Analysis: What ratios tell us about the relative performance of EA-Gameloft, Gamevil-Com2uS and DeNA-GREE
The company earning season is fascinating for people who enjoy playing around with numbers.
Still, it's easy to get lost amongst all those million and billions of dollars, euros, yen and won.
One way to spot trends can be to strip out absolute numbers and just look at rate of growth; something we considered last week.
Another useful trick is to match rival companies that are operating in the same business sector and directly compare their performance over time.
Head-to-head
When it comes to mobile games, there are three obvious matches: EA Mobile and Gameloft; Com2uS and Gamevil; and DeNA and GREE.
EA Mobile and Gameloft are the two largest western mobile publishers; and are similar in size, as well as in business focus i.e. paid, premium branded mobile games across all platforms.
Hence, if we create a ratio of the companies' quarterly sales [the green line], we can gain an idea of their relative performance over the past two and a half years (10 quarters).
Gameloft has smaller sales than EA Mobile throughout (i.e. the ratio is always less than 1), although it almost reached parity in the three months July-September 2010. Since then though, EA has bought iOS publisher Chillingo, which has resulted in it pulling away from Gameloft.
It seems likely as the sales of more recent acquisitions such as PopCap and Firemint are added to its total, this will see the ratio drop down further (i.e. EA sales will grow compared to Gameloft).
PopCap や Firemint のようなその後買収された企業の売り上げが合計に加算されると、割合はさらに低下していくようだ（すなわち EA の売り上げが Gameloft のものと比べて増加するだろうということ）。
Heart and Seoul
Korean mobile publishers Com2uS and Gamevil [purple line] offer up a similar situation.
Both built their business on the back of domestic feature phone sales, and have since been branching out in the global smartphone market.
Looking back five quarters, they were evenly matched for half a year, before Com2uS, which is the larger company in terms of headcount, pulled away for the next two quarters, mainly because of cyclical issues in Gamevil's release schedule.
韓国のモバイルゲーム開発会社である Com2us と Gamevil (purple line) は似たような状況にある。
両方ともが携帯電話が国内向けにしか販売されていないことを背景に事業を確立し、その後世界的なスマートフォン市場に進出してきている。
過去5四半期を振り返ってみると、半年ほど両社は互角の戦いをしていたが、続く2四半期でCom2us がGamevil を引き離した（社員数は Com2us の方が多い）。こういう結果となったのはGamevil のリリーススケジュールに致命的な問題があったためだ。
However this masked the fact that Com2uS' sales peaked in 2009 and were now falling, while Gamevil's were growing fast, something that's now become clear as it's leaped ahead of its rival.
Value of being open
Japanese social mobile platform holders DeNA (Mobage) and GREE [yellow line] are our third comparison.
Again, their business models are very similar - social mobile portals that are mainly feature phone-based, but being migrated to smartphones. Both companies are also aggressively expanding overseas, with DeNA buying ngmoco and GREE OpenFeint.
解放することの価値
日本のソーシャルモバイルプラットフォームを持つDeNA（モバゲー）とGREEが３つ目の比較だ（黄色い線）。
この2社のビジネスモデルも、とても似ている。ソーシャルモバイルポータルで、主にフィーチャーフォンを基盤としているがスマートフォンに移行してきている。両社ともに海外進出に積極的で、DeNAはngmocoをGREEはOpenFeintを買収している。
What's interesting is that two years (8 quarters) ago, DeNA was larger but not significantly so (ratio of 0.8 so a quarter larger). However, as it opened up Mobage so thirdparty developers could launch their games on it, its revenues grew dramatically.
This happened so quickly, a year ago, it had more than double the sales of its rival.
Of course, as GREE has made a similar move, opening up the GREE platform to thirdparties, the line has started to curve upwards, although DeNA's sales remain two thirds as large as GREE's.
それは１年前にあまりに急に起こり、DeNAはGREEの2倍以上の収益を上げた。
もちろん、GREEも同様の動きをし、同社のプラットフォームを第3者に解放した。黄色の線は上向きの曲線を描き始めてはいるが、GREEの売上げはDeNAの3分の2ほどに留まっている。
しかし、第三者の開発者が彼らのゲームをスタートすることができるように、Mobageとなった時に、収益は劇的に増加しました。
これはとても急に起こったので、1年前、それはそのライバルの販売の2倍より多くを持っていました。
もちろん、GREEが、第三者にGREEプラットフォームを広げて同様な動きをした時に、DeNAの販売はGREEのと同じくらい大きく3分の2であり続けるけれども、ラインは、上方で曲がり始めました。
すいません、複数個所の訂正があります。
①訳文で「(purple line)」としているところは「（紫の線）」としてください。
②訳文で「携帯電話が国内向けにしか販売されていないこと」としているところは、「フィーチャーフォンの国内向け販売」としてください。恥ずかしながら、この分野に不案内でフィーチャーフォンなるものを知りませんでした。