The application, which is free and available now for download from the Android Market, recognizes the approximate age of a person by making use of real time face recognition biometric systems online.

Pretty nifty, indeed – especially with regard to the mobile marketing implications the app and its underlying technology deliver.

“We’re changing the face of mobile marketing. AppTech is uniting brilliant minds around this idea. With the launch of ReconAge, we intend to introduce the usefulness of biometric algorithms applied to mobile devices in the field of marketing. The possibilities are virtually limitless,” says AppTech Corp’s CEO Elias Rocha. “Mastering this highly complex combination of biometrics and mobile communication positions AppTech at the forefront of mobile apps development.”

According to details presented in today’s formal announcement, the app in question is the result of the “close cooperation” with Cognitec Tecnologia Brazil, owner of the FaceMidia patent, and data processing specialist BrScan Tecnologia.

FaceMidia is described as a “highly advanced advertising engine.”

“Now, advertisers will be able to ascertain the age, gender, and ethnicity of their audience and evaluate whether they are advertising the right products to the right demographics,” AppTech said in today’s announcement.

According to the data, over 1.2B apps were downloaded across iOS and Android devices alone, representing a full 60 percent increase when compared to early December.  Though a huge rise in downloads was expected as millions of consumers unwrapped their new iPads, iPhones and other mobile devices on Christmas Day, this year was by far the highest jump ever recorded by Flurry.

Most of the downloads came from the U.S. and a handful of Western countries, with China coming in at second place behind the U.S followed by the U.K, Canada and Germany to round out the top five.  China alone saw 99 million downloads, which is relatively small compared to China’s overall installed base and the fact that it’s the second largest mobile app ecosystem in the world.  Still, given the fact that Christmas isn’t widely celebrated in China, it shows just how accelerated the worldwide mobile app market is shaping up to be as we enter 2012.

“Today I’m thrilled to announce the beta launch of Android Training — a collection of classes that we hope will help you to build better Android apps,” writes Reto Meier, Android Developer Relations Tech Lead, on the Android Developer’s Blog.

From designing effective navigation, to managing audio playback, to optimizing battery life, these classes are designed to demonstrate best practices for solving common Android development problems.

“Each class,” Meier says, “explains the steps required to solve a problem, or implement a feature, with plenty of code snippets and sample code for you to use within your own apps.”

For now, the initial aims of the Android training program are small, but it is “just the beginning,” Meier says. “Over the coming months we will be increasing the number of classes available, as well as introducing over-arching courses and sample apps to further help your development experience.”

To learn more, click here.

To rank mobile apps by active reach, that is, by the percentage of Android owners who used the app within the past 30 days, Nielsen analyzed usage data from its proprietary device meters on the smartphones of the thousands of consumer panelists who agreed to be part of Nielsen’s ongoing Smartphone Analytics research.

Nielsen found that Facebook’s popular app is the most active among Android owners in the age range of 18-24 and 25-34, “who both hover at around an 80 percent active reach.”

Not surprisingly, Google’s YouTube app gets heavy usage from Android smartphone owners 18 -24. Nielsen says 64 percent have used it in the past 30 days, compared to 56 percent and 51 percent of 25-34 and 35-44 year olds.

A preference for media apps with a social dimension (e.g. Words with Friends) among the 18-24 set is also reinforced by their sizable usage of music and video apps (e.g. Pandora) compared to older demographics.

In addition to using their smartphone apps for social activities and mobile gaming, the 35-44 segment demonstrates a greater inclination to shop using the Amazon AppStore, as 24 percent of them used the app in the last 30 days, while only 14 percent of those 18-24 did the same, Nielsen says.

To read the full report, click here.

Black Friday is not only one of the biggest shopping days of the year for brick-and-mortar retailers, but also for digital storefronts on the World Wide Web.

Perhaps nowhere is this reality more apparent than on Amazon, which will discount several high-profile apps in its Amazon App Store.

From Black Friday, 12:00 a.m. PT, through Cyber Monday 11:59 p.m. PT, Amazon’s app store will be serving up substantial discounts on several titles, each of which will be available for 50% off their regularly listed price.

The advertised apps include the following:

• Plants vs. Zombies/Plants vs. Zombies HD
• Exchange By Touchdown
• LogMeIn Ignition
• Sims or Safari!
• Shazam Encore
• SwiftKey X
• Kids ABC Letters

“If you’re still hungry for more Android Apps,” the online retailer teased in a press release Wednesday, “be sure to visit Amazon’s Black Friday Deals Store, which features great deals on top holiday items including up to 50% off Android apps throughout the weekend, and follow @amazon to get the most up-to-date news about Amazon.”

The report shows that 27% of the most popular apps in Apple’s App Store for iPhone are only popular in one specific country.  Meanwhile, Nokia’s Ovi Store has the highest proportion of apps published in just one country (29.4%) while the App Store for iPad has the lowest (3.4%).

