Real Racing 3 brings live multiplayer mode on iOS

Real Racing 3 has been offering a multiplayer mode, which allowed you to race against the time of your friend’s ghost car, but today’s iOS updates adds another, more compelling dimension to the mode. The new multiplayer mode allows for up to four players to race against each other in real-time.

The new multiplayer mode will be available for iOS users only, but the update also brings a couple of new cars. Android and iOS users alike will be treated to the latest McLaren P1 plug-in hybrid and the next-gen Lamborghini Veneno. Naturally, they require some in-game cash to purchase, but it certainly sounds tempting

Check out the trailer of Real Racing 3 below to see the new cars in action.

Google Play Catching Apple's App Store in User Spending..Google vs Apple

Google has narrowed the gap with Apple in the amount spent on apps by users of its Android system this year, even though users of Apple’s iPhone and iPad remain the biggest spenders on digital content.

A new report from Distimo, tracking spending on Apple’s App Store and Google Play, also revealed the dramatic extent to which business models for app developers have shifted from upfront payments to in-app purchasing, in part driven by messaging apps in Asia.

According to IDC, Apple’s smartphone market share stood at 13 per cent in the third quarter, down from 14 per cent a year earlier, while Android’s had increased from 75 per cent to 81 per cent over the same period.

By contrast, Distimo found that Apple’s share of app store spending in November remained much higher at 63 per cent, compared with 37 per cent for Google Play.

However, Google’s share has risen from 30 per cent since June, eating into Apple’s lead. Many Android handsets are sold in China, where Google Play is not widely available and third-party app stores are more popular, which also accounts for some of the disparity.

Average daily combined spending on the 200 apps that generate the most revenue on Apple’s App store rose from $15m to $18m over the past year, Distimo estimates, while Google’s equivalent almost quadrupled over the same period, from $3.5m to $12m.

“The Apple App Store is still leading in terms of total revenue,” said Distimo analyst Christel Schoger. “However, during 2013 Google Play’s piece of the pie was consistently increasing month over month.”

A lucrative app store helps to attract developers, who create the software and services that can keep mobile phone buyers loyal to a particular platform.

Google overtook Apple by the volume of apps downloaded this year, analysts say, but Android has taken longer to catch the iPhone in terms of the amount spent on those apps. Apple’s legacy of selling music through iTunes helped it to accrue hundreds of millions of credit card details, enabling its customers to pay for apps much more easily.

Distimo’s report also showed the rapid rise of so-called “freemium” business models, which are particularly popular among game developers.

The portion of revenue from in-app purchases through apps that were initially free to download in the Apple App Store was 53 per cent two years ago. By January this year that had risen to 77 per cent, but by November it reached 92 per cent for freemium services. The dominance of the freemium model is nearly absolute on Google Play, where it accounts for 98 per cent of all spending on Android apps.

The move from paid to freemium apps has been accelerated by the growth of Asian customers. Spending in South Korea, China and Japan increased several times over the course of 2013. People in the US, Japan and South Korea are the biggest spenders on apps, Distimo found, followed by the UK for Apple customers and Germany for Android owners.

Distimo found that all 10 of the top-grossing apps on Apple’s App Store were games, while also making up most of those on Google Play. Supercell, the Scandinavian maker of Clash of Clans, and King, creator of Candy Crush Saga, were the games companies that made most money on Apple’s app store, followed by the more established console games publisher Electronic Arts.

On Google Play, chat app Line generated the most revenues, thanks to a variety of games that use its platform and sales of digital “stickers” to its users, many of whom are in Japan and South Korea. KakaoTalk, a local rival to Line, has also become a popular platform for games developers, something analysts say could present a nascent threat to Facebook, which has become the dominant site for social gaming in the US and Europe.

State Of Security Report: The 100 Top Paid Android Apps For 2013 Have Been Cracked

Even casual observers of the Android ecosystem know that piracy is a big issue for developers. But if a report from mobile security company Arxan is to be believed, app piracy and "hacking" is incredibly prevalent, or at least prevalent enough that most of the popular apps are available in a pirated or cracked form. According to the company's "State of Security in the App Economy" report for 2013 , the top 100 paid Android apps have been "hacked."

