Big news from DeNA today: just a few minutes ago, DeNA and Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo (58 million customers) announced a partnership that’s nothing short of spectacular.
Starting next month, Mobage will be directly linked to Docomo’s i-mode mobile web portal for feature phones and the so-called “docomo market” for smartphones. In other words, Docomo will make sure that Mobage will be in front of a lot eyeballs automatically: i-mode is Japan’s biggest mobile web system and Docomo expects 6 million smartphone subscribers this fiscal.
But that’s not all. In the press release, Docomo says:
A dedicated Mobage application will be preinstalled in selected DOCOMO smartphones to be released beginning in the foreseeable future. DOCOMO users will enjoy special benefits when using Mobage, such as early access to sought-after new content and exclusive privileges for selected content, as well as easy direct billing via DOCOMO’s sp-mode™ service for smartphones.
DOCOMO and DeNA also plan to promote Mobage overseas starting in Europe and Asia through collaboration with mobile operators and game developers. The two companies will complement each other’s expertise in overseas mobile-service platforms and related services that they have developed together with their respective subsidiaries and partners in foreign markets.
This is huge for both companies.
I am little skeptical about the impact the DeNA / Docomo partnership will have outside Japan, but inside the country, DeNA couldn’t have found a more powerful player. Watch the DeNA stock go north today.
