Chinese mobile game company CocoaChina today announced it hired of Kai Zhao as vice president of engineering as well as revealing some of the company’s plans in 2013.

Zhao is tasked with leading the technical direction for infrastructure supporting mobile games published in the U.S. Before joining CocoaChina, he was most recently the co-founder and chief technology officer for photo sharing startup Keepsy. He also co-founded Chinese translation website Yeeyan and worked for more than 15 years with major tech companies including AOL, Netscape and Motorola.

In 2013, CocoaChina has big plans for the U.S. and for the rest of the world. The company’s most important plan for this year will be the launch of its own social game platform around Q2 2013, which will be similar to GREE’s platform, DeNA’s Mobage platform as well as communication platforms with gaming platform elements like KakaoTalk and Line. It’s other plans include publishing third-party games in the U.S. from top Chinese developers, as well as its own titles, and launch a beta version of its development toolset for cocos2d-x, an open-source, cross-platform 2D game engine, by the end of Q2 2013.

Zhao’s experience building and maintaing large scale infrastructures for AOL products such as AOL web mail and AOL photo will translate to doing the same for CocoaChina’s upcoming social gaming platform, says Lei Zhang, CocoaChina’s U.S. general manager.

“We are looking to build an infrastructure that supports that scale, so Kai’s experience both hands-on and management experience in that scale, for the U.S., is tremendously valuable,” he says.

In late November 2012, we reported that CocoaChina’s FIshing Joy 2 was raking in $1.6 million in gross revenue a month on Android in China, with a conversion rate of more than 30 percent and saw average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU) of $0.40. Fishing Joy 2′s gross revenue figure has since increased, according to Zhang, by more than doubling to $4 million in gross revenue as of February 2013. Zhang notes that seasonality from the Chinese New Year may have attributed to the recent increase in monthly gross revenue.

CocoaChina as a company, which was founded in 2008, started as a developer community for iOS developers, sort of like a Facebook or MySpace but for mobile developers only. The company also develops and publishes first-party and third-party mobile games mainly in Greater China as well as for the rest of the world. CocoaChina has partnerships with companies such as Disney Mobile, U.S. mobile developer Z2Live, South Korean gaming giant Nexon, and more, where CocoaChina publishes its partners’ games in the Chinese market. Lastly, the company is the sole financial backer of cocos2d-x.

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…)

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.

Messaging app Line surpassed 100 million users in 19 months, according to a blog post on the official Line blog.

Line, an app developed by South Korea’s Naver Corp., is the leading messaging app in Japan. The app is now taking off in other regions, but in the grand scheme of messaging apps, the market is very fragmented with particular apps doing well in a certain country like Tencent’s WeChat in China and Taiwan Mobile’s M+ in Taiwan, and Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Kik in the U.S.

Line is a free app that allows users to send messages and initiate voice calls for free. American messaging competitors such as Skype have been allowing free calls for years, and recently Facebook added free voice calling to their Facebook Messenger app for U.S. users.

One of the newest messaging players is Digisocial, which is an iOS app that allows users to add audio to an image and to send voice messages for free through Digisocial’s network.

You can read our hands on with Line here.

Update: The Atlantic is now reporting that Schiller never even mentioned anything cheap iPhone related to the Shanghai Evening News. The newspaper made revisions to Schiller’s comments, who is now quoted as saying that Apple would focus on making “the best products” for customers and “never blindly pursue market share.” Shanghai Evening News removed all mentions of a cheaper iPhone handset in a new version of their story.

News organization Reuters posted a story yesterday that featured Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller dismissing Apple’s interest in making a cheaper iPhone. Reuters wrote a note on why they rescinded the story, citing that their story was based on a Shanghai Evening News report that was updated with “substantial” changes to its content, leading Reuters to take down its story.

Reuters didn’t elaborate what “substantial” changes were made to Shanghai Evening News’ story, which is still live on jfdaily.com.

A less-expensive iPhone would help the Cupertino, Calif.-headquartered corporation compete with Android in countries where phone subsidies don’t exist, lowering the cost of the premium priced iPhone handsets. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out on Tuesday, the cheaper iPhone would be aimed at emerging markets like China. The cheaper iPhone is predicted to sell for $99 to $149.

