ReadWriteWeb

Apple may lose its claim to the term "app store" in its trademark suit against Amazon, makers of the Amazon Appstore for Android. According to reports from Bloomberg and Reuters, U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton is not convinced that Apple has proved consumers would confuse the two services.

Although the ruling is not yet final - Judge Hamilton says she will reread some of the supporting papers - she did say that she is "probably" going to deny Apple's motion. Does this mean "app store" will now officially be a generic term?

According to a new report from analytics firm Distimo, the iPhone app download volume in Asian countries, led by China, has seen significant increases over the past 6 months, even as Western markets saw decreases. And China is now the second largest market in this area, after the U.S.

However, even though the numbers of downloads are increasing in this region, the proportion of paid downloads and overall revenue is lagging behind both the U.S. and Europe. That means developers wanting to expand their businesses into Asia need to have other monetization plans in mind, such as advertising.

The reviews are in. Windows Phone "Mango" is a hit with gadget bloggers. "Mango," the code-name for Microsoft's upcoming release of its mobile operating system Windows Phone, is a big leap forward with a total of around 500 new features. Many of those are addressing real pain points for current users. With Mango, Windows Phone finally gets long sought after features like multi-tasking, conversation views, voice integration, plus several unique tweaks involving Bing, better live tiles, Twitter integration, Facebook Chat and more.

But some of the updates in "Mango" are even more forward-thinking. Windows Phone is pushing users to move beyond apps for some of the core use cases involving smartphones. Meanwhile, it's introducing a new paradigm for recommending applications to the phone's end users.

According to new statistics from analytics firm Flurry, the average mobile user now spends 9% more time using mobile apps than the Internet. That's 81 minutes per day for mobile apps versus 74 minutes per day spent surfing the Web (both desktop and mobile).

But mobile apps haven't always been more popular than the Web, says Flurry. Only last year, these positions were reversed, with users spending 43 minutes on apps versus 64 minutes on the Web.

I very rarely review a single mobile app these days - we prefer to do mobile app round-ups here on ReadWriteWeb - but I'm going to make an exception this time for Photogram. This new iPhone application, launched just yesterday, is deserving of a mention, if only for catching my attention among a sea of mobile photo app startups.

From the description, the app seems somewhat basic, maybe even a little boring: share photos via Facebook, Twitter or email. But it does so with a simplicity, elegance and ease that I've often found lacking elsewhere.

App monetization and distribution service provider Tapjoy has just announced the launch of a $5 million fund to help iOS developers port their existing applications to Android. The news comes on the heels of Apple's policy change, which affected all apps that used Tapjoy's pay-per-install advertisements. Apple's decision, said Tapjoy at the time, "is destroying the user experience and threatening the entire freemium model."

Now, the company has a workaround: move to Android.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg once said, when asked when we would finally see an iPad app for the social networking service, "iPad isn't mobile. It's a computer, sorry." The implication was that there would never be a Facebook app for Apple's tablet computer, because, frankly, it didn't need one.

Now, according to a new report, things may have changed. An official iPad app for Facebook could be only be weeks away.

Lightbox, a beautifully designed photo sharing and camera replacement app originally launched into beta at this year's SXSW. Between then and today's public launch, the app has been overhauled, and has added support for Honeycomb tablets. But what's most interesting about Lightbox is its business model: "Android First."

What that means is that developers behind Lightbox, lead by founders Thai Tran and Nilesh Patel, are building Android applications first, before building the iOS counterparts. And that hasn't always been an easy task, they say.

Today, cloud platform provider Appcelerator is expanding beyond mobile and Web with a new offering designed for developers looking to build cross-platform applications. Now, in addition to building for smartphones, tablets and the mobile Web, developers can use the new Titanium Studio to build, test and deploy to desktop platforms including Windows, Mac and Linux as well as build HTML5 Web applications, all in one single development environment.

From the makers of mobile app discovery service Zwapp, there comes OneMillionAppSchemes.com, a new initiative which aims to open source the unpublished custom URL schemes for iOS applications. For those unaware, a custom URL scheme is a way for apps to communicate with each other and do other smart things. For example, custom URL schemes allow other apps or Web pages to call the app, trigger it and send data to it, or even transfer data between lite and paid app versions.

Apple's built-in apps like Safari, the Phone app, the Messaging app, Email and others have URL schemes included by default. Developers using the iOS SDK can built their own, too. Unfortunately, though, there isn't a well-maintained master list of these custom URLs anywhere on the Web.