The mobile gaming platform battle is becoming a winner-takes-all concern of giants such as DeNA, GREE, RIM, Zynga, Apple and Facebook.

But that doesn't mean there's no place for tiny start ups who are focused on one particular area.

That's the view of Yaniv Presler, CEO of PlayerDuel.

En garde

As the name suggests, the Israeli-founded but soon-to-be US-based outfit is all about adding head-to-head competitive features to mobile games.

According to Presler, such competition is the solution to many of the current issues faced by game developers.

"Discovery is a mess and 99 percent of players who start playing your game have stopped after three months," he argues.

"This makes it very hard to make money from mobile games. The top 20 companies are taking everything."

Add will to win

Although still in its early testing phases, PlayerDuel is an SDK (currently just for iPhone) that developers can use to enable players of their games to set up competitions among their friends, as well as supporting global features.

Because much of activity will be among friends - PlayerDuel uses Facebook Connect to create a social graph - Presler says it will be a great viral distribution method.

"If you challenge your friends to find out who can get the highest score in the level of a game they don't already have, they're likely to download it," he says, pointing out the power of trusted networks over recommendation engines.

Bet I'll beat you

In terms of incentivising such competitions, PlayerDuel will have its own in-game currency that can be wagered.

At the moment, people who download the PlayerDuel app and sign up using Facebook are given currency, although the company's planned business model is to share revenue with developers when players buy currency as an in-app purchase.

It also has some high profile plans to fuel worldwide activity in games.

Presler says he expects this combination of local and global will give PlayerDuel an advantage over the competition, whether that be Game Center or third party options.

Dual wielding

Of course, given the entrenched position of those other players, the company will likely experience tough competition, amongst developers and players.

Presler says the situation is more complex, though, as PlayerDuel will integrate with the likes of Game Center, OpenFeint and Scoreloop.

"We're offering something different: leaderboards are so 2008," he says. "We can be a second platform."

The company will announce more details of its platform in the coming months.

In the meantime you can sign up for more details via its website or download its standalone iPhone app from the App Store [link].