GREE Targeting 1Bn Users Worldwide

Tanaka-san, CEO of GREE, interview with Reuters noted the company has 500M - 1Bn users worldwide in coming years: http://bit.ly/ndtu3G

Certainly they would love to get carrier pre-install in other markets as was just announced by KDDI recently [Eds]

Japan mobile gaming firm Gree targets 1 billion users

Japanese mobile social gaming firm Gree will aim for 500 million to a billion users worldwide, rivaling Facebook, the company’s founder and chief executive said on Wednesday. Gree this year paid $104 million to buy fast-growing U.S.-based mobile social gaming platform OpenFeint, which has 90 million users worldwide and is adding 2.8 more per second.

“We are aiming for 500 million to a billion users, though we don’t have a timeframe, or particular countries,” Yoshikazu Tanaka said. Facebook is said to have 700 million, and we are also aiming for that level,” he added.

Some in the industry expressed surprise at the high price Gree paid for OpenFeint, which made a net loss of $6.6 million on sales of $282,000 in fiscal 2010, according to a Gree statement. Tanaka said he was confident he could turn the business profitable, though he did not specify the timing, saying it would depend on how much Gree chose to invest.

Gree itself made 19.6 billion yen ($242 million) in operating profit in the financial year to June last year on sales of 35.2 billion yen, and expects to hike operating profit to 27-30 billion yen in the financial year ending on Thursday.