VentureBeat reported that, Japanese mobile social gaming network firm DeNA has announced it has signed deals with China’s three largest mobile carriers, enabling DeNA’s games to get in front of nearly 1 billion mobile subscribers.
The network called Mobage China network, allows gamers to buy social games and virtual goods. The partnerships have been signed with the largest carriers, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom. This means that Android users in China will be able to now find Mobage China games in each of the carrier’s official mobile app stores. Chinese Android users will be happy to receive this news since Google Play app store is not supported in China. To make paying for virtual items more seamless, the carriers are offering carrier billing.
DeNA runs of a free-to-play mobile gaming model like Zynga and has proven extremely successful having generated a whopping US$445 Million in Q4 alone. DeNA has 35 million users in Japan and 1,800 games.
For some interesting background information, DeNa was founded by Tomoko Namba, one of Japan’s most powerful businesswomen. She controversially resigned from the company during its stellar growth phase mid- last year. It confused many people because she was an icon for being a female leader in a country where less than 2% of business leaders are women.
