EA (NASDAQ: ERTS) has announced its preliminary Q3 FY11 financials, which reveal EA Mobile's sales were $59 million for the three months ending December 2010.

This is up 5 percent year-on-year.

In comparison, the company experienced a 4 percent drop in Q2, although considering EA Mobile's massive 99c Christmas Apple App Store sale perhaps the uplift isn't surprisingly.

EA also bought UK iOS publisher Chillingo in October, so it's assumed its sales would now included in these figures.

Over the first nine months of its financial year, total sales were $160 million, up 2 percent year-on-year. 

Big, bigger, best

EA claimed it was the #1 publisher in Western markets for iPhone, iPad and Windows Phone 7.

It further stressed its cross platform muscle, announcing the Kindle version of Scrabble was the #1 selling item on Amazon's e-reader in December, out-selling all individual book titles.

EA Mobile accounted for 5.6 percent of EA's overall GAAP net revenues of $1.05 billion.

Points mean prizes

Overall, EA made a GAAP loss of $322 million for the quarter.

PSP sales during the quarter were $22 million, down 27 percent year-on-year, while DS sales were $49 million, down 22 percent.

As a combined sector, EA's portable gaming sales (something it labels Mobile and Handhelds) were $130 million, down 13 percent year-on-year.

EA Mobile's non-GAAP sales (which strips out one-off costs and income to try and make year-on-year comparisons easier) were up 12 percent to $64 million.

Gonna be a long year

EA's overall non-GAAP sales were $1.4 billion, up 5 percent year-on-year.

The company finished the quarter with $1.35 billion in cash and cash equivalents, compared to $1.06 billion three month previous, up 27 percent.

For its FY11, EA expects to post GAAP net revenue is approximately $3.473 to $3.573 billion, with a loss of $0.90 to $0.77 per share.

It's also announced a $600 million share buy back plan which will occur over the next 18 months. 

[source: EA]