Glu IPO nets $84m
Glu Mobile has raised $84 million from its much anticipated Nasdaq IPO. The mobile games publisher issued 7.3 million shares priced at $11.50 - well within the $10-$12 range forecast - for an intial market capitalisation of $327 million.

Movistar increases electronic transactions by 70% in 2006
Mobile operator Movistar Argentina saw a 70% increase in the amount of e-transactions to credit prepaid accounts in 2006 compared to the previous year, the company said in a statement.

China Mobile Expected To Outpace Unicom In 2006 Earnings
HONG KONG -(Dow Jones)- China's telecommunications boom is expected to lift profits for mobile phone operators, but China Mobile's rising subscriber base and stable margins should keep its earnings growth well above those at smaller rival China Unicom.

EA Mobile launches Sports Link service
EA Mobile has launched a service allowing users to access the latest information about EA Sports games and sports news, with future plans to let players challenge each other to online games.

Kalador's FreePlay in-game Advertising Technology for Mobile Phone Games Powers MobileRated
March 19, 2007, Brentwood Bay, Canada: FreePlay is a Kalador developed technology that enables non-disruptive in-game advertising within traditional mobile phone games. The process is seamless to the game developer and can incorporate a wide variety of advertising models and strategies, including pay-per-view, pay-per-click and other ad-tracking metrics, and supports both textual and graphical advertising formats.

South Pole’s Peny & Petty arrived the Northern Hampshire
Peny and Petty from the South Pole has arrived Northern Hampshire for Mobile Users in the Asia Pacific Region.

In brief: this week's mobile gaming news
"Golden age" of paid downloads is over, says GDC Mobile boss

Report: Mobile revs grow 12% in 2006 to US$13.3bn
Mexico's five mobile operators saw combined revenues increase 12% in 2006 to US$13.3bn compared to 2005, according to a report from local consultancy The Competitive Intelligence Unit.

GDC: The First Decade of Mobile Games
At his keynote at his year's GDC Mobile, event founder Robert Tercek gave a presentation covering the ten-year history of mobile games, from perspectives of business, innovation, and gameplay.

GDC: Nokia's Sauter Talks Next Generation N-Gage
Two years ago, at E3, Nokia announced a strategic withdrawal from the handheld arena; in place of a discrete handheld platform, future N*Gage hardware would be incorporated into Nokia's full line of mobile devices. Today, Nokia director of publishing Gregg Sauter elaborated on the plans.

GDC: Mobile Session Itself Goes Massively Multiplayer
Going by the online schedule, Gamevil, Inc. general manager Kyu C. Lee was to spend an hour chatting about mobile MMO games and communities, by way of his mobile MMO game, Path of a Warrior – in North Hall room 124, at 2:00.

AMD launches mobile toolkit
Chip giant AMD is targeting the wireless games sector with a suite of hardware acceleration tools designed to bring console quality to mobile.

US Mobile Gaming Revenues Surpassed $750 Million in 2006
Video games on mobile phones in the US generated $757 million in 2006, according to new data from Telephia.

Vollee, World's-First 3G Mobile Gaming Solution, Completes Series A Financing
Benchmark Capital Joins BlueRun Ventures to Launch the Next-Generation of Mobile Gaming

Oasys to refresh indy games developers
US content aggregator Oasys Mobile has launched a web-based programme through which mobile games developers can pitch to have their titles published.

Nemodigm To Offer Ozura Games In S. Korea, Japan
About 139 million mobile subscribers in South Korea and Japan will now have access to Ozura's mobile games.

3G Americas: LatAm ends 2006 with 208mn GSM users
Latin America ended 2006 with a total of 208mn mobile subscribers using GSM technology, with net additions of 81mn during the year, GSM industry association 3G Americas said in a statement.

Tira Wireless Joins ARM Connected Community
SAN MATEO, Calif. – Tira Wireless, the premier provider of advanced technology for mobile content deployment, today announced that it is a new member in the ARM® Connected Community, the industry’s largest ecosystem of ARM technology-based products and services. As part of the ARM Connected Community, Tira Wireless will gain access to a full range of resources to help it market and deploy innovative solutions that will enable developers to get their ARM Powered® products to market faster.

Wmode to distribute Magmic games through ProvisionX service
TORONTO, March 6 /PRNewswire/ - Wmode, the leading provider of digital
media distribution services under the ClearMode brand, announced today that
they have signed a partnership with Magmic Games, the world's largest
developer and publisher of games for BlackBerry(R) handsets. Wmode will
distribute Magmic games to all of Wmode's ProvisionX partners starting in
Q2, including games such as Poker Blast, Texas Hold'em2, Deblocked, Miner
2049er and Brain Up.

