SkillPod Media, although a relatively new player in the world of mobile apps and, more specifically, mobile game apps, is making headway in this congested market. The first of their apps were launched at the end of June 2011 and are currently published across Apple iTunes, Android Market, Amazon App Store, SlideMe.org, LG World and a host of other app stores across the globe. To date, 11 mobile games have been developed for Android and Apple iOS, all of which have been approved and are for sale across the various app stores.

The first batch of these mobile app store game titles were deployed with 3 different focuses, these being; A – Free games with ad support, B – Trial versions that include ads and have only a few active levels, C – pay for download, with no ads included.

Skillpod Press Release

SkillPod Media, a Convergence Partners’ investee, has put a lot of recent effort into developing games for Apple iTunes and Android Market.

SkillPod’s motto is ‘Play Anywhere, Anytime, Playtime’. In the words of SkillPod CEO, Mark van Diggelen: “The name of the game is convergence. Players don’t want to be restricted as to when they play and what device they play on. We’re concentrating on making sure that players can play their favourite games wherever they are, with whatever they have in their hands.”

This is the latest element in the company’s all-encompassing strategy that has seen it roll out its casual and skill game platforms for entertainment websites and portals, and on social networking sites like Facebook.

Skillpod Press Statement

“If the first month of 2011 is anything to go by, then the rest of the year is going to be an incredible one” according to Mark van Diggelen – CEO of online and mobile casual gaming business, SkillPod Media, in which Convergence Partners has a strategic equity investment. “We’ve just completed a 7 month period of R&D, where we redeveloped our online and Facebook casual games platforms, adding a host of new features targeted at personalisation, customisation and monetisation.” As a result of this development the response from new and existing clients has been incredibly positive, with 20 new projects already confirmed. These include a number of new casual games portal deployments in the Middle East (these sites have been fully customised to cater for the Arabic language and the reading of content from right to left), UK, USA, Vietnam, Europe and South Africa.

He adds that the uptake and response from new and existing clients has been incredibly positive, with 20 new projects already confirmed. These include a number of new casual games portal deployments in the Middle East (these sites have been fully customised to cater for the Arabic language and the reading of content from right to left), UK, USA, Vietnam, Europe and South Africa.

The new platform caters for publishers wishing to quickly and cost effectively deploy a casual games offering either onto their existing portal or as a new standalone solution, this can either be a full white label solution or a full featured Facebook application. The platform allows publishers to customise the “Look and Feel” of the site, import logo’s, add tracking scripts (such as Google Analytics), add banner tags, customise backgrounds, manage the message of the day, change themes, setup tournaments, translate the site and the most popular games.

The added benefit of the platform is that publishers, large or small, can immediately start earning revenues from their user base, these revenues are derived from traditional advertising and from micro payments. The platform is fully integrated into PayPal and Moneybookers, additional payment mechanisms will be added on an ongoing basis. Micropayments are earned when users use their virtual currency credits (Pods) to buy in-game power-ups, customise games, when virtual gifts are bought and sent to friends, when users create contests and enter tournaments, micro payments are also used when users customise or pimp their avatars. Other revenue earning opportunities include: sponsorship of site backgrounds, backgrounds in the avatar platform, pre-roll ads, surveys, sponsorship of merchandise in the avatar and virtual gifts store and finally revenues can be earned from in-game advertising.

SkillPod has developed a number of API’s for their games, these include secure high score API’s, post game screens, power-ups, translation and game customisation API’s. The intention is to make these API’s available to the greater game development community, the developers will need to integrate the API’s and then submit their games for approval, where after they’ll be published across our global network of games portals. The upside being that the game developers share in the revenues earned from the various API’s that make use of the micro payments platform. SkillPod is already working with a number of 3rd party game developers across the globe, interested developers should get into contact with SkillPod to discuss the partnership opportunity.

Content is king and we know full well that we need to create unique titles, to not only add value to our publishing clients games offerings, but stand out in the various mobile app stores, and have thus embarked on the creation of a number of exiting new game titles, these games have been built from the ground up and aren’t clones of existing titles. We’re very excited about these titles and will be publishing them across multiple platforms, including: online, mobile web, PC download and more importantly they’ll be published and formatted for distribution through the Nokia Ovi Store, Android Market and the Apple App Store.

The ongoing growth and success of SkillPod Media has received a lot of attention from local and international investors, as one US based venture fund said, “SkillPod continually pops up on the radar”. This interest has resulted in SkillPod’s management team partaking in discussions with a number of parties that have expressed an interest in investing in the business, some of these discussions are already at an advanced stage. SkillPod’s current shareholders (Mark van Diggelen and Convergence Partners) are looking for a strategic partner that not only has access to financial resources but more importantly would be well positioned to assist with the strategic growth and expansion of the SkillPod games network, across the globe.

