Today, Glu Mobile provides more than 140 wireless games for the mobile phone market.
Glu Mobile shares are down sharply in late trading Thursday on weaker-than-expected Q4 guidance.
The Glu CEO added that he sees adjusted EBITDA improvement in Q2 from Q4 guidance levels.
One: More than 50% of Glu's revenue in 2006 came from licenses that will expire this year.
As it builds up its business, Glu Mobile is also now working to streamline its technology further.
While I expect Glu will be able to renew those licenses, any fallout will hurt the bottom line.
In an industry with well-known gaming players such as Electronic Arts, you may wonder why Glu is in the spotlight.
Glu's technology lets companies port over their games faster and more inexpensively than if they tried to do it themselves.
While this could be beneficial in the long run, it could delay Glu's ability to achieve profitability in the near term.
Glu Mobile will be first out the gate, turning on subscriptions in properties like Frontline Commando, but we're sure plenty of others will follow.
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Glu Mobile shares are trading sharply higher Wednesday morning on what would appear to be speculation that the mobile gaming company could be a takeover target.
Glu Mobile this after posted better-than-expected Q4 financial results, but Q1 guidance fell well short of Street expectations, and stock is trading slightly lower after hours.
FORBES: Glu Mobile Q4 Edges Estimates, But Q1 Guidance Misses
Since then, Glu Mobile has gone public and over the past two months, Ballard and I have talked on the phone and had lunch in New York.
Glu was formed around a unique porting system that efficiently, quickly and inexpensively takes videogames, perhaps written for consoles or personal computers, and rewrites them to work on wireless networks.
Even Glu just announced that it will also open up a Beijing office, but the company says that because of its proprietary technology, its costs are a fraction of what others pay.
Overall, given the outlook for strong growth in the mobile gaming market and the smart steps that Glu is taking to expand its business, I think shares of Glu Mobile are attractive.
Relan says that a number of the developers who have used OpenFeint on the iPhone plan to use it for games on Android as well, like Glu Mobile, Digital Chocolate and Hudson Entertainment.
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And that seems to be giving a big lift this morning to shares of Glu Mobile, a San Francisco-based company that provides games for the iOS, Android, Palm and Windows Phone 7 platforms.
The wireless carriers keep a percentage of the fee (generally between 30% and 50%) and the rest goes to Glu Mobile, which is booked as net revenue, for its own games, or shared with the company that owns the game.
If you include the proforma effects for iFone, which was acquired on March 29, 2006, as if it had been acquired at the beginning of fiscal 2006, Glu's revenue grew 50% on a year-over-year basis during the first quarter 2007.
As game developers and content providers such as Cartoon Network and FOX Sports Interactive scramble to figure out how to make their games work on cellphones, and as wireless carriers look for ways to keep people on their networks longer, Glu holds the key.
While Glu does create its own games, the company also strikes deals with other game companies and well-known brands and makes their games available as well--so you'll find mobile games from Atari, Celador, Fox, PopCap Games, Sega Europe, Microsoft, Turner Broadcasting, Hasbro and Harrah's Entertainment.
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