Report: 66% online games bought by women
Forget the picture of a teenage boy sitting in a dark room playing video games. According to a report from Telephia, women are increasingly playing and purchasing online games.

Report: 66% online games bought by women
Forget the picture of a teenage boy sitting in a dark room playing video games. According to a report from Telephia, women are increasingly playing and purchasing online games.

GDC: The First Decade of Mobile Games
At his keynote at his year's GDC Mobile, event founder Robert Tercek gave a presentation covering the ten-year history of mobile games, from perspectives of business, innovation, and gameplay.

Serious, Indie, Mobile Games Highlight GDC Monday
The first day of GDC is generally devoted to games just a bit off the beaten path. In recent years, serious games have vied with titles from the mobile and indie markets on the first two days of the Game Developer's Conference. Probably the most interesting serious discussion from Monday was word from Square/Enix's new serious games arm. Sessions like innovations in Indie games and how to get your Indie game published rounded out the independent games discussions for the day. The pirates at Three Rings also put on a good show, talking about how to make an indie MMOG. Meanwhile, on the mobile front, EA veteran Trip Hawkins talked about innovations on the smallest screen, while Nokia rolled out some new details on their next generation of N-Gage .

GDC: Future mobile games to be inspired by Wii
With exception of Snake, the odd golf game and, of course, Sonic the Hedgehog, mobile phone games are generally rubbish. But that could change.

GDC: Telephia Reports Revenue Increase in Mobile Games
San Francisco – Telephia, a provider of syndicated consumer research to the telecom and mobile media markets, reported at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) a 61% revenue increase to $151 million in the mobile games market in Q4 2006, according to a press release by the company. Also in Q4, Telephia found that 17.4 million mobile customers downloaded a game, a 45% increase from the previous year.

Nokia sets the quality standard for connected mobile games with the SNAP Mobile Compliance Testing Program
Game Developers Conference 2007, San Francisco, CA - Nokia today announced the SNAP Mobile Compliance Testing Program, a groundbreaking initiative that will help to ensure that all SNAP Mobile connected games offer people a consistent game-playing experience. The two-part program includes free initial testing tools for developers to establish a higher standard for connected mobile Java(TM) games coming to market.

At GDC, mobile game-makers bemoan ‘giant sucking sound’
The opening day of the 2007 Game Developers Conference was all about 5 percent. While U.S. consumers increasingly use their phones to send photos and experiment with the wireless Web, mobile gaming continues to lag. Less than 5 percent of all wireless users download a game, according to recent figures, while more than twice as many share photos or search for news or information on their handsets.

Global Market for Mobile Computing Worth $88.9 Billion by 2011
According to a new and updated technical market research report from BCC Research, the global market for mobile computing was almost US$55.6 billion in 2005 and US$63.5 billion in 2006. At a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.0%, this market will reach more than US$88.9 billion by 2011.

Customers Not Convinced of the Benefits of Smartphones
A new MarketStar study indicates that mobile phone consumers are unconvinced of the need to upgrade to a combination device or smartphone, and retail sales associates do not typically mention combination devices to regular mobile phone users.

A Nokia-Palm Deal? No Way, Say Analysts
That was essentially the message several industry observers conveyed on Tuesday when asked whether it would make sense for Nokia, the world's largest mobile-phone maker, to acquire struggling smart-phone and handheld organizer pioneer Palm.

Tao to ease games porting with Gameplayer kit
Tao Group aims to drastically reduce the headache of porting games across multiple devices with its intent GamePlayer platform, which launched today.

dotMobi passes 400k
More than 400,000 .mobi domains have been registered in 104 countries since the its launch in October 2006.

Exit Games raises $4.6 million
Multiplayer gaming specialist Exit Games raised $4.6 million in a new round of funding led by Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments.

Nokia to serve mobile ads
Nokia has leapt into the mobile advertising space with two services: Nokia Ad Service and Nokia Advertising Connector. It looks like another ambitious move into the ‘services’ market from a company that used to just make handsets.

One Billion Brews says Qualcomm
Qualcomm says that BREW publishers and developers have now earned more than US$1 billion from the sale of BREW applications and services since the first commercial deployment of BREW services in November 2001.

