VentureBeat |
- Ask the accountant: When should I take a loss?
- NFC is way overhyped, says mobile payment leader Sybase
- Nintendo says its 3DS launch was best handheld debut ever
- Salesforce acquires Radian6 for $326M to boost social offerrings
- Cornerstone for Android tablets delivers true multitasking before Honeycomb
- Voice SMS gets a boost as Bubble Motion nabs $10M
- Handbags at dawn: Tesla sues TopGear for libel
- MIT researcher shows how to measure emotions with technology (video)
- Today’s napkin entrepreneuers take to the Web
- Apple’s WWDC tickets sell out in less than a day — is it another jab at game conferences?
- India’s Games2win raises $6M for casual online games
- Is Microsoft marching fast into NFC mobile payments?
- Another day, another deal for Facebook’s Zuckerberg?
- Google launches in-app purchases that will make mobile apps more money
- What’s Ev Williams working on that’s “bigger and better” than Twitter?
| Ask the accountant: When should I take a loss? Posted: 30 Mar 2011 09:00 AM PDT This series is brought to you by TurboTax Home & Business Edition – Guides You to Your Biggest Tax Refund. As always, VentureBeat is adamant about maintaining editorial objectivity. TurboTax had no involvement in the content of this post.
We passed the question on to Mike Scholz, CPA and tax director at Wegner CPAs & Consultants. Here’s his answer:
From now through April 15, VentureBeat will be taking your tax and accounting questions and getting you expert answers. You can send us a question by email, leave one in the comments below, or reach us by Twitter or on Facebook or Quora.
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| NFC is way overhyped, says mobile payment leader Sybase Posted: 30 Mar 2011 08:53 AM PDT
The promise of NFC is seductive: It turns your mobile phone into a mobile wallet. Wave your phone at a store reader and — voila — your mobile payment goes through when your phone communicates wirelessly with it. NFC lets you do away with credit cards, check books and other clumsy payment methods. What's not to like? With the hype we're hearing, you'd think it's a done deal. But some seasoned players in the industry think the technology is hyped, and has yet to show any real value; they argue it will take several years before it gets any traction at all.
Last week, I sat down with Marty Beard (pictured right), who is president of Sybase 365, the unit within Sybase that runs the largest mobile messaging business in the world. His unit delivers more than 1.5 billion messages a day, acting as the SMS service back-end to many of the world's leading carriers and large businesses. As such, he can see where and how messaging is being used, including with mobile payment and transfer activity.
He said he'd come to CTIA hoping to hear what the value add of NFC really is, but still hasn't heard it. On the most basic level, whipping out a credit card to pay for something takes just a few seconds. So taking out a phone, opening an application and then waving in front of a reader, isn't going to save a whole lot of time, if any. And even if carrying just a mobile phone does become more efficient for some people — you only need to carry your phone, and no credit card – there are other mobile payment technologies that work well already. Specifically, SMS is being used by lots of people to make payments — especially outside of the U.S. People are doing things like topping up their phone accounts with credit, or transferring money via texting — where their phones are associated with a carrier plan. NFC really offers nothing unique. You could say he's biased, because Sybase already leads the industry with his text-messaging payments service. And that business is growing like crazy: Beard isn't giving out exact numbers but it more than doubled last year, and is poised for similar growth this year: "Mobile commerce is exploding," he says. Now, it's not like Sybase is sticking its head in the ground. Sybase is now part of the software giant SAP, and the entire company is embracing cloud-based technologies — the kind that are driving mobile applications that are behind NFC. On the other hand, if NFC is adopted, Sybase would no longer own the infrastructure behind sucpayments, so it is a threat. Still, we've talked with enough analysts to believe that mobile payments like NFC will come at some point. If you use a phone to make payment, its just so much easier to do other things, for example have the transaction and receipt details sent to a personal finance management app. That promise, however, will take years to realize. Millions of stores and businesses will have to adopt the readers to accept such payments, and that may mean investments they're not ready to make. Consumers will have to buy smartphones that carry relevant chips — and only one in four people own smartphones right now, not to mention those that carry NFC chips. And there's the dogfights that will breakout with incumbents like the