Kicking off its first ever analysts day as its share price hit a three year high, Glu Mobile (NASDAQ:GLUU), was keen to stress how it was riding the combination of a global trend of smartphone adoption and freemium game popularity.

"It's a crucial intersection. We've gone from an industry laggard to an industry leader," said CEO Niccolo de Masi.

He has the figures to prove it too.

Count the zeros

During its first quarter 2011, Glu's added 20 million users. Its current total is 70 million.

More significantly, its games have 953,000 daily active users, and 11.9 million monthly active users.

The jewel in its portfolio is iOS/Android freemium shooter Gun Bros. To-date, it's cost around $1 million in terms of development and support costs plus marketing.

However, with 215,000 daily active users, it generated a highly profitable $2.3 million in the three months of Q1 2011 (non-GAAP revenue).

The average revenue generated per daily player is 12c; something that's bound to pay dividends when the game's much anticipated multiplayer and social update is released.

But the company's not a one hit wonder. Its past four releases have gained 14.5 million downloads, with Contract Killer being the key release. It's done 8.6 million downloads on iPhone and iPad, and is now coming to Android.

Future perfect

One upshot of this performance is Glu has upped its predicted revenue for Q2: more good news for the investors and analysts.

It now expects to have revenues of between $16 - $17 million (non-GAAP), up $0.5 - $1 million. It will still make net loss, but a smaller one - $1.9 million to $2.7 million.

More importantly, it expects to end the year with more cash too - $18 million.