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Gaming firms Glu, EA narrow quarterly losses

November 3, 2010 — 8:51am ET | By Jason Ankeny

Two of the mobile gaming segment's premier publishers, Glu Mobile and Electronic Arts, reported their respective quarterly earnings Tuesday. Glu posted Q3 2010 revenues of $15.5 million, compared to $19.6 million a year ago--the company reported losses of $1.6 million, an improvement from $4 million in Q3 2009. "During the third quarter, we were able to sequentially grow smartphone revenues by 12 percent, micro-transactions and in-game advertising by 98 percent as well as monthly active users by 15 percent," Glu CEO Niccolo de Masi said in a prepared statement, adding the company plans to introduce five to six new social, persistent titles every quarter beginning in the fourth quarter. In Q3, Glu teamed with cross-platform applications storefront GetJar to introduce GetJar+, a new pilot program offering consumers premium content for free in an effort to broaden the reach of the mobile content ecosystem.

Electronic Arts reported a fiscal Q2 2011 loss of $201 million, compared with losses of $391 million a year earlier. Revenue fell 20 percent from $788 million to $631 million; mobile revenues for the period slipped to $49 million, down from $51 million a year ago and off from $52 million the previous quarter. EA Mobile introduced eight new iOS titles during the quarter, including Risk: The Official Game, Madden NFL 11 (iPhone & iPad),Yahtzee HD (iPad), and The Sims 3 Ambitions. In September, the firm also launched Scrabble and Solitaire for Amazon.com's Kindle ereader. Last month, Electronic Arts acquired Chillingo, the U.K.-based publisher of mobile games including the blockbuster Angry Birds--Chillingo's new Cut the Rope, developed by ZeptoLab, has already racked up 2 million downloads after three weeks in the App Store.