Apple is possibly looking into a cheaper iPhone, and Bloomberg believes Apple is considering a price range between $99 to $149 for a handset that would hit the market in late 2013. An unnamed source told Bloomberg that Apple has spoken with least one of the giant U.S. wireless carriers about its plans for a less-expensive iPhone. Although, Bloomberg didn’t make it clear whether the price it states includes carrier subsidies.

Apple’s reasoning for moving forward with a cheaper iPhone would be to target customers in emerging markets, according to Bloomberg. The cheaper Apple handset would allow the Cupertino, Calif.-based corporation to compete with smartphone manufacturer leader Samsung, which runs Google’s Android platform. According to IDC, Android has a 75 percent market share of smartphone shipments as of Q3 2012, while Apple has 15 percent.

China, one of the biggest emerging markets, is currently a focal point for Apple. In September 2012 during the company’s Q4 2012 earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook said China accounted for 15 percent of Apple’s total sales, generating $5.7 billion for the quarter and $23.8 billion for the year.

Christmas Day to New Year’s Day in 2012 was the biggest week for both new device activations and app downloads for iOS and Android, says mobile app monetization company Flurry.

Between Dec. 25 and Dec. 31, Flurry estimated that users activated more than 50 million new devices and downloaded 1.76 billion apps. Christmas Day alone broke records for Flurry, with 17.4 million iOS and Android device activations and 328 million app downloads.

In the first few weeks of December, Flurry saw an average of 1.07 billion new iOS and Android app downloads each week. Comparatively, the week from Dec. 25 to Dec. 31 was up 65 percent at 1.76 billion apps downloaded, breaking the previous single week app download record set in the same week of 2011.

To no one’s surprise, the U.S. had the most app downloads from Dec. 25 to Dec. 31, with 604 million, which translates to a 34.3 percent share among the top 20 countries that attributed to the 1.76 billion downloads. China, where Christmas isn’t a legal holiday, came in second place, with 183 million app downloads. China coming in second shouldn’t be a surprise since Flurry recently predicted China to overtake the U.S. in iOS and Android install base by Q1 2013. The U.K., Germany and France ranked third, forth, and fifth, but all three countries had a significantly lower amount of app downloads versus the U.S. and China.

Flurry pulled data for the report from the more than 260,000 apps on iOS and Android devices running its analytics service. The analytics firm added that it can reliably detect more than 90 percent of all the iOS and Android devices, and that its analytics service is integrated into 25 percent of all iOS and Android apps downloaded on a daily basis.

Flurry believes that weeks where there’s a billion app downloads will likely become the norm in 2013, and that weeks with two billion app downloads will come during Q4 this year.

From the beginning of the year until now, the mobile industry has continued to rise at a meteoric pace.

Many themes emerged after reviewing all of our stories in 2012. Apple and Google set themselves up as the two mobile front-runners, mobile games continued to rake in piles of money and China continued its rapid growth in mobile.

Here are the top stories of the year in no particular order:

iOS 6 Maps debacle

At WWDC 2012 in June, Apple first announced that it was ditching Google Maps as the pre-installed maps app for iOS in favor of Apple’s own maps service when iOS 6 would launch in the fall. In September, iOS 6 launched along with Apple Maps as planned and the new Maps app was quickly flooded with criticism for its poor directions and lack of features. Even Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote an apology letter regarding Apple Maps poor debut. Apple users went 14 weeks without an official, native Google Maps for iOS app until it hit the Apple App Store on Dec. 13, after which it racked up 10 million downloads in 48 hours.

Rise of the mobile market

In 2012, Apple and Google became the hands-down leaders in the mobile space. Both Apple and Google now have more than 700,000 apps in each of their respective app stores — nearly doubling the amount of apps in a year’s span. Smartphone penetration in the U.S. market also passed 50 percent for the first time. Platform-wise, Apple and Google also dominate, with a 86.8 percent lion’s share of the market as of September 2012, according to ComScore.

