HTC Pushes Forward with Invests in Mobile Content Delivery, Gaming
HTC announced two mobile investments as a part of a push to further anchor its turf in the mobile market. The first is the acquisition of multimedia delivery platform Saffron Digital for $48.6 million, and plans to buy a $40 stake of cloud gaming company OnLive. “Citing an HTC spokeswoman, the newspaper [WSJ] said that HTC’s investment in OnLive will be used to help it deliver more games to players on smartphones. All told, HTC will purchase 5.3 million OnLive shares for $7.50 per share, according to the report.”
HTC’s net profit in Q4 2010 doubled throughout a period of only one year, thanks in part to its team-up with Google for the first Android phones, and ongoing device manufacturing. The company’s revenue also doubled, and now, the Taiwanese phone maker is pushing the content/content distribution front to inch its way ahead, or at least next to the competition.
HTC has been somewhat overshadowed by Samsung and Motorola ever since they jumped on the Android bandwagon, and growth is necessary for it to stay relevant. For that reason HTC’s investment in gaming is probably a smart call, since this segment provides a huge and increasingly growing aspect of mobile. Mobile gaming is one of the first areas to cover widespread distribution; multiple revenue streams opportunities and an establishing ad system, making it a great investment from more than one aspect.
We’ve been watching the mobile gaming sector extensively, including the most recent Valentine’s Day Angry Birds update and the launch of Kongregate Arcade for Android. Moreover, HTC is not the only one who’s been investing in mobile – mobile social networking site mig33 recently raised $8.9M in round C funding led by Pak Sugiono Wiyono. In turn, Intel also invested $3 million in social mobile game platform OpenFeint.
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