Part two in our review of the year in mobile games (kicking off in June, when we launched).

Apple was the biggest story in mobile gaming this July, with the launch of its App Store. Publishers weren't allowed to talk to journalists about any iPhone games until the due launch date, but then Apple launched the store by surprise a day early.

As you'd expect, there was plenty of iPhone news, with the launch of a hotly-tipped iPhone game publisher called ngmoco, and news that AdMob was placing adverts in iPhone apps, including games.

Elsewhere, Google was facing criticism from developers about its Android platform, with accusations that the company was focusing too much on hardware, and not enough on the SDK for developers to get cracking on apps.

On the stats side of things, Nielsen Mobile claimed that 19 million people downloaded a mobile game in the US during the first three months of 2008, and claimed that Guitar Hero III Mobile was showing particularly strong word-of-mouth growth.

Meanwhile, Sony Ericsson was preparing for the launch of its PlayNow Arena portal, signing up GlobalFun as one of its two games aggregators (the other was HandyGames).

And, of course, July saw results announcements from EA Mobile, Gameloft and THQ Wireless. It was July, too, when Gameloft launched its first Facebook games, to see if they could drive more sales of its mobile titles.