Founded in 2003, PlayPhone is a mobile social gaming network. Headquartered in San Fransisco, CA the firm has received a funding of $95.1 million dollars from Menlo Ventures, Cardinal Venture Capital, Coral Capital Management and Scale Venture Partners.

Mobile gaming is here to stay. With all the networks and the smart phones getting better day after day, the overall gaming experience has also seen a great improvement. Mobile messaging has become a revelation over the years, but is also becoming the hub for content sharing, content distribution and games too.

This trend of mobile messaging has evolved out and is slowly becoming a platform for sharing thoughts, exchanging notes with your small group of friends in private or getting in touch with the people you talk to on a regular basis or also playing games with them online.

The next few years will witness a growth in the carrier space, with carriers being the app source and with a whopping $13 billion carrying over them. So the carriers are returning back as the source for many apps going forward. Also looking at the emerging markets where the strength of penetration is not that high nowadays, this is the only way people can actually monetize or play premium games.

Set top boxes and gaming consoles have emerged to be a luxury for the home gamer. There are various providers who are looking to control the overall living room experience. Any of these set top boxes or gaming consoles are becoming multipurpose consoles where it is not just about gaming. This is another trend shaping up in the gaming front which is going to get to get strong over the next few years.

Focusing on the End User

At a granular level, financing is happening very easily as we see people availing the seed funds through angel investing and from various other sources. The key thing that some have to keep in mind is in creating engaging products and striving to deliver value to customers. Being able to focus on the end user and create value to that one particular consumer is very important. The other important thing is of hiring talent. Talent is a precious commodity overall, so getting the right people around you to build the company is essential and the key to success.

The key part of mobile gaming is that these are casual games and they have a shelf life which is very small. So building the right amount of engagement and distribution is critical, also being able to partner with the right mobile partners is a key in order to achieve the target of engagement and distribution moving forward. (As told to Durgesh Prakash)