosures, the FTC recommended platforms and developers provide privacy data disclosures to consumers before allowing an app to access sensitive content like geolocation and for other personal data such as photos, contacts or calendar entries.

The FTC also recommended that platforms consider implementing a version of Do Not Track (DNT), the privacy mechanism that allows users to prevent tracking by ad networks or other third parties. Multiple desktop web browsers already support DNT including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari. Mozilla’s Firefox mobile browser has the DNT mechanism and Apple’s Safari has a “limited ad tracking” slider for iOS, but despite Mozilla’s and Apple’s DNT support on mobile, the privacy mechanism is not as standard on mobile as it is on desktops.

At the end of 2012, the FTC strengthened its more than a decade-old child online privacy laws, in particular, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The new laws require child-directed websites and online services to obtain parental consent before collecting children’s personal information like geolocation data or photos before sending the data off to third-party companies. Although, the updated rules explicitly exempt app “platforms” such as the Apple App Store and Google Play from complying with COPPA since the app stores only offer “public access” to kids’ apps, as opposed to targeting kids directly and exclusively.

Both of the top app stores — Apple App Store and Google Play — showed high growth in app revenue from Q3 2012 to Q4 2012, App Annie reports. Google Play, in particular, doubled app revenue from Q3 to Q4 along with a higher growth rate than the Apple App Store. Despite Google Play’s revenue doubling quarter-over-quarter, the Apple App Store gained more in absolute revenue, considering its larger revenue base. Apple is far and away the leader in app revenue, earning more than three-and-a-half times more revenue than Google Play in December 2012.

According to the company’s January 2013 App Annie Index, Apple App Store revenue grew by around one-fifth from Q3 to Q4, increasing revenues by 35 percent from November 2012 to December. In comparison, the Apple App Store’s revenue increased by 25 percent from November 2011 to December 2011. App Annie attributed users receiving new iPhones and iPads as gifts for the holidays that led to a spike in app downloads, and therefore, app revenue.

The top five most lucrative countries for iOS developers remained the same from Q3 to Q4. Starting from first to fifth is the U.S., Japan, the U.K., Australia and Canada. For the quarter, those five countries accounted for more than 60 percent of the Apple App Store’s revenue. China, in particular, is quickly moving up the top ranking countries by revenue on the Apple App Store list, changing from No. 8 spot to the No. 7 spot in October 2012, and from the No. 7 spot to the No. 6 spot as of December. It should come as no surprise as even CEO Tim Cook said in Apple’s Q4 2012 earnings call last week that China is its second largest region. The Cupertino, Calif.-based corporation has even been rumored to be developing a cheaper iPhone that would be aimed at emerging markets like China.

Japan and South Korea led the way for Google’s app store to double its revenue from Q3 to Q4, accounting for nearly half of Google Play’s app revenue in Q4. The three most lucrative countries for Google Play developers, in order from first to third, were Japan, the U.S. and South Korea. Coincidentally, all three of the same countries had the highest percentage of app money spent on games. In December 2012, 76 percent of app revenue came from games among U.S. users. In Japan, it was 88 percent and in South Korea it was 95 percent.

After racking up 2 million downloads on Christmas Day, mobile-social game developer Storm8 was the only notable publisher to crack the iOS top publishers by monthly downloads chart, moving from the No. 14 spot in November 2012 to the No. 9 spot in December 2012.

On the iOS top publishers by monthly revenue chart, Electronic Arts reclaimed the No. 1 spot in December, with strong performance from its free-to-play title The Simpsons: Tapped Out. Japanese game company GungHo Online was the biggest mover, leaping six spots to the No. 5 spot. Earlier this week, we reported that GungHo’s Puzzle & Dragons is seeing massive success in Japan, and now the company is more valuable than Zynga. For Android, nine of the top 10 publishes by monthly revenue on Google Play were either Japanese or South Korean, French game company Gameloft was the lone Western publisher.

South Korean Naver Corp., developer of the messaging app Line, was the notable publisher on all four top publisher charts for iOS and Google Play by downloads and revenue. Line recently surpassed the 100 million user mark in less than 19 months. Line was also the top grossing non-game app worldwide for both iOS and Android, according to App Annie.

On App Annie’s top iOS game apps by monthly revenue chart, King.com’s Candy Crush Saga catapulted 28 spots from November to December, landing at the No. 5 spot. (more…)

App store analytics company App Annie today took an in-depth look at Japan, analyzing the Japanese mobile industry, the state of the platforms in the country and the companies, app genres and apps dominating the Japanese market.

In October 2012, Japan surpassed the U.S. in revenue on Google Play, becoming the most lucrative country for the Android platform, with 29 percent of the app store’s total global revenue.

