Oh, we do like to be besides the seaside, and so we were, during a typically busy week at PocketGamer.biz; the world of app stores, smartphone platforms, developments in mobile game making and assorted technology.

Brighton, UK was the location for the two day Develop conference, which kicked off with the one day Evolve event.



EA Sport's Andrew Wilson spoke about how the company was dealing with social and digital distribution, while there was a discussion comparing smartphones to console, and Stuart Dredge highlighted 45 interesting iOS games in 45 minutes - all before lunch.

Other talks included Ideaworks3D on cross platform gaming, Noel Llopis' excellent evaluation of Flexible Pricing (i.e. freemium), and the news that the top Android game using Tapjoy is making $150,000 a month.

This linked into our weekly column in which Mobile Pie's Will Luton pointed out that while Android was no gold rush, there's still money to be made on the platform.

Elsewhere in the main Develop conference, Sony explained why PS Vita is its most developer friendly hardware ever, Microsoft highlighted the opportunities of its cross-platform, social, 35 million-strong Xbox Live, and there was a discussion about whether freemium was evil. Unity's Tracy Erickson reckoned some companies had been 'borderline predatory'.

Oh, and here's five things I learned.

In other news

There was plenty of other stuff going on too.

We got very confused by the continuing aspects of Edge-gate, and the ongoing IP case between Lodsys and various developers was extended with the inclusion of EA, Square Enix, Atari, Take-Two and Rovio.

In the world of dollars and euros, Sony Ericsson and Nokia announced their quarterly figures - both bad - although Sony Ericsson did tie up a deal with PopCap to bring some of its games to its Xperia mini Android phones.

RIM bought Swedish video editing tool provider JayCut, Qualcomm was involved in cloud gaming platform Gaikai's $30 million investment round, and as we predicted, Unity closed a $12 million funding round.

Nation of millions

More numbers where highlighted as Nexon's celebrated 3 million downloads of its KartRider Rush game, and social mobile network Star Arcade announced 5 million downloads.

Never short of ambition, Rovio has set its sights on 1 billion Angry Birds fans by 2014. It also won at the Develop awards, while news leaked out the company was on the trail for mobile IP acquisition, effectively acting as a publisher.

Maybe it should look closer to home, as we pointed out that Helsinki is the hot spot for mobile start ups.

Be here now

There was also lots of activity when it came to app promotion, distribution and discovery.

PressOK launched location-based ad tool PlacePlay for iOS games, PlayPhone signed up China Wireless Arts and Magic Universe for its social SDK, and unknown US developer Parsith Studios announced iOS gaming network FriendSt@r.

In addition, cross promotion discovery platform Applifier launched its iOS beta, Exent extended its all-you-can-eat PC GameTanium service to Android, while Chillingo decided to experiment with freemium games, re-releasing Monster Mayhem.

W3i's Melissa Johnson explained how its Mobile App Ad Network offers 'incentivisation without the controversy'.

There was some conflicting news about mobile ads however. On the day InMobi expanded its US operations - already pushing 6 billion mobile ads monthly - with four new hires, a UK survey claimed 88 percent of UK smartphone users ignore mobile ads.

Still, when it comes to something to remember, we'll leave it up to the new head of IGDA Mobile SIG, Kevin Dent, who said developers need to remember 'Top of the charts is vanity, top grossing is sanity'.

Until next week....