Rumours in the Korean mobile games market are suggesting that newly minted Chinese outfit Alibaba is about to make a big investment into Com2uS.
In many respects, such a deal wouldn't be a great surprise as even before its US IPO, Alibaba has been investing heavily in technology, including games.
For example, it dropped $120 million to get into US/Chinese F2P publisher Kabam in an aggressive move to gain traction with the fast-growing company that has strong presence in the west and which together with Alibaba is now looking to crack the Chinese market.
More recently, Alibaba invested $250 million in Chinese TV/film outfit Huayi Brothers; a deal made in conjunction with its arch-rival Tencent, and did a deal with Rovio over the Chinese launch of Angry Birds Stella.
It also spend $215 million investing in US mobile messaging service Tango.
Buying at the peak?
As for the attractiveness of Com2uS, it could be said that the Korean mobile publisher - which is particularly strong in the Asia Pacific region - has peaked, given that its most recent financials saw record quarterly revenue of $85 million and profit of $40 million.
And perhaps counting against the rumours is the issue that Com2uS is majority-owned by another Korean publisher Gamevil, which took a controlling stake in 2013.
Still, given the market share advantage of local rivals like Tencent, if Alibaba wants to make a real impact in the mobile games market, it is going to have to spend big and outside of China to make its presence felt.
Comments
Login to to leave a comment Or click here to register
Forgot password?
Password Reset
To reset your pass, please enter your email below and submit. Your new password will then be emailed to you.
You can change this pass at any time on the "edit profile" link when logged in.
Got your password?