After many rumours and ominous statements that it was “reviewing its activities” Namco Bandai confirmed today that EA Mobile will thenceforth act as its distributor for mobile games outside the US and outside any app store.
After Taito and Eidos, EA Mobile just gobbled up another major distribution deal and the exodus from J2ME games distributed via carriers continues. It also means that EA’s dominance over the operator decks has just increased a little more yet again. It had estimated (back in June) that its 2009 mobile revenues would reach $185m (although this arguably includes Apple’s and other people’s app stores as well as embeds).
What is worrying is that this cements the oligopoly of games distribution in all major markets. EA Mobile, Gameloft occupy the top 2 slots very comfortably with Glu an equally comfortable but distant third. I-Play, Digital Chocolate, Real and Connect 2 Media are fighting for place and Xendex, Handy Games and a few others seek (and sometimes find) niches to prosper. THQ Wireless, Vivendi Games Mobile have departed. Player X found a new home under the mighty wings of Zed. And then? If the above companies all manage to maintain a healthy business, this might be enough; there are silverback gorillas in every market segment. If not though, this might become a doomed sub-sector; the limelight would then be on the (failed) ecosystem operators tried to build: overly fragmented with everyone of them wanting it just so and just their way rather than agreeing on a largely unified structure and processes pressed margins from a system that has been tough from the outset (handset fragmentation and international spread mean fairly high cost per capita anyway).
The accumulation of external properties arguably also mean that EA will need to run a business that is almost a combination of a publisher and an aggregator (with its very own challenges). The issue of shelf position (will they give Tetris and the Sims undue preference over Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Cooking Mama?), the commercials of their own deals (they anecdotally paid Hasbro a handsome sum), and the generally dominant position will all come into play and it is inconceivable (well, is it really?) that their partners will continue to play ball.
It might of course only be a brief interregnum on the way to an app store world. Smartphones are very much on the rise and, in that world, such stores seem to rule. Apple has taken the lead, Android followed suit and new stores are springing up almost by the day, which also includes operator-led ones: Orange already has one, Verizon Wireless has announced one (mobile web-based) and so has Vodafone (which might actually be bigger than Apples) as well as many others. The OEM all do the same (even though some carriers want to disallow them): Nokia Ovi, Blackberry App World, Sony Ericsson, LG, Samsung, you name them, they have it. The question of course is if that might mean the same thing all over again: will they again want it all just so? Will they again have it just their way so that a user would have the unique flavour of operator X on handset Y in this unique way, meaning that – again – thousands of SKUs would be required to service them? Groundhog Day? I hope not!
Image credit: http://www.antitrustreview.com/files/2007/07/files51lsaydhrsl.-ss500-.jpg
With what seems a month taken off for summer vacation (at least there was no list available), Swedish phone accessory maker 
Samsung’s new app store (no one can do without one these days!) will be operated by Handmark and is set to go live on 14 September (2009, that is), 
Last week was quarterly reporting week, and both Apple and Nokia let us have a glimpse on whatever they did. Subsequently, some reported (via Twitter) that the iPhone outsold the N series for the first time.
Nokia 
Apple, by contrast, 
Nokia has 
Last week, there was the 
Upon the launch of the app store and the wondrous stories of the 
With Apple’s roaring success with the app store, the whole industry stampeded to put out their own, and they have been moderately successful or failed. But it is early days! Why did they fail? Because they equally had hoped that one thing and one thing only (just name your bucket of apps an “app store”) would heal the painful failure of the sector in converting otherwise gladly paying users to also using, consuming, contributing to entertainment and information on their mobiles. Now, this overlooked that Apple’s model did not only consist of a storefront. It also consisted of a fairly simple developer programme (with a click-through agreement), a fair(er) revenue share to the developers and unprecedented ease of use in getting to the app of one’s choice. Try and apply this to, say, the 
It is another question if these will be delivered via flexible widgets or larger, more comprehensive apps (functionally, a lot of apps effectively are covert widgets); this will simply be (and remain) a question on the complexity of any given task and the ease and superior (or not) delivery an app would provide over a browser-based service. There will be an equilibrium between the two but I posit that there will remain large areas where browser-based delivery will not be able to compete with specific applications (that will draw on data from the cloud as well). Incidentally, 58% of 
Now, let’s try to differentiate a little. Would you say the US have the lead in computer manufacturing? Well, probably not. IBM’s ThinkPads are Chinese, then there is Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, and there is HP and Dell. There is of course also Apple (“designed in California”). Does it matter at all where the hardware is from? No, not at all, and no one really cares anymore. And why not? Because hardware is basically a commodity, that is in a world where one does not actually see that much of the hardware because the interfaces are software-driven. And these are from Microsoft, etc.
The iPhone has changed a lot of things of course. However, American Idol arguably 
One last word on Europe: distinct to what Mr Scoble appears to have in mind, Europe is not a country, and this is not meant to be sarcastic. Europe is a pile of little countries and in each of them a couple of carriers rule like little kings. It makes for an extremely complex (and, consequently, low-margin) playground to deploy services. The US (as well as some of the huge Asian countries) have the incredible opportunity to deploy applications and services in one language through less than a handful of carriers to hundreds of millions. No such thing in Europe.
I hope, however, the US will catch up on this front sooner rather than later, too. Because of the size of the market and the aforementioned advantages, it would unleash incredible opportunities that would bring all of us fantastic new services and applications. And, Mr Scoble, it does not matter if these are 160 characters or polished web pages; it depends on what you want to do with it (as you, being one of the