EA Mobile still top mobile games publisher by revenue
EA and Glu results reveal the Big Three's growth
EA Mobile is still the biggest mobile games publisher when it comes to revenues. Today, both EA and Glu Mobile announced their financials for the first quarter of 2008, allowing us to compare them both with Gameloft.
The topline figures: EA made $41 million from mobile games in the first quarter, just ahead of Gameloft's $39.6 million, with Glu coming in third with $20.6 million.
Glu posted a net loss of $6 million for the quarter. Gameloft has only announced its sales figures so far, while EA doesn't publish an individual profit or loss figure for its mobile division.
When it comes to growth, Glu is outpacing the other two, however. Its first-quarter revenues were up 31.2% compared to the first quarter last year, while EA and Gameloft's corresponding rises were 13.9% and 11% respectively.
EDIT - However, Glu says that around $2.7 million of its first-quarter revenues came from recent acquisitions Superscape and MIG. If you strip those out, its growth year-on-year was more like 14%.A couple of other stats from the financials announcements: mobile is now responsible for 4% of EA's overall revenues, which is more than Nintendo DS, which accounts for 3%.
Meanwhile, Glu is spreading its revenues more evenly across its games, with its ten top-selling titles only generating 43% of its revenues in the first quarter, compared to 57% a year ago.
Just to remind you, Gameloft's first-quarter revenues this year were €25.3 million (around $39.6 million). If you want to really dig into the figures, 6% of those revenues came from other platforms (for example DS and Xbox Live Arcade).
So in pure mobile terms, Gameloft is a bit further behind EA Mobile, although I'm not sure how either firm counts iPod revenues, just to complicate things further.
Anyway, the fact is that EA Mobile can claim top-dog status for three months at least, while Glu Mobile can proudly boast of growing faster than either of its main rivals. But in terms of sales, all three are doing pretty well.
