Jill Braff on the games publisher's executive reshuffle and smartphone strategy.
It’s been a tough last 12 months for Glu Mobile, taking in headcount reduction, a bumpy share price, speculation over potential acquisitions, and the news that CEO Greg Ballard is to step down. All this, while its main rivals EA and Gameloft made hay on iPhone’s App Store while Glu held back.
Senior VP of global publishing Jill Braff says the publisher has come through the tough times, though. “We've been undergoing a bit of pain, but really we're in pretty good shape,” she says.
“We often get hard knocks from competitors, but the reality is that the past couple of quarters, we've generated cash, which we’re using to fund our investment in our growth businesses.”
Specifically, Braff says that Glu has continued to make decent revenues from its business selling mobile games through carrier decks, at a time when many mid-tier games publishers have abandoned the operators for the iPhone gold-rush.
“We never left the carrier business behind,” says Braff. “We got some hard knocks for maybe being slow to iPhone, but we needed to get our costs in a better place so that we could be on top of our profitability. In the first half of this year we had very positive operating margins on the carrier business, and we’ve been able to use that to invest in the growth area of the business.”
European changes
Before getting into those growth areas, it’s worth noting that Glu has also changed its organisational structure, with particular implications for Europe. Braff confirms that EMEA managing director Frank Keeling has now left Glu, for example.
The former Vodafone, RealNetworks and In-Fusio executive had joined Glu in December 2007 to head up its European arm, but the publisher’s Euro activities will now be headed up by recently-appointed EMEA marketing director James Scalpello, and existing EMEA sales director Olivier Bernard – both of whom will report in to Braff.
“A few years ago, it was ‘hey, we have people in Europe and Latin America, and everyone’s working on their own businesses’,” says Braff.
“Now what we’re seeing is that iPhone particularly is a global platform. So there’s things that James and his team will do in Europe with the carrier business, but increasingly we’re seeing the similarities and pulling close as a global team.”
iPhone success
Glu’s cautious approach to iPhone is well-documented, and has arguably left it scrabbling to catch up with EA Mobile and Gameloft – the other two members of the ‘Big Three’ mobile games publishers in the carrier world.
Glu was also hampered by the fact that some of its brand partners elected to retain their licensing rights for iPhone, which left the publisher having to shift focus to developing more own-IP games for the App Store.
Although Glu is still bringing some brands to iPhone – Family Guy goes live soon – Braff says the publisher is excited about the performance of own-IP titles like Glyder and Deer Hunter.
“We are starting to figure out how to drive successes,” she says, pointing out that ten of Glu’s 11 iPhone games have reached the Top 100 chart, and eight have reached the Top 40.
“Deer Hunter was interesting: it fell out of the top 100, but we were able to reinvigorate it back in with a free version, which to date has had over two million downloads. We’re starting to measure click-throughs from that free version and understand the dynamics.”
Android improvement
Glu hasn’t been quite as cautious when it comes to the launch of other smartphone app stores like Android Market and BlackBerry App World. However, rivals have been muttering about poor sales from these channels compared to the App Store, particularly on Android Market. What’s Glu’s view?
“We know that everything in mobile is a marathon, not a sprint,” says Braff, taking a diplomatic line. “We recognize that the Android install base is going to be quite impressive, and we’ve been a good partner for Google from day one with Bonsai Blast. We’ve had well over a million downloads from Android Market, so it’s a nice install base there already.”
However, she accepts that many of the non-Apple app stores are in their first generations. “Our hope is that they will improve, and we think they’ll get there,” she says.
“Apple made it look easy, but nothing in mobile is easy! When you see Google’s planned improvements to Android Market, separating paid from free and promoting games that have just been released, you can see that they’re acting on the feedback that people have been bringing to them.”
Click here for part two of the interview, covering Glu's move into social gaming on Facebook.
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