We used "cracked" in the headline because Arxan doesn't mention the purpose behind these hacks, so we're assuming that in most cases they're free, pirated versions of paid apps. Arxan also doesn't define its methodology for deciding the "top 100 paid apps," but a relatively recent look at the Play Store's Top Paid Apps section would be a good bet. According to the report, the researches identified and reviewed "hacked" apps from locations other than the Play Store, which probably includes some pirated versions of those apps that were simply uploaded in a non-modified form for illegal side-loading - not "hacked" in the traditional sense, but illegitimate and damaging to their creators all the same. In contrast, the report says that 56% of the top 100 paid apps on iOS have been hacked. That makes sense given the relative ease of installing non-vetted apps on Android and the difficulty of doing so on iOS.

Arxan also reports that 73% of popular free apps (no number given) have been "hacked," though again, the determination for both the popularity metric and the method of the "hack" was not divulged. From a purely economic standpoint, this probably includes apps that have been modified to run without ads or to open up premium content - illegally modified versions of popular streaming music apps are widely available, opening up paid options to non-paying users who side-load the APK. It should be noted that any time users go outside the Play Store to download apps, especially for APK files for popular apps, they run the risk of downloading a malicious app that seeks to obtain personal information or otherwise harm the user. Google has been making strides to combat thiseven among non-Play Store downloads, estimating that only .13% of apps from outside sources are installed after triggering a warning from Google's Verify Apps feature.

Arxan's conclusions should be taken with a grain of salt, since security companies have been known to overstate risk to make their own services seem more vital. The methodology and presentation of the data is somewhat alarmist, and fails to make a distinction between apps that are simply pirated or modified to work around ads or paid features, and those that are modified with intent to harm the user or collect data. That said, the conclusions from the report itself seem sensible enough for any developer: apps with access to sensitive user data should be protected against attack and reverse engineering, runtime analysis, and tampering

Apple iPhone Predicted to have 68% Market share at peak

Horace Dediu has come up with another one of his interesting little analyses of the way that the electronics markets are working. Here he’s trying to predict what portion of the smartphone market Apple will have as and when the smartphone market itself peaks. That peak will of course be when the market is saturated and we move from an expanding marketplace over to one where we are only either replacing aged kit and or following the demographic changes in the population. The remarkable result is that Dediu thinks that Apple will have 68% of the entire US smartphone market at that point:

We also know from the plot of the market that F = .91 is reached around February 2017. So we can suggest that at 90% penetration (approximately saturation) the iPhone will have 68% market share of users in the US. Forecasting the addressable market (US population aged older than 13) at about 266 million that implies 180 million US users of the iPhone by early 2017.

As to the predictive accuracy of that method I’m not sure. It would appear to depend upon the idea that Apple remains the most popular phone for the next three years which is something I expect to see happen but am not sure about.

But there’s something else more interesting in these numbers I think. Which is that we expect to reach market saturation in 2017. Saturation being defined here as 90% of the population using the technology: no technologies ever achieve 100% penetration of the market of course. And the remarkable thing about this is that the smartphone won’t even be ten years old by that point. Yes, the first real smartphone (there were attempts before this but nothing that really grasped peoples’ attention) was indeed the iPhone and it was released in 2007. But not until June: so if market saturation comes in Feb 2017 then market saturation will come in just under a decade.

And that is just amazing, stupendous in fact. It makes the smartphone by far the fastest adopted technology ever. The only one that comes anywhere close is the closely related cell phone. As an example it took at least 50 years for electrification to achieve full penetration of the market. All of which is why it always slightly surprise me when people talk about this great technological stagnation we’re supposed to be going through. We’re right in the middle of the fastest technological change ever

9 Best iPhone/iPad games this week

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (£4.99)

The latest GTA game to be re-released for smartphones and tablets is San Andreas, which has been carefully ported to iOS. Developer Rockstar promises 70 hours of gameplay – if my memory's correct from the original console version, that's about right – with the usual gangster high-jinks in store. Good news if you have an Apple-approved controller too: the game works with those for physical-button fun.
iPhone / iPad

The Room Two (£2.99)

