It appears that there is an air of acquisition, especially in the social media arena. Facebook has been up with acquiring patents from Friendster, Google is looking ahead to get deals with Zynga with plans to launch its own Facebook competitor, whereas Zynga is focused on dominating the social game arena. Today, Pincus’ Zynga announced the acquisition of Unoh, a Tokyo-based start-up.
There has been no confirmation or figures on the financial aspects of the deal. Unoh is one of the leaders in the social gaming sector in Japan, which is enough to justify the acquisition. Unoh will become a gateway for Zynga to lay the foundation for the gaming giant’s mobile product initiatives in Japan. This initiative will come as
a joint venture between the SoftBank Group and Zynga itself, ensuring a smooth entry for Zynga into the social gaming market in the region.
Going a little back on the Zynga-SoftBank relationship, the Japanese tech firm invested a hefty $150 million in Zynga, which explains where Zynga got the rumored $11.6 million to finalize this deal.
Before ending this post, I would like to run down a couple of reasons why Zynga might benefit from this:
- Unoh develops games for both mobiles and computers
- It enjoys a healthy reputation in the local market, the same which Zynga can leverage to enter a major Asian market
Just for the sake of mentioning it, Unoh’s Machitsuku, a free game following the typical virtual item based business model, currently has over 3 million users. This is roughly 15% of the 20 million users registered on Japan’s largest social network, Mixi. Again, this would help Zynga develop games that have a higher appeal amongst the locals in the region, giving Zynga an unmatchable position in the social gaming sector just like Facebook enjoys in social networking and Google in the search market. Surprisingly enough, both Facebook and Google are connected to Zynga in one way or the other.
Jean-Baptiste Su is the technology columnist for L’Expansion, the leading business publication in France. He’s also the co-founder and editor of TechPulse 360, a blog at the crossroads of business and technology, exploring the innovation and companies defining the high-tech and clean-tech industries.
Jean-Baptiste started his journalistic career 18 years ago at IDG in France, first as reporter at InfoPC (PC World) and then senior editor at Le Monde Informatique (ComputerWorld). He later joined Decision Informatique, part of Groupe Tests (01 Informatique, 01net.com…) as senior editor, before heading to France’s financial daily newspaper La Tribune as its local Silicon Valley correspondent.
