Scoreloop Lands Mobile Platform Deal With Taiwanese Carrier, Predicts Many More to Come

Every mobile phone carrier and manufacturer in the world is trying to reproduce Apple's iPhone; that much is obvious. But are they also trying to anticipate Apple's moves in software? Yes, at least according to Scoreloop CEO Marc Gumpinger. Scoreloop is a social platform for mobile phone games, providing leaderboards and other social features to downloadable games. What makes it stand out from a competitor like OpenFeint or Plus+ is that it sells a white-label version of its platform to anyone that wants it. Today, that's a major Taiwanese carrier called Chunghwa Telecom. Tomorrow, it could be any other carrier in the world -- or all of them. Gumpinger says he's talking to firms around the world. However, he's willing to credit Apple, which is planning a mobile social effort called Game Center, as much as his own company. "Apple Game Center has alerted everyone from operators to OEMs that there needs to be some focus on gaming," says Gumpinger. "It's pretty obvious that the success you're seeing on Facebook is moving to mobile. But in mobile there's none of the infrastructure that developers are used to on Facebook." While the iPhone itself will have Game Center, other phones will need some equivalent. Android may eventually get one, depending on Google's social plans. But in the meantime, Gumpinger says that mobile carriers are starting to see a social platform as a way to show value to their customers. "What the operators are looking for is a deeper relationship with their subscribers," says Gumpinger. "[The companies] need to offer their customers something they really want. Games turn out to be the most interesting market to re-establish end user relationships." Down the road, that may mean that each mobile carrier has its own social network that gamers sign into when they start playing. That could result in a fragmented market, but in its current form Scoreloop connects to various other networks including Facebook, and Gumpinger says that data on user activities is currently shared across all the white-labeled versions. Scoreloop itself is getting pretty big. The company says it gets 100,000 new signups per day, driven mainly by Android gamers. That's up significantly from May, when it claimed 300,000 per week (or about 43,000 daily).

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Scoreloop Lands Mobile Platform Deal With Taiwanese Carrier, Predicts Many More to Come

Chris Morrison

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