Blue Lava Wireless
I just read this press release over at Mobenta which proves again that the mobile applications industry is starting to heat up, and the name of the game is *volume*:
BLUE LAVA WIRELESS HITS 1 MILLION PAID WIRELESS GAME DOWNLOAD MILESTONE
HONOLULU, HI - February 4, 2004 - Blue Lava Wireless, a leading publisher and developer of mobile entertainment for wireless devices proudly announced they have reached their one millionth paid game download during January 2004, after going live only sixteen months earlier.
Blue Lava Wireless went live with their first game, Tetris(r), in August 2002 for customers of Sprint's PCS Vision(SM) service. The company subsequently released additional game titles including Blue Babel, Blue Blocks and Video Poker.
2003 proved to be a mammoth year of growth for the small Hawaii-based mobile entertainment company. Blue Lava Wireless expanded to cover six more wireless carriers with their games, and introduced new titles in the repertoire: Tetris Cascade, Mine Hunter, Chess Everywhere, Dell Magazines Crossword Puzzle and Tetris Tournament. The number of players downloading Blue Lava Wireless games grew exponentially, and by January 2004 the company had reached their one-millionth game download mark.
Very cool for these guys, but did you see the dateline? These guys are not only working in the cool mobile gaming space and seemingly doing well, they're doing it from Hawaii! I love San Francisco and my current job, but working for a mobile games company on Oahu? Come on! My total dream job. We're talking an hours drive and you're surfing the pipeline on the North Shore or just hanging out on one of the zillion pristine beaches. Where do I apply? ;-)
Anyways, this company was started by the guy who helped commercialize Tetris, Henk Rogers. You can do the math for yourself on their revenues over that time. It's sort of a guessing game on how much money they actually received per game, but if it's more than a dollar, than this small island gaming company just made over a million dollars in revenue in the past 16 months and I'm *sure* is just starting to ramp up now. Even if it's just half of that is still impressive numbers for an independant software shop. Mobile apps: it's all about volume baby, and the volume is there *now*.
I also noticed that one of Blue Lava's main apps is a Crossword. Huh, imagine that...
;-)
-Russ