EA and Glu Report Mobile Game Sales Results

Two of the biggest mobile game developers in the world, Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) and Glu Mobile (NASDAQ: GLUU) announced quarterly results this week.

While EA's overall business continues to struggle, mobile was a bright spot with the company reporting that their mobile revenues were up 24% year-over-year to $189 million. For the fiscal fourth quarter, EA Mobile recorded $48 million in revenues, up 14% year-over-year.

Glu reported revenues of $20.8 million, compared to $20.6 million in the first quarter of 2008 which represents less than a 1% increase year over year.

If I was a Glu shareholder I'd be pretty disappointed with Glu's results. Although EA is a bigger company , the mobile games business is growing fairly rapidly (see post coming soon) and Glu should be growing at a similar pace to EA.

If you read Glu's full release and if you've been following the company over the last year, a lot of their lack of growth is due to the fact that Glu was very late to the iPhone party. They've started to ramp up lately with a number of high quality releases on that platform including the very fun Glyder title, but it's clear that they've still got a lot of work to do to get their business to take off further.

EA, on the other hand, was early to the iPhone an their games have done very well. Just in the past couple weeks, EA announced five new iPhone titles and executives said they expect to introduce 30 games for the iPhone this year.

5000 Android Apps

Google's Android Market now offers more than 4,900 applications for smartphones powered by the Android mobile operating system, according to the web services giant's vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra.

Speaking Wednesday at Google's annual I/O developer event in San Francisco, Gundotra said Android users have downloaded an average of more than 40 applications per user, adding that Android smartphones are now second in the U.S. in mobile web browsing, behind Apple's iPhone.

5000 apps is a pretty good number. We (Movaya) are about to launch our first premium app in the Android Market next week so we'll see how that goes.

Remote-Controlled Pigeons

Chinese scientists have reportedly been able to control a pigeon's flight remotely through electrodes that stimulated different parts of the bird's brain. Scientists at the Robot Engineering Technology Research Center at Shandong University were able to send the pigeon commands to fly left, right, up and down. It is reportedly the first such successful experiment in the world, and could have important implications for neurology and even remote mind control.

Source: MSNBC

Billing Revolution Says Mobile Shopping About to Explode

Americans are gradually warming up to the idea of buying things via their mobile phones, particularly young adults and men, found a new study conducted by Harris Interactive for the mobile credit card security firm Billing Revolution.

Harris surveyed 2,029 adults from April 29 to May 1; 1,883 of those surveyed were cell phone owners (93%). Close to half (45%) said they think that shopping via cell phones is "somewhat safe," though just over a quarter (26%) feel that mobile shopping is completely safe.

Regardless, fewer than half of those surveyed (46%) said they would be willing to shop using their cell phones even if safety was not an issue. But attitudes vary based on age and sex, according to Harris. As with many emerging technology-driven habits, younger adults appear more willing to embrace change; 59% of the 18-34 crowd feels that mobile shopping is somewhat safe, versus just 34% of adults over 55. Also, half of men find the concept of cell phone shopping somewhat safe versus 39% of women.

The relative youth, as well as the male-skewing nature of the potential mobile shopping audience seems to influence the sort of purchases respondents indicated they would be willing to make. Harris found that entertainment is likely to emerge as a key mobile commerce category, as willing mobile shoppers said they would be most interested in purchases such as movie tickets, music, mobile video and games.

Officials at Billing Revolution said the survey results indicated that mobile shopping is poised for growth in the near term, as more and more Americans purchase sophisticated smart phones like Apple's iPhone and spend more time accessing the Internet via these devices. "There's clearly a large U.S. population of consumers open to the idea of making purchases via their cell phones," said Andy Kleitsch, CEO Billing Revolution. "With consumers getting more comfortable navigating the Web from mobile phones, mobile commerce is poised for explosive growth, and consumers are very much leading the charge in this direction."

The End of 'Cheap Food'?

From the end of World War II until now, most nations have enjoyed plentiful and relatively inexpensive food supplies. But now, according to the well-known futurist think tank Global Business Network, that era may be ending.

GBN cites the near doubling of corn prices on the world market in the past year as evidence that this trend has already begun. Factors that are driving up prices include increased demand by the growing world population, as well as the growth of Asian economies. The latter is significant because, as economies prosper, meat consumption increases... and with it, the need for livestock feed. Increasing consumption of bio-fuels will stress grain supplies even further. Throw global warming into the mix (crop yields can fall by up to 5% for every 0.9 degree F rise in temperature) , and the stage is set for possibly much higher food prices worldwide, shortages, and ultimately, mass starvation in the poorest countries.

Writes GBN's Gwynne Dyer, PhD, 'In the early stages of this process, higher food prices will help millions of farmers who have been scraping along on very poor returns for their effort because political power lies in the cities, but later it gets uglier. The price of food relative to average income is heading for levels that have not been seen since the early 19th century, and it will not come down again in our lifetimes.' [Emphasis added]

Source: Arlington Institute

The Future of TV News

If news websites can allow users to subscribe to certain news categories, will TV news be able to do the same thing someday? Dave Winer of Scripting News muses on the possibilities, including the ability to block out categories in which the user has no interest. He even provides a mockup of an interface.

IBM's 'Five in Five'

IBM has released a report outlining 'five innovations that will change our lives over the next five years.' The 'big five' concepts -- though not completely new -- are:

• We will be able to access healthcare remotely, from just about anywhere in the world
• Real-time speech translation-once a vision only in science fiction-will become the norm
• There will be a 3-D Internet
• Technologies the size of a few atoms will address areas of environmental importance
• Our mobile phones will come close to reading our minds