The original The Room was a huge hit on iPad, selling more than 1m copies by the start of this year – hugely impressive for a paid game given current App Store trends. This follow-up already has me tearing my hair out: more physics-based puzzles in a wonderfully-realised 3D environment, with a heavy emphasis on cryptic clues. Hence the hair-tearing.
iPad

Angry Birds Go! (Free)

The latest Angry Birds game is controversial for its enthusiastic adoption of pretty much every free-to-play gaming mechanic going, from timers that make you wait to play once you've had a few races through to coins, sponsored power-ups and a kart costing £34.99. However, underneath that is a genuinely impressive karting game with smooth handling, well-crafted tracks and a sense of fun.
iPhone / iPad

Ski Safari: Adventure Time (£0.69)

In theory, Adventure Time is a children's cartoon. In practice, there are a lot of parents enjoying it too, so this game could cross over to both age groups. It sees the stars of the Cartoon Network show sliding down hills on their bottoms to evade avalanches, pulling stunts as they go. It looks to have captured the quirky charms of the show perfectly.
iPhone / iPad

LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Free)

As the apps world gears up for Christmas, the big guns are rolling out onto the App Store. Lego Star Wars would in most weeks be the biggest new game on iOS, for example. It sees you exploring the Star Wars universe in blocky form, with the first episode available in the free download, but others then paid for by in-app purchases, as are characters.
iPhone / iPad

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (£1.99)

Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog has suffered a few gaming indignities in recent years, but this latest iOS port of one of his classic games isn't one of them. It's a lovingly-remastered version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 – the one with Tails the fox – complete with the famous Hidden Palace Zone that was left out of the original Mega Drive game.
iPhone / iPad

Star Trek Trexels (£1.99)

The recent Star Wars: Tiny Death Star was a revamped version of pixelly social game Tiny Tower, and very good it was too. Now Star Trek is getting a similar treatment: a game where you build a ship, recruit a crew then explore the Star Trek universe – complete with narration from actor George Takei. Although it's a paid download, in-app purchases are also used in the gameplay.
iPhone / iPad

The Walk - Fitness Tracker and Game

Developer Six to Start made the innovative Zombies, Run! fitness game, which got people jogging while pretending to be chased by zombies. This follow-up takes similar basic principles, but it's less athletic: using your walking steps as part of the gameplay rather than requiring you to run. That may also make it more mainstream, which the NHS – a partner – will be hoping for. The storyline involves walking the length of the UK with a package that "could save the world".
iPhone / iPad

Puzzler World (Free)

Finally, something distinctly non-hardcore: traditional puzzles. Released by publisher Puzzler Media, this offers crosswords, wordsearches, sudoku, spot the difference pics and a host of other brain-testers, starting with 40 for free, then selling more in packs via in-app purchase.
iPhone / iPad

Japan now the biggest spender in the iOS App Store/Google Play

Recently, we heard that Japan absolutely loves its iOS devices. In the last batch of stats, it was the only country where iOS had a larger market share than Android at over 60%. Then we heard that most of the top phones and tablets in Japan are all Apple devices. Now, we're finding out that Japan has some deep pocket when it comes to purchasing apps in both the iOS App Store and Google Play.

The data comes from App Annie, which is saying that Japan has grown immensely in the last year and is now the biggest spender in app stores. As of October 2012, Japan averaged about $100 million in combined monthly revenue for the iOS App Store and Google Play; and as of October 2013, that number had more than tripled to just under $350 million. Over that same span, the U.S. grew from about $175 million in combined monthly revenue 

to just over $300 million. 

Even more impressive is the fact that even though Apple devices dominate the Japanese market, Google Play has caught up to the iOS App Store in terms of revenue in Japan. This is the only country in the world where Google Play earns as much as the App Store. So, the relatively few customers with Android devices are spending quite a bit of money. App Annie says that the Google Play revenue growth has been driven by just five publishers (an educated guess even before reading the report told us that Dragon & Puzzles would be mentioned). Not surprisingly, D&P publisher GungHo Online is one of those five, as is messaging app LINE. 

By all indications, next year Japan will absolutely crush all other regions in app store revenue