Greg Ballard, CEO & President, Glu Mobile spoke at the LA Games Conference. Greg’s talk is titled Mobile Games 2008: The Right Stuff.

Glu Media is about a $100 million company in the mobile game space. In 2003 the industry was very fragmented. In 2004, Greg thought that an industry consolidation would take place with companies like Verisign, Yahoo, Real buying mobile game companies. It didn’t turn out that way. Now 50% of the market is controlled by 3 publishers: EA(25.6%), Glu (14%) and gameloft (11.8). The rest of the market is made up of huge numbers of publishers. It’s a healthy business for those that are getting big, but not so great for the smaller players.

At what point, does this become a mass market. Greg thinks it already is a mass market. He focuses on the size of the installed base that you’re targeting.

• 56 million next generation game consoles
• 85 million iPods
• 850 million personal computers
• 1.3 billion landline phones
• 1.3 billion internet users
• 1.5 billion television sets
• 3.3 billion cell phone users

There is a huge untapped market to address. Even if only 5% are playing games, that’s 165 million mobile gamers playing every month. While going from 5% to 6% seems small, each percent gained means 33 million new mobile gamers.

Mobile phone game sales are bigger than DS and PSP game purchased combined.

Every minute glu ports 10 games, every second they sell a game. In 2007, glu sold 30 million games.

The business is healthy, the business is mass market. The question is how to grow the pie. The explosion of new players and platforms in the mobile space. We’ve seen the introduction to iPhone, ngage, and android. This is not to take anything away from existing platforms, but Greg thinks its going to change the battlefield because of the companies behind these platforms who are leaders in the digital media world.

These new players are innovating in both hand sets and in business models. We’re seeing direct sales to consumers, bypassing the carriers. This makes it really interesting for content providers. In this kind of battle, content becomes the differentiator.

Flat data plans, better handsets, better merchandising, better games. 44.7 of smart phone users buy games compared to 19.6 on non-smart phones. The difference is related to flat rate data plans.

Greg compares the iPhone to the PSP and DS in terms of capabilities. The iPhone has more memory and more processing power.

If you look at merchandising, it’s about to get a lot better. Just look at ngage. It makes the buying experience much, much better.

If the business is healthy and growing fast, what’s the one thing holding it back. The issue from Greg’s perspective is the way we think about the value we sell games for.
Playstation titles are at $60. PC games are at $50. DS games are at $30. Mobile games sell for $8. The question is what happens to the price point for next gen mobile?

“It may be a small segment of the market today, but this is a puppy with very large paws,” says Greg.

Technorati Tags: LA Game Conference 2008, Greg Ballard, Glu Mobile, mobile gaming, gaming