Back from a vacation in Istanbul (once called Constantinople, dontcha know) plus a Liverpool daytripper, PG.biz leaped back into action this week - covering all news and views from the business of app stores, smartphones, plus developments in mobile game making and assorted technology.

And it's in Liverpool - at the Develop conference - where our round up starts.

By all accounts, it was an enjoyable event with representatives from some of mobile's big players in attendance. Papaya Mobile's Oscar Clark scored highly with his enthusiastic talk on freemium games, including emphasis on why "freemium is no excuse to skimp on quality".

Rival outfit in the social mobile gaming world, GREE, focused instead on localisation with its EMEA developer relations manager David McCarthy explaining how the company's acquisition of OpenFeint will open up the Japanese market to western developers.

He also got in touch after the event to clarify his comments, explaining how developers need to think beyond text translation and new artwork, into the 'heart of your game' if you wanted to succeed in this incredibly lucrative but insular market.

Make the press your friend

The main comments from Develop Liverpool, however, were provided by indie developers; many of whom are already well known on the page of PocketGamer.biz.

Ben Ward, of local start up Hogrocket, explained why a PR rampage is just as important as delivering a good game, while Greedy Bankers developer Alastair Aitcheson spoke about the power the 'personal touch' can have on the press.

36peas founder Gareth Jenkins talked about the specifics of iPad gaming: it's no a control pad or giant iPhone, he argued.

Sony attacks

Yet the most controversial statement came from Matt Southern, of the Sony-owned Evolution Studios. Denouncing cheap smartphone games you delete a minute later as being bad for industry, his comments sat uncomfortably with the assumption that Sony's looking to be the mobile gamers' friend, in-as-much-as it wants them to buy a PS Vita.

Incidentally, this week the European launch line up was announced including new titles Unit 13 and MotorStorm RC. Sony also branded Vodafone its preferred provider for 3G-equipped PS Vita in Europe.

But the final word went to Andy Payne, chairman of the UK games industry's trade body UKIE. Sony and Nintendo should give up on hardware and focus on phones and other new platforms, he argued, comparing them to dinosaurs, who didn't realise they were on drugs.

Kindle a Fire

The tablet war opened up another front recently with the launch of Amazon's $199 Kindle Fire in the US - as discussed this week by our Mavens panel. No sales figures have been released by a survey suggests that 51 percent of 'broadband households' are now looking to buy Amazon Kindle Fire over iPad 2.

The failure of the competition to-date was also highlighted with a report from NPD which estimated only 1.2 million non-iPad tablets have been sold in the US in 2011 so far (and I bought two of them!)

One of the embattled OEM is RIM, which has slashed the price of its actually not too bad BlackBerry PlayBook device to $199 in the US in order to be competitive with Amazon's offering.

Licked

Into more general OS news. Google's Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) is sort of out via the troubled Galaxy Nexus. This deployment doesn't come with Flash; something Adobe says it will be remedying in 2011.

Still, Android continues to dominant the US market, in particular, with figures from ad network Millennial suggesting it has a 56 percent share of online activity, with iOS slipping 9 percent year-on-year.

Globally, though, Jumptap - another mobile ad network - highlighted the release of iPhone 4S had boost iOS's global share of traffic in October albeit to 24.6 percent, compared to Android's 44.7 percent.

More pressure for Apple's CEO Tim Cook came with the news that Samsung was narrowing the gap with respect to smartphone sales; although this again appears to be an issue related to the delayed iPhone 4S launch.

So over to Microsoft. A year on from the launch of Windows Phone Marketplace, research companies have been picking over the bones.

Website All About Windows Phone reckons it hosts 40,000 titles, with developers adding over 1,000 a week, while Distimo calculated that the top free apps on the app store were generating 3 million downloads a month in US, also pointing out the Apple App Store is 43 times larger.

Analysts were also sucking their teeth when it came to Nokia's' hero device' Lumia 800, with quarter sales predictions slashed to 500,000. Anecdoctal evidence suggests it's selling well in the UK however.

Between barriers

Moving onto games. Zynga still hasn't IPOed so it took the opportunity to announce its daily active users total was 11.1 million across iOS, Android and mobile web during October, up over one million from September. It also launched first mobile game with location-based elements, Dream Zoo.

Other companies pushing cross-platform features this week included Disney, which revealed 100 million coins has been transfered from a companion mobile game into its Club Penguin online community.

Less successfully, Big Fish soft launched its mobile and tablet streaming and subscription games service on iOS, but it seemed to be pulled - by Apple or Big Fish - no one yet knows.

In all of this activity, there was a warning though. Experienced Facebook and mobile game producer Tami Baribeau explained why she thought "Facebook games are an unsustainable business strategy" - something that looks increasingly likely to extend to mobile freemium in 2012.

And with companies such as Ubisoft looking to get heavily involved in mobile in 2012 - both premium and freemium - competitive advantage is something everything should be seriously thinking about.

Filling the seats

So let's end with some companies that are doing this, with new hires.

It's all change at UK publisher Thumbstar Games, which gained new investment as well as Driver creative Martin Edmondson as CCO, and his brother Gareth as CEO.

German outfit Fishlabs added to its staff, appointing Christy Tang as social media manager for China, while middleware company Marmalade hired former HP man Guy Whitcroft as its COO.

And finally, app PR service appromoter launched with a free promotion for the first 300 developers.