Despite the tough year Glu Mobile (NSDQ: GLUU) is having, its CEO Greg Ballard emphasized his company's unique position as a licensee of big game brands at Goldman Sach's Communacopia conference. Ballard: "Our relationship with the console companies has been unique. Remember that the other two competitors in this marketplace, Gameloft (EPA: GFT) and Electronic Arts (NSDQ: ERTS), are closely affiliated or actually owned by companies that are in the console business. So if you are a console company without a mobile arm yourself your choices of who to license your titles to are pretty narrow and that's one of the reasons why we've been very successful in that market." Still, while 2008 has seen growth in other categories, it hasn't been easy for Glu Mobile and some of its competitors. Ballard: "2008 is probably the year of the slowest growth so far, but we think that growth resumes in 2009 and 2010."
--Carriers have no choice but to innovate: Ballard:"The common thread through all of this is that in this battlefield that takes place the one thing that will differentiate one provider from the other is going to be the content and the quality of that content."
--Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and the iPhone: Ballard: "Apple has a great business model for publishers. 70 percent goes to us, 30 percent goes to them. That's the best deal we get anywhere… We're starting to hear the carriers sort of tell us that's why they think that maybe that business model is why developers and publishers have been spending as much time as they are on the iPhone… It's not just the device, but also the business model."
--High-end growth: Ballard: "In general, people tend to focus on the iPhone, but we think the innovation is coming across all of these high-end handsets and sets up 2009 as being the year of the high end in mobile. And we can't neglect the fact that even as big as the high end is going to be it's likely to only be about 15 percent of the market next year—85 percent of the market at worst is going to continue to be Java and Brew devices where we continue to focus the bulk of our attention. But we will be involved extensively in the high end next year." The company is planning to launch at least 10 titles for high-end devices next year.
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