DeNA's Mobage platform off to a slow start says JP Morgan

Despite being massively profitable in Japan, the problem for companies such as DeNA and GREE is that their success is built on a legacy technology; Japanese feature phones.

That was one reason both looked to acquire western companies - respectively ngmoco and OpenFeint - to extend their global reach and provide experience of smartphones, which are starting to flood into the Japanese market.

Yet, for both companies, that transition isn't coming easily.

OpenFeint lost is co-founder and CEO Jason Citron in mysterious circumstances recently, and it appears that the western roll out of DeNA/ngmoco's Mobage platform on Android has been slow.

At least that's according to JP Morgan, which is reporting in an investors note that its recently released Android portal app has 'only' been downloaded 50,000 - 100,000 from Android Market; something it calls "extremely small".

Many of the Android games it's published through Mobage such as Pocket Frogs, Zombie Cafe and We Rule also showing low downloads numbers.

Of course, with Mobage being pre-installed on some Samsung Android devices outside Japan, plus deals with carriers such as AT&T, Android Market downloads are unlikely to be a totally reliable guide of overall activity on the platform.

Indeed, DeNA and ngmoco are frantically building out a business framework for Mobage, with recent studio acquisitions in Chile, Vietnam, the US, and Holland plus a new start up in Sweden, and publisher offices in China, Korea and Singapore.

[source: Serkantoto via Gamebiz (Japanese)]