Billed as a global mobile entertainment service provider, Thumbstar is not a company short on ambition.

After four years working away in the mobile content aggregation business, the UK-based company is ready to start shouting about its plans to take on the world - starting with China.

We caught up with CEO Gareth Edmondson and brother Martin Edmondson, who serves as CCO, for their take on a world of opportunity.

Pocket Gamer: For those who haven't been following your career, give us a potted history of Thumbstar.

Martin Edmondson: I founded Reflections back in 1983, and in 2008 I co-founded and invested in Thumbstar, although wasn't involved so much in its day-to-day running.

It was set up originally as a mobile game aggregator, and has developed itself into a fully vertically integrated, developer, publisher and distribution business.

Now we're kicking off the second phase of the company. We've been under the radar. Thumbstar isn't a well-known name yet. Having said that over those four years we have been gradually working away at our distribution.

We now have distribution through 140 channels, which is right up there with the big guys, but we've been doing that quite quietly. We've distributed 3,500 games so far.

What's the Thumbstar philosophy?

Gareth Edmondson: The overall philosophy is every platform, every language, every territory.

ME:  This means we handle platforms people don't think about so much, such as BlackBerry.

RIM has had a lot of bad press recently, but in some markets it's massive, absolutely massive - 50 percent of the smartphone market in South America, for example. And something in the region of 75 percent of the smartphone market in Indonesia.

There are 200 million mobile phone subscribers in Indonesia. There are massive markets out there that other companies don't touch.

GE: The good thing is that Thumbstar is not a traditional publisher or developer. While we're developing our own in-house stuff, and working on our own IP and exclusive content, most publishers are just looking at two stores - Google Play and the App Store.

We put products into 140 channels, so we use the distribution the company's been working on from the aggregation days, and leverage that to get products everywhere.

We reach customers that publishers normally can't reach, and strengthen the route into mobile operators.

There's a huge market outside of those two stores [App Store/Google Play] of customers who don't want to use, or don't have credit cards, and just use operator billing, especially in the emerging markets. But even in the UK and Europe it's still pretty strong, because it's convenient to have it on your mobile phone bill.

And so much of the world is prepaid now - purchases just comes off your total.

So when I'm talking to third party developers, it's a relatively easy sell. You only have to do a thousand units in each of the 140 channels and those are brilliant numbers, so it's all incremental revenue.

And we are also doing the traditional publisher thing of marketing, PR and all the rest of it on App Store and Google Play. We're being really aggressive and rolling out two games a week, and will keep that rolling. 

It sounds like a logistical headache.

GE: Well, we've been doing it for four years, and we have an office in Bangkok to cover South East Asia. Our office in Hong Kong opens next week to deal with China.

We've got an office in Columbia to cover South America, so the idea is we have staff on the ground in those territories that know the market.

It's very difficult. We deal in areas that most other people would find a challenge, but we're not scared of those kind of challenges, and over the years we've built up lots of relationships.

Where's your content sourced from?

GE: Everywhere, and it's diverse in terms of content types.

One of the big advantages is that unlike the old PlayStation days where we spent years making a game, we've got four internal teams, so we can make four games concurrently and there's some diversification there.

The products we take from other developers are obviously even more diverse, and then choosing which markets those particular games go into gives us more reach.

Is it a refreshing return to the old ways?

GE: Yes, absolutely. There's that same feeling of experimenting and trying things. They're not all going to work, but if your costs are reasonable, you can afford to do that.

Has your experience of working on smaller games in the 80s and early 90s stood you in good stead?

GE: In terms of design and experimentation, yes, but the nice thing now is that the tools are fantastic, compared to back in the early days, where there were no tools.

Then it was hard work to get anything to happen. A very very simple game on the BBC Micro would take us six months because there were no tools at all.

So how long would it take you now?

GE: The shortest is about eight weeks for a mobile game, but we're doing some bigger ones as well, and they take several months, and have slightly larger teams.

You can do a small but quality game in eight weeks.

What pricing models are you adopting?

GE: We're starting off at 99c/69p, and we're working on some freemium stuff.

Also, some of the operators in different markets use all sorts of business models no-one's talking about yet. Maybe there'll be some disruptive forces that we're looking at in China and other parts of Asia. I know the debate will go on forever.

Is freemium here to stay?

GE: I don't think it's a fad. In the middle of 2011, it was 25 percent of gross revenue, and by the end of the year was 75 percent. That's a compelling argument people like it. But, for me it always comes back to content.

The business model is the business model, and you do need to design the game according to the business model. If the game is poor and has an amazing monetisation system, most players are unlikely to pay. If players are enjoying a game they will pay. If they aren't, they won't. Simple as that.

You have to innovate. If you rip people off all the time, people just get tired. The business model for us is what's appropriate for what game.

Also in some markets, if you do a puzzle game for 50+ year old players, they're not interested in free-to-play business models. They want to buy their puzzle and play it.

How are you solving the problem of discoverability?

GE: It's actually built in to our business model.

We do publishing, PR, marketing etc, and this is combined with the distribution. If we put a game into 140 stores, and then the operators market it as well. It helps solve discoverability by mass distribution.

ME: What that feeds into is the initiative we're launching in China.

We've secured a deal with China Telecom, who has decided to tackle piracy in a very serious way. The firm is launching a new platform in the next few weeks, and the Chinese government is incentivised to deal with piracy because of the revenue it gets. It's got teeth.

Our deal there is that we're the exclusive provider of content to that platform, and it's the only way to get copy-protected games in China. We're rolling that out relatively small in one region with nine million customers, which, in China terms, is tiny.

To give you an idea, O2 has around 16 million customers in the UK, but that's just one town [in China]. China Telecom has 130 million subscribers, and it's expanding at a rate of three million a month.

It's a soft launch to make sure it works, but very quickly after the first month, we'll roll out across the rest of the country. Ultimately it will roll out to other operators, too. There are a billion mobile phone customers in China.

That's a bullish approach. How big can you be?

GE: We're being aggressive. There's no point being anything else.

In China, the audience obviously want the higher end content, but they also want the simple games, so we'll be supplying a lot of content and taking it from all sorts of different places, because it is the only way of getting in there if you want copy protected games in China.

Localisation must be a big part of the process?

GE: Yes, but it's easy, though. We've been doing it for so long now. We localise into over a hundred countries. It sounds like a nightmare, but when you've been doing it so long, it's easy.

The incremental costs of adding another language are low; now we're doing Thai, Vietnamese, Filipino... we're doing as many languages as we can.

Is Thumbstar focused solely on mobile, or are you looking at other handhelds? Vita? 3DS?

GE: No, just mobile.

Do you see those platforms as a closed shop?

ME: Yes, it is a closed shop, for one. Secondly, it's about focus for our business.

We've got a lot to do in the mobile space - growing massively and rapidly - especially in emerging markets. You never say never, because we've worked on consoles for years, and we've done very well on console, but for now, we're focused on mobile.

But if you had a superhit, Angry Birds style, you wouldn't be averse to putting that game on other non-mobile platforms?

GE: You've got to be prepared to adapt anyway. Smart TVs are up-and-coming. It's no secret that Apple is working on something, so we'll all be on that soon.
Thanks to Gareth and Martin for their time.

You can see what Thumbstar gets up to via its website.