Welcome to PocketGamer.biz's weekly rundown of the stories clocking up the hits, picking up the click-throughs and generally keeping the advertisers happy by serving up page views.
Or, if you'd prefer, the top five stories currently dominating our readers' attention.
Each week, we'll be counting down the biggest news from the previous seven days, giving just a glimpse of the industry's big issues, from five to one.
Microsoft ditches Flash for default Internet Explorer 10 in Windows 8
It was a good week for Microsoft - and surrogate Nokia - partly given the problems experienced by rivals such as Google and RIM - but mainly because of the boost given to the forthcoming Windows 8 as part of the BUILD conference.
The OS, which is designed to work across desktops, laptops and tablets, has been revealed has having two modes; at least with respect to its default browser IE 10. There's a tablet-friendly Metro UI, which won't support plug-ins such as Flash or Unity; and a standard desktop version that will.
"Plug-ins were important early on in the web's history. But the web has come a long way since then with HTML5," said corporate VP Dean Hachamovitch.
Click here to read more.
With Rovio making at least $10 million a month from plushes and t-shirts, a survey finds 53% of users are playing free versions
The poster child developer of the mobile games industry continues to make headlines. Last week, Rovio announced over 350 million Angry Birds games have been downloaded, but more significant was the news that it was selling around 1 million t-shirts and 1 million plush toys a month.
A basic, and low-ball, estimate suggests the company is making at least $10 million per month, just from these two pieces of merchandise.
Interestingly, another small survey concluded only 47 percent of Americans, who had downloaded at least one Angry Birds game, had gone on to buy a copy of the game. Distribution per device was split 41 percent Android, 33 percent iPod touch, 32 percent iPhone, 25 percent PC, 15 percent iPad and 6 percent other (Ovi, webOS, etc).
Click here to read more.
AnandTech benchmarks Mali-400 as the fastest smartphone GPU
It's not clear than any consumer purchases a new phone based on processor benchmarks, but such willywaving is always popular within the industry, so the news that Samsung's Galaxy S II, which uses an all-ARM chip, including a quad-core Mali-400 GPU, is the current market leader made headlines.
And impressively, AnandTech's test concluded than when it came to an OpenGL 2.1 shader test, the Galaxy S II was faster than all other smartphones, and tablets, iPad 2-aside.
Of course, with iPhone 5 due soon that status might not last too long...
Click here to read more.
As it launches freemium title DragonVale, Backflip approaches 150 million smartphone installs
One of the most interesting mobile companies is US outfit Backflip Studios, which has revealed its games have been downloaded more than 150 million times. To-date, these have mainly been free, ad-supported titles, with the company's initial growth kickstarted by the success of Paper Toss.
Across all titles, it now also boasts around 3 million daily active players, or 27 million active players and around one billion ad impressions per month; figures it's expecting to build on with its just launched first proper freemium game - DragonVale.
Click here to read more. Adobe brings iOS on board as HTML5 support hits Flash Media Server
The whole Adobe-Apple debacle is so 2010, but its tendrils are still embedded deep in some part of the tech world.
Hence the news that Adobe is going to support the live conversion of Flash content to HTML5 via its Flash Media Server - enabling Flash to work on Apple devices for the first time - is an interesting twist. But the move isn't only significant for the Apple angle. It also underlines the important of HTML5 as a foundation technology for the future mobile web.
Click here to read more.
Until next week, Pocket Gamer pickers...
Hot Five
Contributing Editor
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.
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