Apple may currently have the device of choice, but Glu CEO Niccolo de Masi believes that the fruits of Microsoft, Google, and other handset providers will fill the mobile gaming basket soon enough.

By the end of 2010, Windows Phone 7 and Android handsets will be ripe for the commercial picking, giving iPhone serious competition on which de Masi plans to capitalise.

Long known for its ability to efficiently port games to a wide range of handsets, Glu is aiming to release its games on as many smartphones as possible.

"Our advantage in the past has been about reach," he observes.

With fragmentation sprouting in the marketplace, de Masi is confident the strategy will succeed.

"Fragmentation is going to squeeze some companies, but we're in a position - thanks to our experience in the previous generation - to meet the challenge of an increasingly fragmented smartphone arena," he states.

The five year outlook

While de Masi recognises that Apple holds the decisive lead in the high end smartphone sector, he predicts a limit to the company's success.

Drawing a comparison with the automobile industry in which select manufacturers dominate specific regions without any single company holding more than 20 percent of the global market, de Masi insists  Apple won't seize more than 20 percent of the global mobile business.

"Nokia is not going to zero market share and Apple won't take a majority share," he contends. "Windows Phone 7, Android, and Samsung will grow the marketplace as Apple and Nokia discover new roles."

De Masi goes further in analysing the hype around Google's Android operating system, noting that despite claims that it will take over Apple as the high end standard it will instead cater to a wider market.

"Android is effectively going to replace Java," he predicts.

Platform of choice

Conversely, de Masi thinks that Microsoft is aiming for a different audience. "Windows Phone 7 will make a great play for the hardcore gamer."

It's easy to agree. Integration with Xbox Live - however piecemeal it may appear from the company's early game catalogue - could entice entrenched console gamers to make the jump to mobile gaming.

Supporting so many devices will be a challenge not just in terms of the technical hurdles that must be overcome in the porting process, but also the creative decisions that must be made when porting games designed with a particular device in mind.

Glu's most recently announced games - an impressive batch including The Lord of the Rings: Middle-Earth Defense, Gun Bros, ToyShop Adventures, and more - are all being created for iPhone and iPod touch first.

While it's possible to port these games with relative technical ease to Android and Windows Phone 7, the subjective factors of quality and playability remain in question.

Just as old Java games have fared poorly on iPhone, will titles designed first for iPhone suffer a similar fate on Google and Microsoft devices?

"There will always be idiosyncrasies with fragmentation," de Masi admits.

By possessing the necessary technical resources, he believes that Glu can concentrate on surmounting the creative challenges involved in porting.

With smartphone competition to be in full swing by the end of the year, we'll see how successful Glu's porting endeavours fare soon. After all, as a publicly floated company, it has to report its earning figures every three months.