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EA Mobile bouyed by Q3 FY10 revenues up 14 percent to $56 million

Strong performance from App Store and Verizon

EA Mobile bouyed by Q3 FY10 revenues up 14 percent to $56 million
EA (NASDAQ: ERTS) has announced its Q3 FY10 financials, which reveal EA Mobile sales were $56 million for the three months ending December 31st, 2009.

This accounts for 4.5 percent of EA’s total revenue for the period, and is up 14 percent year-on-year compared to the $49 million of revenue in Q3 FY09.

Compared to Q2 FY10, sales were up 10 percent, driven by Christmas iPhone and mobile game purchases.

For mobile games, the holiday season is a strong quarter as people buy new handsets and then download games for them.

EA said it had seven of the top eleven games on the App Store during December, seven of the top ten games on US carrier Verizon for the quarter, and over 50 percent of the top ten games on AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile US.

Strong performance

To date, EA Mobile’s sales during FY10 are $157 million and look likely to break the $200 million barrier by year’s end.

All these figures are provided using the standard Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

EA Mobile's sales for Q2 FY10 under non-GAAP - which is used to strip out one-off costs and income to try and make year-on-year comparisons easier - were $57 million.

In comparison, rival mobile publisher Gameloft's sales for the same period of time were €31.8 million (approx. $44 million), although six percentage of this includes console sales via Nintendo's WiiWare and DSiWare channels.

Drop of portables

In contrast, EA's revenue from other portable consoles continued to decline, with DS down 47 percent year-on-year to $63 million and PSP down 17 percent to $30 million.

As a combined sector, EA’s mobile sales were $149 million, down 27 percent year-on-year.

Trouble at the top

Overall sales for the whole of EA during Q3 FY10 were down 25 percent year-on-year to $1.243 billion. This included revenue deferral of $103 million related to certain online-enabled packaged goods and digital content.

The company made a loss of $82 million as compared with a net loss of $641 million for the prior year.

Non-GAAP net revenue for the quarter was $1.346 billion, down 23 percent, while non-GAAP income $109 million down 39 percent.

The company has $1.1 billion in cash, down 19 percent year-on-year, and 1.8 billion in terms of cash, short-term investments and other securities.

Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.