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Glu Mobile's Greg Ballard

Greg Ballard discusses the integration of iFone's assets and IP

Glu Mobile has firmly established itself as the second largest mobile games publisher worldwide, but the firm has clear ambitions to better that position and take the lead from industry behemoth Electronic Arts.

With a rapidly expanding portfolio of titles which includes numerous million-selling games in multiple territories worldwide, Glu's growth looks set to continue unabated for the foreseeable future.

The publisher made a concerted effort to expand its portfolio of branded and licensed titles, in addition to massively increasing its distribution network, with the recent acquisition of iFone.

Some four months on, we caught up with president and CEO, Greg Ballard, to find out how the integration of iFone is working out and what impact the acquisition has had on Glu's market position.

MobileIndustry.biz Glu's acquisition of iFone took place in April this year. How has the move affected the company in terms of its growth and development in the mobile market?
Greg Ballard

The acquisition of iFone has strengthened Glu's position in the market both in the Americas and in Europe. The addition of iFone's sales and marketing capabilities in Europe has boosted our existing operations in that region. We've also added highly sought-after titles, like Sonic the Hedgehog, Monopoly and Atari Classics, to our portfolio. We're especially proud of the immediate benefits we've seen by focusing our deployment expertise on the new titles, expanding their availability to include a broader, global consumer base, and increasing their profitability.

MobileIndustry.biz How is the integration of iFone's assets and IP shaping up? Will there be any significant changes to your product line-up and future releases?
Greg Ballard

The integration is going extremely well. We've been able to take some of the iFone titles and, with fairly little time and resources, dramatically expand deployment. For example, we saw huge potential for Monopoly. Just after the acquisition, we quickly launched 56 re-engineered builds in the US covering major new handsets and giving the title enhanced deck placement on Cingular. As a result, Monopoly moved from no. 22 to the top five on Cingular and sales have increased nearly 300 percent since March.

MobileIndustry.biz There's been a lot of talk about the problem of quality versus quantity in mobile gaming. What's Glu's policy? How much effort do you put into quality assurance?
Greg Ballard

We've been focused on quality from the beginning, and year after year our titles continue to win awards for excellence. Just recently we did an analysis of IGN reviews among top publishers for 2006, and our games have the highest average score in the industry, which we take as a great endorsement of our development capabilities. Also, the quality of our games continually improves as handset technology advances and we discover new ways to exploit the full capabilities of mobile phones. Carriers have also played an increasing role in setting standards for quality through more stringent evaluation processes intended to weed out poor quality titles.

MobileIndustry.biz When we spoke to you earlier in the year, you stated that the ambition was to become the number one publisher on the mobile market. Are you any closer to achieving that goal?
Greg Ballard

Yes we are. The iFone acquisition combined with the growing traction Glu has had over the past year worked to solidify our position in the top 3 publishers worldwide, and clearly established us as the leading independent mobile publisher globally. Our growth is strong. Gameloft reported that their growth q2 2006 over q2 2005 was an impressive 50 percent, and we actually grew significantly faster than that, so we feel really good about our current position as well as our potential.

MobileIndustry.biz EA has a pretty firm grip on the US market thanks to its acquisition of Jamdat. How are you combating that market strength and do you think you can eventually take the lead over EA?
Greg Ballard

We are very respectful of the great job that Jamdat has done. However, we view EA Mobile's lead in the US primarily as a function of legacy titles, which will erode over time. The US is the only market in which EA Mobile is leading; Glu continues to out-sell EA Mobile in Europe, Asia and Latin America and we feel strongly that our position will penetrate to the US, making Glu the clear and unequivocal leader worldwide.

MobileIndustry.biz Telcogames has just announced the appointment of Enda Carey. How will his departure affect Glu and the plans you had for the company following iFone's acquisition?
Greg Ballard

We have great respect for Enda and the work he did while at iFone, and we wish him all the best in his new venture.

MobileIndustry.biz How do you view Enda's move to Telcogames? Do you see a demand for higher quality smartphone games, or is there still room for growth in the Java and Brew handset markets?
Greg Ballard

Glu saw 70 percent growth Q2 2006 over Q2 2005, which can be attributed to titles for Java and Brew, so we definitely see tremendous growth opportunity for those platforms. However, we see opportunities with smartphone games and continue to evaluate those development platforms, especially as we see increases capabilities for over-air purchases. In May we announced a partnership with Microsoft in which we will develop and publish Project Gotham Racing for a variety of mobile platforms, including Microsoft Windows Mobile, so we are certainly keeping an eye on opportunities to develop and publish for smartphones.

MobileIndustry.biz What can we expect to see from Glu over the coming twelve months? What's your focus as far as new markets, development of existing markets and product portfolio?
Greg Ballard

We're focused on expanding our portfolio of great games. We have seven titles in our portfolio that have sold more than one million units, and we're focused on growing the number of million-unit sellers with the launch of new titles and expanded deployment in the 70 countries Glu games are currently available in, and bringing our games to those where were not.

Greg Ballard is the president and CEO of Glu Mobile.

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