Publishers can contact SkillPod to discuss their casual games requirements, we’re able to offer publishers a turnkey solution or an out of the box option, with a self service solution currently in development, this offering will allow publishers to register, download the games solution and immediately access the backend to start setting up and customising their new casual games portal, all in a matter of minutes.

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Skillpod Media, the online and mobile casual gaming business in the Convergence Partners portfolio of investments was featured e-TV’s Tech Report on the 21^st October 2010. The programme highlighted the world leading platform developed by this SA company an the growth of casual gaming globally.

Please check the clip to find the missing info

India’s premier games developer and publisher, Hungama Game Studio (a leading Indian gaming studio), has partnered with Imade Games (a Castletown Corporation and Nextwave Multimedia Pvt Limited partnership). Hungama Game Studio has developed over 400 games in the last four years and teaming with Imade allows them to provide an innovative offering to the players, where each player has the option of personalizing all aspects of their game and further sharing it with friends. The games can also be shared with friends and family via social networking sites. The games will be available from November onwards on the websites of the Hungama networks.

The Imade games can be integrated seamlessly into various game portals through Iframe. This plugs into the game portals API or Web service for identifying the user of the game portals. Castletown Corporation recently announced its partnership with world leading games portal Skillpod Media (Pty) Ltd of South Africa, whereby 300 of its leading games will be converted to Imade format in the next 12 months.

See attached press release

Castletown Corporation (UK) and SkillPod Media (RSA), in which Convergence Partners has a significant minority interest, have agreed a commercial deal aimed at positioning them in a major drive into user generated content (“UGC”) for casual games.  This joint initiative, should result in yielding increased traffic and income from their existing asset bases. This will be achieved by combining SkillPod’s library of world leading games and existing technology platforms with the ‘IMADE’ technology developed for Castletown’s own website ‘ikoncity.com’. SkillPod and Castletown have produced a unique online application that allows users to create and run their own individually created games and contests. The deal also means that other commercial operators can use the software to create branded games for use on their own websites, creating value for their users and avoiding costly once-off production costs.

See attached Press Release

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Convergence investees SkillPod Media and Integrat have launched their joint mobile games portal, Play4Games.co.za, which supports all the most popular smart phone handsets. The site has been branded as Play4Games and forms part of Integrat’s mobile entertainment brand Play4. The platform makes use of the Integrat High Gate mobile payments platform and the SkillPod Media mobile games platform.

Gaming is increasingly moving from the console and PC to the smartphone. This trend is driven by factors including the higher penetration of smartphones, the affordability of these devices, easier access to app stores, increased penetration of Flash on mobile devices and the ever growing installed base of the Opera Mini browser.

In the past smartphones were targeted at business users, but this trend is steadily changing and today it’s become a trend for the youth to be seen with their smartphones.

Research figures show that worldwide mobile game sales will reach- €7 Billion by 2013 (Source: BuddeComm). This will be fuelled by greater penetration of new generation handsets, cheaper data costs and increased connectivity speeds, fuelled by increased network speeds and access to wireless networks. The mobile web is on the increase and in South Africa more users access the web from their mobile phones than from computers.

Web browsers play an important role in this growth, as they are striving to improve the functionality, user experience and speed of the mobile web. Opera’s iPhone browser was downloaded more than 2.6 million times, during April, creating 70% of user growth in the month for Opera’s mobile browser. In June alone more than 26.4% of cellphone browsing has been done through Opera’s browser, according to Web analytics firm StatCounter.

In conclusion it is safe to say that mobile gaming is here to stay, both locally and internationally and it remains an incredibly popular form of entertainment and technology is driving the growth from a multitude of angles and across multiple devices.

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SkillPod Innovation

SkillPod Integrat

SkillPodMobile

The Technology Top 100 (TT100) awards ceremony was held at Vodaworld last night. Convergence Partners’ investee SkillPod media was a finalist in the Excellence in the Management of systems category.
The SkillPod Media team and shareholders are delighted with this award of recognition for the time, effort and investment that have been put into the development of the globally competitive casual gaming platforms and services, which are being used by many of South Africa’s top media businesses, including Media 24, KTV and Independent Newspapers. The platforms and services have been implemented with a number of leading international publishers in as far a field as Netherlands, USA, Poland, Luxembourg, Hungary and Ukraine. The next few months are an exciting time for SkillPod, with further expansion of the online games platforms into Turkey and Vietnam.

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