A mix of old and new apps start out the new year for the first emerging applications list of 2010. Meanwhile, some month-long charting apps graduate past the emerging list and new titles take their place.

To new readers, the emerging list shows the 20 apps that grew by the most monthly active users in the past week and ended it with between 100,000 and 1 million monthly active users. This cross-section is a way to see potentially big titles on their way up the charts. All the numbers on this list are for the week ending December 31 and based on numbers from AppData.

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Happy New Year 2010 by Kari	658,835	+655,710	+99.53
2.	Pro League Basketball	854,201	+199,073	+23.31
3.	快打之王	605,327	+138,627	+22.90
4.	Three Kingdoms Online – Best Browser Game of 2009!	257,675	+137,617	+53.41
5.	Status History	972,154	+132,507	+13.63
6.	Yılbaşı Kartları	132,479	+128,006	+96.62
7.	Happy Aquarium Community	850,718	+120,835	+14.20
8.	I Love Chocolate	378,394	+120,200	+31.77
9.	Warstorm	220,980	+113,117	+51.19
10.	Scene It?	266,346	+105,140	+39.47
11.	Ma Fiche	897,898	+102,481	+11.41
12.	New Year Gift	207,560	+99,575	+47.97
13.	Nindou International	236,403	+98,558	+41.69
14.	Birthday Greeting Cards	510,520	+84,490	+16.55
15.	COLLAPSE!	759,514	+72,174	+9.50
16.	Poll Daddy Polls	154,251	+69,344	+44.96
17.	New Year Wish!	128,817	+64,432	+50.02
18.	Facebook for Android	222,386	+64,002	+28.78
19.	My Town	144,404	+63,230	+43.79
20.	Say Merry Christmas	373,499	+60,394	+16.17

At first place, Happy New Year 2010 by Kari is seeing the largest percentage increase of any app on the list, with a 100 percent jump this week. The seasonality of this app all but guarantees its absence from the list next week. The New Years app jumped from 3,270 users on Christmas to 659,000 on December 31.

Pro League Basketball is our second place app and a game that has the biggest position jump on the top 20 this week. The app was absent from last weeks list and was released in September 2008. PageFad, LLC is giving their game a boost with “Super Money Bonus’” for players and asking about new features that people would want in the next year. PLB saw a boost of 199,000 players this week, but not enough to vault it beyond of the top 20 emerging. We’ll see if it can keep its momentum going.

Next we have 快打之王 (“King of Kombat“): this Chinese-language RPG has been on the emerging list all month, after being released on December 5th. With fans around South Asia and in the states (Facebook is banned in China), the game grew 22 percent and now has 605,000 monthly active players. Last week, the app grew 66 percent, but added the same amount of players — 139,000. Its position on the list remains the same, too, at third.

Self-titled the “best browser game of 2009!”, Three Kingdoms Online – Best Browser Game of 2009!, is climbing up the charts after an absence from the list last week. Released on December 7th, the game is seeing a sharp improvement in players by years end with its numbers raised mostly this week by 54 percent and an MAU of 258,000. For all intents this could be a new regular on the top 20 emerging throughout January.

Kayodi Inc‘s fourth place app took a little bit of time to build word-of-mouth buzz but the New Year is helping Status History with a little timeliness. The app pulls up old friends and personal status updates and organizes them in a collage-looking graphic. The app has 972,000 for its MAU and shouldn’t be back on the emerging list next week with additions like this weeks 13 percent or 133,000 new users.

Meanwhile,while new apps are finally getting some attention, it is at the cost of some of Decembers regular top 20 emerging apps which have moved on. Ponzi, Inc., Bubble Popp and Tiki Farm all have broken the million MAU milestone. Congratulations to their developers.