Before Japan surpassed the U.S. as the leader in terms of revenue on Google Play, the country was actually late to the smartphone party, with smartphones taking only a 23 percent share of the handset market share at the end of 2011.

In Japan, the mobile market is dominated by three wireless carriers — NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and SoftBank. Traditionally, these companies have been the gatekeepers of content, but since the debut of the iOS and Android app store ecosystems, the top three wireless carriers are seeing its control over content change hands to the iOS and Android mobile platforms. This is why feature phones held on for so long in the country while smartphones blossomed in other regions, because the wireless carriers could restrict access to content and have influence over device manufacturers.

The No. 1 wireless carrier, NTT DoCoMo, doesn’t carry Apple products because it can’t control the sale of content from the Apple iTunes Store. Instead, NTT DoCoMo put its chips on Android and also built its own carrier stores to continue to maintain control on content that flows through its wireless network. For example, “dmenu” is a portal for accessing internet-based content, and “dmarket” is a market offering videos, music, books and apps.

On the other hand, the No. 2 and 3 wireless carriers, KDDI and Softbank, offer the iPhone, enabling Japanese consumers to buy content through the Apple iTunes Store instead of through the wireless carrier. The move to carry Apple products in turn has boosted the subscriber rate for both KDDI and Softbank, while NTT DoCoMo is now losing more subscribers than the competition, which leaves hope for KDDI or Softbank to overtake NTT DoCoMo as the wireless carrier leader in Japan.

All the happenings in the Japanese wireless carrier industry led to Android holding two-thirds of the Japanese smartphone market share, while iPhone has the other third. Despite Android’s handset market share, the Apple iTunes Store generates far more revenue than Google Play, although Google Play has been catching up over 2012. A trend seen in other regions as well.

App Annie also analyzed the top 20 iOS publishers in Japan by revenue from January 2012 to September 2012, finding that 18 of the top 20 publishers are gaming companies. The 20 publishers combine for more than half of the total value of all grossing content, with the top five publishers representing nearly one-third of all revenues. Also, Japanese companies dominate the chart, with only South Korean NHN, developer of LINE, French game developer Gameloft and Apple as the lone Western companies in the top 20. Publishers with deep pockets and market dominance in other regions such as Electronic Arts, Zynga, and Rovio, aren’t even in the top 20, which demonstrates the difficulty for Western companies to excel in the Japanese gaming market.

The games genre, to no one’s surprise, crushes the other app genres in revenue, with 77 percent of total revenues across all categories. The gaming category is the leader in revenue in other regions as well — the U.S. at 59 percent — but the category is not as dominate as the category is in Japan. GungHo Online’s Puzzle & Dragons, which recently reached the seven million user mark, is an example of a native mobile game for smartphones that’s leading the way for the gaming genre in Japan, demolishing the competition in terms of revenue.

Aside from games, social networking is a genre worth noting. iOS revenues for social networking apps grew 383 percent when App Annie compared its January 2012 versus its September 2012 data. Messaging app Line, which recently reached 100 million users, was the leading app in the social networking genre by revenue over a 12-month period ending in September 2012.

Apple continues to show growth in China, reporting $6.8 billion in revenue in Q1 2013, a 66 percent growth year-over-year and 26 percent growth quarter-over-quarter.

“It’s clear that China is our second largest region from data that we’ve given you, and it’s clear that there’s potential there,” CEO Tim Cook said in Apple’s Q1 2013 earnings call.

In Q4 2012, Apple generated 5.4 billion and 4.1 billion in Q1 2012. Cook also said that iPhone sales in China doubled over the last year, with triple digit growth.

It should be noted that Apple changed the way it reports revenue for the China region, now lumping mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan into a category Apple now calls “Greater China.”

Looking at sales across the globe, international sales, which includes the wider Americas, Greater China, Japan and the rest of Asia Pacific, accounted for 61 percent of Apple’s overall revenue of $54.5 billion, translating to $33.2 billion.

Multiple sources earlier this month reported that Apple is possibly looking into a cheaper iPhone, which would be aimed at emerging markets like China.

Apple announced on its earning call today that the iTunes App Store has now paid out $7 billion to developers. This means that the iTunes App Store has earned a total of $10 billion over its lifetime, with Apple earning $3 billion from a 30 percent cut of sales.

Apple also revealed that it broke its previous app downloads records, with 2 billion apps downloaded in the month of december alone.

The iTunes App Store now has half a billion account holders in 155 countries. As we’ve reported a few weeks ago, the App Store had recently exceeded 40 billion downloads. Apple’s SEC filing also showed a 775,000 figure of apps in total on the App Store, but later during the Q&A portion of the call, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that there are now 800,000 apps on the App Store.