An Interview With Namco On Ms. PAC-MAN On iPod, iPod Gaming & Mobile Gaming
We have an exclusive interview for you with Scott Rubin, VP of Namco Networks/Games, on the recent release of Ms. PAC-MAN on Apple's iPod. Scott provides insight on why Namco decided to bring Ms. PAC-MAN as a follow-up to PAC-MAN's release on the iPod last year, developing a game on the iPod, what plans it has for future releases, thoughts on future development for the iPhone and the mobile gaming industry and in-game advertising.

OrangePixel revamps RumbleX mobile games community
OrangePixel has revamped its RumbleX mobile games community, which now has more than 55,000 players submitting their high scores.

TI and Ideaworks3D simplify development of advanced gaming for mobile handsets
Dallas -- Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) and Ideaworks3D are extending the capabilities of the OMAP(TM) Gaming Platform to support the OpenKODE 1.0 specification, addressing a wider market targeting feature phones to high-end multimedia handsets. This platform will be one of the first in the industry to incorporate the OpenKODE Khronos Open Development Environment to further simplify the development and deployment of new games across multiple mobile phone segments, creating a larger market opportunity for game publishers.

Artificial Life, Inc. Partners With Bob Mobile AG to Launch the Latest Mobile Games in Germany and Switzerland
HONG KONG, March 1, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) (PRIMEZONE) -- Hong Kong based Artificial Life, Inc. (OTCBB:ALIF), a leading provider of award winning mobile 3G technology, games and applications, today announced a new partnership with Bob Mobile AG, one of Europe's leading providers of digital content via media channels. Bob Mobile AG will release the latest mobile games from Artificial Life, Inc. including V-girl(r), V-boyfriend(tm), V-Penguins(r), and Poli -- the Bear(tm) in Germany and Switzerland. The localized games will be available to Bob Mobile AG subscribers in the upcoming months.

Spotlight: Hovr Brings Ad-Supported Games with Social Networking to Customers
Vipul Sawhney, Founder and CEO of Hovr, an ad-supported mobile games company, noticed a statistical disparity signaling an opportunity. “Roughly a third of mobile subscribers say, ‘Yes, I’ve played some sort of game on my mobile phone,’” he said. “But only about 2-3% of a carrier’s subscriber base actually goes and purchases a game.” Sawhney believes it is the outdated model – not consumer interest – that has caused the mobile games market, currently bringing in just over $1 billion worldwide, to plateau.

GDC: 'Mobile Can Be a First-Rate Platform' – Hawkins
Digital Chocolate CEO Trip Hawkins (right) delivered an enthusiastic keynote address, proclaiming the potential of mobile entertainment. Although many view mobile as a second-rate platform, Hawkins believes it can be truly first-rate, alongside consoles, PCs and others.

Zelfi as new player in international market of mobile gaming
(openPR) - The German mobile platform Zelfi, publisher of free mobile games, is now also available in English. During the last 12 month Zelfi established successful a great amount of users for mobile games including advertising breaks in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Now it’s time for expanding.

ARM Announces Development Kit To Reduce Time-To-Market Of Mobile Gaming Platforms
CAMBRIDGE, UK – Mar. 5, 2007 –ARM today announced at the Game Developers’ Conference, San Francisco, Calif., the ARM® Mali™ Software Development Kit (SDK), which enables game developers to quickly transition from generic application development to ready-to-use designs for a wide range of handsets. Mobile handset manufacturers require that games are available at launch to capitalize on the shelf life of new devices. The Mali SDK enables developers to create and test games before silicon exists, thereby ensuring that new games are available on the day the handset is released and maximizing the time for which their games are marketable.

Mobile Game Revenue In The U.S. Hits $151 Million In Q4 2006
SAN FRANCISCO — March 5, 2007 — On-portal mobile game revenue jumped 61 percent year-over-year to $151 million in Q4 2006 (see Table 1). Nearly 17.4 million mobile consumers downloaded a mobile game last quarter, up 45 percent from a total of 12 million downloaders a year ago, according to Telephia, the world’s largest provider of syndicated consumer research to the telecom and mobile media markets. On-portal mobile game revenues also account for 74 percent of total mobile game revenues, while off-portal downloads account for the remaining 26 percent. While revenue is growing, revenue growth is slowing consistent with a market that is maturing.

