As a third party analytics outfit, there's no guarantee that the figures from FADE (Forecasting & Analyzing Digital Entertainment) are correct.

However, assuming its methods are regular, it should provide decent comparative period trends.

For this reason, its announcement that Android games sales - we assume these to be from the official Android Market - rose 330 percent in the three months January to March 2011, compared to same period in 2010, is good news for developers.

Rising fast

The absolute figures - whether accurate or not - aren't massive however; an estimated $8.8 million in Q1 2011 compared to around $2 million in Q1 2010.

FADE estimates downloads of free and paid Android apps were up 780 percent from 43 million to 336 million over the same period.

In terms of titles, FADE breaks out the top 10 games and their estimated gross revenues; again this doesn't take into account in-app purchases - something we know generating cash for freemium developers.

King of the castle

It reckons top grossing game Robo Defense sold 186,000 units during Q1 2011, while the most popular free game was Angry Birds Seasons, with around 6 million downloads from the Android Market.

1. Robo Defense (Lupis Labs) - $558,000

2. Game Dev Story (Kariosoft) - $407,000

3. Homerun Battle 3D (Com2uS) - $344,000

4. X Construction (CrossConstruct) - $257,000

5. Spectral Souls (ENG) - $228,000

6. Fruit Ninja (Halfbrick) - $154,000

7. Majesty: Fantasy Kingdom Sim (HeroCraft) - $143,000

8. Zenonia 2 (Gamevil) - $139,000

9. N64oid (yongzh) - $124,000

10. Dungeon Defenders: FW Deluxe (Trendy) - $120,000

You can find more information from FADE's website.