Aside from laughing at super injunctions, it has been another busy week in the world of PocketGamer.biz; the world of app stores, smartphone platforms, developments in mobile game making and assorted technology.

The week started with a number of responses to a set of articles by Tracy Erickson, called 'Freemium is more hype than hope'.

They inspired several industry luminaries to respond, with NaturalMotion's Torsten Reil pointing out that freemium games are potentially much more profitable than premium, while Mobile Pie's Will Luton said the growth of freemium games was inevitable.

In similar vein, although not directly related, Tag Games' Paul Farley discussed five transitional challenges his studio had experienced moving from the development of single player game to social games.

Yet that isn't to say there's isn't a hype bubble surrounding social games, with Gameloft's CTO Alexandre de Rochefort telling Reuters he thought Zynga was over-valued.

Cut and thrust of business

Still, one company that's hoping to cash in on the current situation - PopCap, which could IPO in 2011 - continues to keep doing the business. As well as hook ups in China and Korea, it's launched its Bejeweled-based Pop Tower meta-social mobile game on GREE with Taito. It also announced Chuzzle and Plants vs. Zombies would be coming to Amazon's Appstore for Android exclusively, each for a limited two week period. Both games will be free on their launch day.

Amazon maybe looking to try different markets too. Rumours suggest it's working on its own Android tablets using Nvidia's chips for release in late 2011.

Not that everyone likes Amazon though. Apple's suing the company over the term app store, which it now says isn't a generic term for a store for selling apps. Instead, it's a term that since Apple invented it, is apparently exclusively recognised by the public as being about Apple.

Apple has been less active getting involved with the current IP troll situation that sees Lodsys asking some iOS developers for recompense for using its patent on in-app purchases. It's demanding 0.575 percent of all US sales using the method.

And, according to mobile ad network Millennial that could be a lot of cash. Its latest Mobile Mix report for April reckons half of all app revenues in the US comes from iOS.

More beancounting came from Distimo and market research firm Newzoo. They reckon 63 million iOS users download 5 million games per day in the US and biggest five European countries, while 40 percent of revenues on iPhone come from IAP.

Millions all around

Another week, another total from Rovio. Its Angry Birds series of games have now racked up 200 million paid and free downloads across mobile, tablet, PC and other platforms, apparently.

The game is also the most popular on Barnes & Noble's Nook Color Android e-reader, which has now accumulated one million downloads from its store.

Mexican publisher EnsenaSoft has hit the same magic number on its own from the 31 games and apps it has on the Mac App Store. It claims it's the first company to reach such a total. Meanwhile, Gamevil has announced it's made $1 million in a month from its popular iPhone game Air Penguin.

RIM hasn't said anything official about how many BlackBerry PlayBook tablets it's sold, but that hasn't stopped the estimates. RBC analyst Mike Abramsky reckons it's done a reasonable 250,000 in first month.

Other hardware looking to get off to a flying start is Windows Phone 7, which is launching on Verizon this month: the network also announced it would be selling Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play gaming phone for $200 with a two-year contract. SE's CTO Jan Uddenfeldt is an optimist. He says the company has the ambition to be the No. 1 Android OEM. HTC and Samsung beware! Well, maybe...

But let's share a thought for Nokia. Everything's up in the air thanks to new strategic partner Microsoft: Ovi Store being the latest casualty. It's going to be rebranded as the plain Nokia store.

Social expansion/contraction

Still, at least, last week's confusion about ngmoco's status is over. It announced it was buying longterm development partner Rough Cookie, with the Dutch studio working on a new games for the Mobage network.

A competitor in that social platform field, US/Chinese outfit PapayaMobile tweaked its business model this week, doing what ngmoco was rumoured to have been doing, but wasn't. Papaya has decided to stop making its own social games so it can better focus on building its social platform and providing tools for its partners.

The augmented reality world was awash with tools news too. Layar has launched new AR creation tools, while Qualcomm has released its existing Android SDK for iOS.

Like AR, HTML5 browser-based gaming is an emerging sector, so more tools and better business opportunities are sought there too. Specialist Particle Code has launched a multi-platform SDK beta for native and HTML5 app development, while SPIL Games' CEO Peter Driessen told PocketGamer.biz, it's already seeing great traction for mobile HTML5 gaming.

Sticky eyeballs

And, finally, there's always lots going on in the world of mobile advertising. This week, three of corporate team behind Quattro Mobile, and hence Apple's iAd, announced they had set up new outfit session M to 'achieve higher engagement rates'.

Game-focused ad network Tap.Me is after the same thing. It revealed US DVD rental outfit Redbox had signed up for its services.

And, with download incentivisation frowned on by Apple, companies looking to make money from that lucrative business are shifting over to Android fast. Adknowledge's Super Rewards division is one such. It's just integrated its SDKs with the Corona development platform to ensure studios can get up and running fast.