Japanese mobile social powerhouse GREE has announced a deal to extend its platform across Singapore-based mig33's mobile community in south-east Asia, India and South Africa.

With a userbase totalling more than 47 million, the agreement will allow games on GREE's social network – which competes with the likes of Mobage Town in Japan – to be converted to work on mig33's technology.

The deal follows on from GREE's Series C investment in mig33 in November 2010.

Social surge

"GREE is rapidly advancing its expansion overseas through the use of smartphones," the company said in a statement.

"This business partnership enables the social applications developed by GREE partners using GREE Platform for smartphone and the social applications offered as a part of mig33 to be easily deployed in the both companies' application platforms."

In total, both networks have a combined reach of 70 million users.

Open market

The deal follows a similar agreement with one of mig33's competitors - Chinese mobile social network operator Tencent - back in January.

However, mig33 CEO and co-founder Steven Goh believes there's no conflict between the two deals. Rather, GREE's moves create a "tremendous opportunity for social game developers everywhere."

"Today's announcement changes the face of social gaming throughout Asia, as the millions of mobile users in emerging markets far beyond China and Japan are now within reach," he added.

"Our unique merchant model has been successful at monetising users in markets previously difficult to reach and the opening of GREE Platform for smartphone will provide opportunity to the social games developers to monetise that large and potential audience."

[source: GREE (PDF)/PR Newswire]