Japan bans monetization mechanic kompu gacha

In May, Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency declared kompu gacha illegal in the country, going into effect in July. Kompu gacha is a monetization mechanic in social games where users pay small amounts of money to receive a random item, kind of like a toy vending machine. Major Japanese mobile players including GREE and DeNA announced that they would pull the mechanic out of their games. Companies such as mobile-social gaming powerhouse GREE felt the effect of the ban on its bottom line. GREE reported in its Q1 2013 earnings that the company’s “monthly net sales bottomed in July,” which was around the time of the kompu gacha ban, adding that its net sales fell 5.4 percent quarter-over-quarter.

Huge mobile game earners

Finnish mobile game developer Supercell told the New York Times in October about the staggering amount of money the company pulls in on a daily and monthly basis. Supercell, which only has two games in its stable, were seeing sales in upward of $500,000 a day and $15 million in gross revenue a month. NaturlMotion Games’ free-to-play racer CSR Racing was pulling in more than $12 million a month on iOS and in-app sales of more than $400,000 a day. Developer Cygames’ card battler Rage of Bahamut was reported to be earning $43,000 a day on Android (Japan revenues excluded) and monthly revenue on both iOS and Android possibly as high as $2.6 million. The game held the No. 1 spot on the Android top grossing apps chart for more than six months (it’s still No. 1) was dethroned temporarily by another DeNA game, RPG Blood Brothers back in November.

Monetizing on Google Play

We’ve heard varying opinions whether Google Play monetizes as well as the Apple App Store, but multiple sources have shown that developers can monetize on Google’s platform. Game developer TinyCo told us in October that its free-to-play title Tiny Village saw higher average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) on Android over iOS. In countries where carrier billing is active, which allows users without credit cards to purchase digital goods, developers like DeNA saw 15 percent of their Android users convert to paying users in Japan and Com2uS with a 10 percent conversion rate. In Distimo’s 2012 year in review report, the app tracking company found that daily revenue in Google Play grew 43 percent in the past fourth months, although on a typical day in the month of November, the Apple App Store generates $15 million in revenue, while Google Play sits below $3.5 million.

GREE drops OpenFeint

GREE announced in November that it was shutting down the servers for its social networking platform OpenFeint on Dec. 14. The Tokyo-based company first acquired OpenFeint in April 2011 for $104 million, but the company wants to push its own GREE platform as the primary social platform for its stable of games.

The rise and fall of Draw Something

Pictionary-like title Draw Something took the mobile world by storm. Since launching in February on mobile, the app surpassed 50 million downloads by April. In March, Zynga acquired the game’s developer, Omgpop, for $180 million. Since then, though, Draw Something use fell dramatically. A month after Zynga’s acquisition of Omgpop, Draw Something had four million fewer users.

Microsoft continues its mobile push

Despite Apple and Google cornering the market for the time being, other players are continuing to vie for mobile mobile market share. Microsoft proved its not slowing down its push on mobile, with the recent release of Windows Phone 8 and reporting that the Windows Store has more than 120,000 apps. Microsoft is going down Apple’s route, trying to create an ecosystem that translates across all devices including computers, tablets and smartphones. Flurry reported in June that the Windows Phone platform grew 521 percent year-over-year.

Mobile market in China

China, with a population in excess of one billion, was predicted by mobile app monetization company Flurry to surpass the U.S. in iOS and Android device install base by as early as Q1 2013. It’s clear China is an emerging market for mobile, with developers such as CocoaChina, Punchbox and DeNA seeing success in the country. On the Android platform in China, mobile game developer CocoaChina recently said it generated $1.6 million per month in revenue for its game Fishing Joy 2. Apple revealed in its Q4 2012 earnings call that China now accounts for 15 percent of the corporation’s total revenue and generated $5.7 billion in Q4 2012.

GREE expands platform partnerships with Vostu, Brainz and more — GREE has signed partnership deals with five more international studios. The company announced this week it has signed up Vostu, Brainz, Sun Dried Games, Pangalore and Vast Studios. Our readers may remember in October GREE announced it had signed deals with Enders Fund, Fathom Interactive, Fifth Column and FreezeTag.

Variable rate iTunes gift cards now available — Apple customers can now decide exactly how much their friends and family are worth to them. The company has introduced new gift cards that can come in denominations ranging from $15 to $500 reports 9to5 Mac. The new cards are already rolling out at major U.S. retailers.