Ms. PAC-MAN debuts on the iPod through iTunes
Ms. PAC-MAN debuts on the iPod through iTunes

EXCLUSIVE Q&A: Nokia execs talk new N-Gage
Nokia's third party publishing boss Gregg Sauter and SDK product manager Peter Nielsen take ME sister mag Develop behind the scenes on the new N-Gage games platform…

Roundup: Indonesian Mobile Video, Lil’ Hollywood, Mobile Games
Sega America is teaming up with Finnish mobile game developer Universomo to develop titles based on existing Sega console IP, reports Modojo. There’s two titles in development but they weren’t named.

3GSM Good News for Mobile Gambling
At the Barcelona 3GSM mobile conference, there was good news for pioneering mobile gambling operators like Slotland.com. Developing technologies are making it easier, cheaper and more fun to play casino games like slot machines on mobile phones.

Don't Underestimate Full Potential of Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing represents one of the most promising and challenging opportunities for both the advertising and mobile industries. With more than two billion mobile users in the world today, IDC believes that mobile prevails as the first medium through which advertisers can reach such a large audience on an individual basis in the developing world. According to IDC, the brand spend of the U.S. mobile marketing market in 2006 should more than double the spend in 2005.

T-Mobile gets connnected with Terraplay
Terraplay has inked a deal to host and manage a connected games storefront and community for T-Mobile UK.

In brief: this week's mobile gaming news
Glu Mobile has extended it's deal with Sega to publish games based on a range of gaming franchises. Adding to an already healthy portfolio of titles will be new outings for Football Manager Quiz, Total War and Wonderboy.

Study: Mobile phones in service grew 14.9% in 2006
The number of mobile phones in service in Chile grew to 12.8mn at the end of 2006, a 14.9% increase on end-2005, the country's national statistics institute INE said in a statement.

Modelabs launches branded handset
French handset manufacturer Modelabs Group has launched its first mobile handset in the Chilean market and plans to follow up with additional products, the company's Americas general manager Jeff Galant told press.

LG U830 3G Phone Review
Chocolate plus 3.5G wizz. LG has spawned another member of the Chocolate family but this time the familiar-looking U830 arrives fitted with a 3.5G wireless engine.

MOTORAZR Maxx v6 3G Phone Review
Maxxed out. Motorola’s first 3.5G phone, the RAZR maxx V6, carries on where the V3x left off and now has faster download speeds. But is this motor refit enough to persuade you to upgrade?

New Huawei U120 3G Handset
Europe : Huawei Technologies launched its stylish U120, a 3G handset optimized for music lovers on the move. The stylish U120 is positioned as an entry-level device that will help operators drive further development of the 3G market by broadening the appeal of 3G multimedia services and applications. Designed with music enthusiasts in mind, the U120 provides a strong value proposition as it boasts many versatile features and capabilities previously found only in high-end handsets.

Sony Ericsson W710i Phone Review (not 3G)
Power walk. According to recent reports we’re a nation of fatties. So what better companion on your quest to fight the flab than the new fitness-fanatic Sony Ericsson W710i Walkman phone?

T-Mobile UK bets on multiplayer mobile poker
It's been a busy week for T-Mobile. Having already announced a deal with Terraplay to launch a connected mobile games community, the operator has now revealed it also plans to launch real money multiplayer poker.

Nokia and Glu Mobile Offer New Games on N-Gage
World’s largest manufacturer of mobile phones, Nokia and Glu Mobile, a publisher of mobile video games, collaborated on Friday to offer Glu’s mobile games and content on the N-Gage platform. Glu’s portfolio of games includes popular titles like Super K.O. Boxing!, Stranded and the Ancient Empires franchise, in addition to titles based on major brands from Atari, Harrah’s, Hasbro, Microsoft, PlayFirst, PopCap Games and Sony.

BPlay and Hands-On Mobile announce long-term partnership for BlackBerry Market
OTTAWA and SAN FRANCISCO, March 2 /PRNewswire/ - BPlay, the
next-generation mobile content portal exclusively for BlackBerry(R)
handsets from Research In Motion (RIM), today entered into an exclusive,
long-term partnership with Hands-On Mobile, a leading global publisher of
mobile lifestyle, games, and personalization products.

OMAP™ Gaming Platform, TI and Ideaworks3D
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) and Ideaworks3D are extending the capabilities of the OMAP™ Gaming Platform to support the OpenKODE® 1.0 specification, addressing a wider market targeting feature phones to high-end multimedia handsets. This platform will be one of the first in the industry to incorporate the OpenKODE Khronos Open Development Environment to further simplify the development and deployment of new games across multiple mobile phone segments, creating a larger market opportunity for game publishers.