Gameloft Looks at Tie Ups to Increase Market Share in the Mobile Gaming Segment

Gameloft the international game development and publishing firm is looking at ways to increase its market share in the Indian mobile gaming industry. The European game biggie is looking at potential tie ups with telecom service providers, handset developers and wireless carriers to take its chunk of the pie. The 100 million Euro company started operations in India in 2005 and at present has distribution agreement with telecom provider Vodafone and handset manufacturer Nokia.

Alliances with Airtel and Spice could follow, with agreements possible this month. Talks with other service providers like BSNL, Reliance and Idea for distribution were on, claimed Ravi Kumar, country manager (India), Gameloft. Besides its collaboration with Nokia, Gameloft was in talks with Sony Ericsson and Motorola.

“We are looking at tapping as many platforms-telecom carriers, handset manufacturers, console manufacturers in India as possible since India is a potential market where the mobile gaming market is estimated to grow 10 times in two years time and Gameloft games can be used on any handset equipped with Java, Brew or symbian technology irrespective of the model”, he added.

According to me, the move shows both the potential of the segment in India and along with that perhaps the saturation in the western markets driving this expansion here. We have covered the Mobile VAS and Mobile Entertainment segments extensively on WATBlog and believe them to be the high potential segments. The international attention like that of Gameloft and a lot of new licensing and govt. initiatives can only make things better for the industry.