It’s interesting to note that Distimo completely ignored RIM for this report for no apparent reason.  Looking at the big picture, only a small proportion of apps are tailored to one specific country in most vendors’ apps stores, including iPhone (5.2%), iPad (3.4%), Android (4.9%) and Windows Phone (3.5%).

Closer to home, the U.S. and the U.K. feature the most locally published apps, with the U.S. having 7,158 apps that are exclusive to the iPhone App Store in the U.S.  When the App Store and Google’s Android Market are combined, the U.S., U.K., South Korea and Japan are about equal in terms of locally available apps.  Despite the high number of locally published apps in the App Store in the U.S., the proportion of local apps is relatively low, according to the report, with only 22% of  the 100 most popular iPhone apps and 19% of 100 most popular iPad apps being U.S.-only.

As always, there’s much more data available in the report itself, which is available for download here.

Covering everything from Android market share to the spread of devices that run Android, to the areas in the world where Android is most popular, the graphic contains just about everything you’d want to know about how Android is taking over the mobile world.  What’s most interesting is the data on the Android users themselves, such as the fact that Android users 10% more likely to be male and that Android users are 35% more likely to have just one email address compared to other OS users.

The data used for the graphic comes straight from PCWorld, Android Market metrics, Nielsen and AdMob so it’s safe to assume the data is accurate.  Regardless, it makes for a pretty awesome infographic.  Enjoy . . .

Nielsen measured the so-called “active reach” of Android apps, which is obtained by looking at the percentage of Android owners who used an app within the past 30 days, according to the company.  This also involved analyzing the data from “on-device meters” on thousands of Android smartphones to determine the active reach of applications.

The results were broken down into three categories; overall active reach, active reach for males, and active reach for females.  The app with the highest overall active reach is the Android Marketplace itself, or the app you use to find all other apps, followed by Google Maps, Gmail, Facebook and Google Search to round out the top 5 across both men and women.  The top five for men were similar, with the Android Market app, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Search and Facebook topping the list.  The only difference in women’s usage was that Facebook came it at second place and Google Maps moved to fourth place.

Other popular Android apps rounding out the top 20 across both men and women include YouTube, Advanced Tasks Kill Free, Angry Birds, Quick Office Pro, Pandora Radio, Weather Channel, Amazon App Store, Words with Friends, Talk – Text To Voice, Twitter, Barcode Scanner, Adobe Reader, Angry Birds Rio, Kindle and Google+.

And the effort is already paying off.

According to a press release issued Monday by the FTC, “marketers who advertised that their smartphone applications could treat acne have agreed to stop making baseless claims in order to settle FTC charges.”

The offending mobile applications were sold in Apple’s iTunes Store and Google’s Android Marketplace.

“The settlements in two separate cases would bar the marketers from making certain health-related claims without scientific evidence,” the release states.

The cases involving mobile apps “AcneApp” and “Acne Pwner” are the first the FTC has brought targeting health claims in the mobile application marketplace.

The FTC alleged that the mobile apps were advertised to work in the same way: both claimed to be able to treat acne with colored lights emitted from smartphones or mobile devices. Consumers were advised to hold the display screen next to the area of skin to be treated for few minutes daily while the app was activated.

According to the FTC complaint, there were approximately 3,300 downloads of AcnePwner, which was offered for 99 cents in the Android Marketplace. Ads for Acne Pwner stated, “Kill ACNE with this simple, yet powerful tool!” The marketers of AcneApp claimed, “This app was developed by a dermatologist. A study published by the British Journal of Dermatology showed blue and red light treatments eliminated p-acne bacteria (a major cause of acne) and reduces skin blemishes by 76%.” There were approximately 11,600 downloads of AcneApp from the iTunes store, where it was sold for $1.99.

The settlement orders would require Koby Brown and Gregory W. Pearson, doing business as DermApps, to pay $14,294, and Andrew N. Finkle, doing business as Acne Pwner, to pay $1,700.

The research firm rates the amount of times a single app was downloaded on average and found that, on Nokia’s Ovi Store, the same app was downloaded 160% more times than on Apple’s App Store.  Apple has nearly 10 times the amount of apps that the Ovi Store currently has, however, and it appears that the discovery issue that’s plagued the App Store as it’s grown larger and larger continues to hurt developers eager for downloads.

A lack of competition is driving developers to smaller App platforms as well and, in the case of Nokia’s platform, they’re seeing much higher download ratios as a result.  In fact, both the Windows Phone Marketplace and Blackberry’s App World offer significantly higher download rates than Apple’s, at 80% and 43% respectively.  Granted, these platforms would be dealing with the same low numbers if they possessed as many apps as Apple, so staying relatively small and independent is the winning combination at the moment.