Half the mobile game market ‘is still up for grabs,’ Glu Mobile C...
Half the mobile game market “is still up for grabs,” Glu Mobile CEO Greg Ballard told a Goldman Sachs symposium in Las Vegas Thursday. Glu will be the only major, Western mobile game company with a “substantial presence in…
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China,” he said. He predicted that market will grow significantly over the next few years. The North America mobile game market is a “three-horse race,” among Electronic Arts, Glu and Gameloft, he said. But smaller mobile game companies are fighting for the remaining 50 percent of the market, and they will be “giving up market share over the next couple of years,” Ballard predicted. Glu disclosed late last year it acquired China mobile game company MIG and announced a tender offer in January to buy Superscape, which Glu said ranked among the top five mobile game publishers in the U.S. during Q4 2007, citing Nielsen Mobile data. If the Superscape transaction is consummated, adding of its market share to Glu’s existing share “would solidify” Glu’s No. 2 position in the U.S. among mobile game companies and bring it closer to No. 1 player Electronic Arts, Ballard said early this month. Glu is “pleased with the progress” of the tender offer so far, he said Thursday. It’s “probably going to pause for a little while” on acquiring more companies as it takes time to “digest” the MIG and Superscape deals, Ballard said. It likely will take “several months” to integrate Superscape into Glu’s operations, he noted. But he said Glu’s “eyes are still open” for new opportunities on the acquisition front. Ballard also predicted EA and other major publishers in the midst of consolidation could end up lessening their focus on mobile games to better focus on their core console games, which will “allow us even further opportunity to consolidate our business,” he said. Glu announced plans to launch 12 titles in the first half of 2008: Shadowalker, Space Monkey, Age of Empires III Mobile, Mystery Case Files: Agent X, Solitaire Pop, Speed Racer, Wedding Dash, Frantic Factory, Get Cookin’, CrossPix by glu, Super Slam Ping Pong! and The Dark Knight, based on the upcoming Warner Bros. Batman film of that name. Nine of those games are original Glu properties, Ballard boasted, before predicting the company’s second half lineup “will be even stronger.”