SGN teams with Betable — Social and mobile game developer SGN is the latest company to sign a deal with London-headquartered Betable to bring real-money gambling elements to its mobile titles. The features will only be available in markets where mobile gambling is legal, such as the U.K. SGN expects to roll out the features in the first half of 2013.

iPhone 5, iPad Mini finally headed to China — The latest generation of Apple devices will soon be in the hands of Chinese consumers. The company announced today the iPad Mini and the fourth generation iPad will be available in China on Dec. 7. The iPhone 5 will be available on Dec. 14.

LINE integrates with Facebook — NAVER’s ultra-popular Japanese chat app LINE has started integrating with Facebook. Facebook users can now create LINE accounts using their Facebook credentials according to Dr. Serkan Toto. Users can also invite their Facebook friends to the service.

PlayPhone picks up Red Herring Global 100 award — San Francisco based PlayPhone has won the Red Herring Global Top 100 award in the mobile category. The awards are decided by Red Herring editorial team and honor promising private technology ventures.

Gameloft teams with Red Bull — Gameloft has signed a deal with Red Bull that will see the energy drink maker’s branded cars coming to Gameloft’s racing game GT Racing: Motor Academy. The F1 RB8 (driven by F1 world champion Sebastian Vettel) and the Red Bull editions of the Camaro SS and Hyundai Genesis Coupe will all be available in the next update of the game.

GREE picks up Best Social Games Service Provider award — GREE has picked up a Mobile Entertainment award for Best Social Games Service Provider, beating out the likes of DeNA, PapayaMobile and PlayPhone for the honor. Based on London, the Mobile Entertainment Awards honor excellence in publishing, services and operations.

Blackboard Mobile Apps hit 4.5 million downloads — Blackboard Inc’s line of educational and campus life apps have been downloaded more than 4.5 million times on iOS and Android.

It is possible for developers to generate monthly revenues in the six figure range from China’s Android users according to CocoaChina. The company reports its game Fishing Joy 2 is currently earning more than $1.6 million per month in revenue from the Chinese Android market.

The casual title has a free to paid conversion rate of more than 30 percent, and sees average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU) of $0.40 — numbers that would be high by the standards of the American iTunes App Store, let alone for the Chinese Android market. For reference, during its most recent quarterly earnings report, Glu Mobile reported ARPDAU figures ranging between 6.4 cents and 9.3 cents in its midcore titles Blood and Glory: Legends and Frontline Commando. According to China Mobile’s official monthly gaming report for September 2012, Fishing Joy 2 accounted for 4.5 percent of all gaming revenue generated on the company’s platform.

CocoaChina’s US GM Lei Zhang attributes Fishing Joy 2’s success to his company broad distribution strategy, a stringent anti-piracy policy, and most importantly, access to carrier billing.

Fishing Joy 2 is currently available in over 200 third party Android and carrier stores in China, many more than most international or even Chinese companies typically target. While the distribution strategy increased CocoaChina’s integration, QA and maintenance workload by up to 10x, the move also significantly increased the title’s revenues and visibility according to Zhang. “Revenue doubles, which is worthwhile given its scale we are seeing right now,” he explains. “More importantly, for casual titles that scale is key, it is essential to achieve a complete coverage of a market.”

CocoaChina also aggressively hunts down pirated versions of the game. According to Zhang piracy is still a significant problem in China, with most pirated titles taking the form of a direct upload of a stolen APK, complete with third party SDKs and even malware along for the ride. “For most popular western titles, if they don’t have a local presence or partner, you will be able to find pirated versions with significant downloads in major chinese android markets,” he explains. CocoaChina’s efforts may not be cheap but they have been effective in reducing the impact of piracy on Fishing Joy 2’s revenues.

The most important factor in the title’s success however, is access to carrier billing. CocoaChina has secured Master CP (Content Provider) status from several major Chinese mobile carriers, a designation that allows the company to utilize carrier billing for the game even when users play a version downloaded through a third party Android market.

Zhang tells us that carrier billing accounts for 90 percent of Fishing Joy 2’s total revenue. As our readers are no doubt aware, the widespread use of carrier billing is also what enables Japanese and South Korean audiences to monetize at such a high rate. Combined with Flurry’s recent report indicating China will soon overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest smartphone market, CocoaChina’s report is  good news for both domestic and international developers looking to expand to the Chinese market.