Papaya reveals 25m Android users and attacks rival service Mobage

Says its own games have generated more than 11 million in-app transactions so far.

Social games network Papaya says it now has 25 million Android users who have generated more than 11 million in-app purchases using its virtual currency system.

The company has also published other metrics, including the fact that its average paying user spends $22.60 a month, with popular titles on its network earning $20,000 a month on average. Users have played more than 874 million game sessions, and the most spent by a single user is $4,440.

Papaya has taken the opportunity to bury a hatchet rival DeNA's Mobage community, which launched globally in July.

Its head of developer relations Paul Chen points to the fact that the main Mobage app has yet to break the 50,000 download mark on Android Market according to Google's own stats, with individual Mobage-enabled games also falling below that milestone.

"There is little market traction for these apps four weeks after launch," says Chen. "This is especially surprising considering the original versions of these titles were huge hits with millions of downloads on either iOS and/or Android."

Chen claims that Mobage is suffering from the requirement that Android users download its main app as well as the games they want to play, "creating a significant barrier to adoption for the Mobage platform as users do not wish to download two applications to play one game".

He also criticises DeNA and another social gaming service Gree for continuing to publish games as well as run social mobile networks: "Papaya fundamentally believes there is a conflict of interest when an owner of a social network also publishes games on that network.  In this scenario, third party games will always be promoted second in priority to a network’s first party games."

DeNA and Gree may well have their say on these issues in the coming days, but Papaya's decision to publicly call them out shows the fierce competition that is emerging around Android social games, where Google has not launched its own Game Center or Xbox Live-style official community.

And if it does? It will be interesting to see what the implications are for all these other companies. Although by speaking out about its own growth and perceived deficiencies in its rivals, Papaya may have one eye on positioning itself as a potential acquisition for Google.