August 6th, 2009 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A, Platforms: iOS | No Comments »
Glu's earnings call has been put online. In the conversation, Greg outlines a lot of details about Glu's performance and expectations on Apple's App Store. Marketing will be key in improving their business.
He explained (during his last call) that the company still needs to put in a lot of effort to improve their revenues from the App Store. Launching Lite versions and connecting with social networks will be key to drive marketing. The conversion from Lite versions is much higher then expected. Greg also admits that revenue isn't growing as fast as investments in the platform.
Another important factor for App Store success is pricing. If Glu would launch more games at $0,99 or $1,99, the company would attract more sales, but the company would not be making much money from the titles.
Greg also brought very positive news from the traditional mobile games market. Though that market is still under s lot of pressure, operators are slowly moving to a 70-30 revshare. Something which was very common for only branded content a few years back.
Glu also set a new record as they got 8 mobile games in Verizon's top 25. Glu even managed to kick Tetris from it's first place.
“This success, notwithstanding, we do expect that the worldwide carrier business will have a seasonal slowdown in the third quarter as EMEA experiences its traditional slow summer month and when several carriers including North America undergo platform changes and maintenance. While we expect a seasonal pick up in sales in Q4 that will coincide with the launch of what we believe will be a very strong fourth quarter title line up.” said Greg Ballard “We continue to believe that the carrier business has the potential for renewed growth although it is too early for us to give our detailed thought about 2010. The largest carriers appear to continue to invest in gaming as a strategy and many of them had made it an even a higher priority in the contest of Apple’s success with the iPhone. While many users have disappeared from their game platforms due to purchases of iPhone or other Smart phone devices that are not connected to their gaming platforms, many of these devices are actually still serviced to the carriers.”