credit card companies, who don't want to change. And even in those countries where NFC has been rolled out –including in Japan — it's not really taking off. Only 10 percent of the Japanese population is using it, according to Mark Donovan, who runs ComScore's mobile practice (who will also be at the Summit). And NFC does make sense in the longer timeline, he says. For one people will find an NFC-enabled apps more secure, at least compared to texting technology. Mobile banking is also exploding in use, he says — and that will translate into comfort with mobile payments. For now brands like Starbucks are taking things in their own hands and rolling out payment options that are linked with loyalty programs. Verizon, we're also told, is going to be rolling out a related platform, and they've be talking about it at the Mobile Summit. It's not that NFC is dead, it's just that mobile payments will unfold in a more unpredictable way than many people think. Companies: comscore, Sybase, Sybase 365 People: Mark Donovan, Marty Beard
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| Nintendo says its 3DS launch was best handheld debut ever Posted: 30 Mar 2011 08:35 AM PDT
The initial launch figures aren’t available. But getting record numbers at the outset is important because it will help Nintendo grow support for the handheld which it hopes will last for years to come. And it’s also impressive considering all of the competition from tablets and smartphones. Nintendo said in a statement, “”U.S. day-one sales numbers for Nintendo 3DS were the highest of any Nintendo hand-held system in our history.” Nintendo said more details about U.S. sales numbers will be made public on April 14, when first-week U.S. sales figures will be tallied by the market researcher NPD Group. Overall, Nintendo’s goal is to stave off rivals like the iPhone and iPad 2 and get as many units in place before Sony comes out with its NGP gaming handheld late this year. Nintendo has projected that it will sell 4 million 3DS units this month across the U.S., European and Japanese markets. Meanwhile, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime told CNN that glasses-free 3D is a big deal but Nintendo isn’t likely to use it for its next home console. Satoru Iwata, chief executive of Nintendo, said that in our interview last year when he noted that the technology Nintendo uses works fine in small screens but not in TV-size screens. That’s because the sweet spot for viewing is narrow on the screens and you would have to be facing the TV head-on to get a good view. That means only one person watching the screen would be able to see images in 3D. Companies: nintendo People: Reggie Fils-Amie, Satoru Iwata
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| Salesforce acquires Radian6 for $326M to boost social offerrings Posted: 30 Mar 2011 08:17 AM PDT
Radian6 was founded on the premise that businesses need to monitor the social web in order to effectively join conversations. Its technology crawls conversations across social websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other online communities, and provides insight and information in real-time. Products at the company include a platform to help businesses connect with individuals and a monitoring feature to help businesses track and evaluate their social media efforts. The service is currently used by more than half of the Fortune 100. In Salesforce's announcement today, the company said that the purchase of Radian6 would bridge the conversations happening on public social networks and Salesforce.com's Chatter. This acquisition appears to be another effort from Salesforce to embrace social software, which it has begin doing through its private corporate social network, Chatter. Earlier this year, Chatter was updated with Facebook and Twitter-like features, including likes, @replies, trending topics and more. Despite the efforts to integrate Chatter with more social features, Salesforce will continue to face competition from enterprise social network Yammer, which has already picked up more than 100,000 companies as customers since it launched, and Jive, which is reportedly aiming to IPO in 2011. Companies: Radian6, salesforce
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| Cornerstone for Android tablets delivers true multitasking before Honeycomb Posted: 30 Mar 2011 07:54 AM PDT
With Cornerstone, Android tablet manufacturers won't need to wait for Android 3.0 "Honeycomb" to deliver an iPad-like tablet experience — it's compatible with the existing Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" release. Perhaps most importantly, Cornerstone exemplifies the sort of customization that's available on Android. Apple's iOS, which doesn't allow for third-party developers to customize its interface, appears much more restrictive in comparison. You can see Cornerstone in action in the video demonstration below. In a nutshell, it offers an interface that lets you juggle multiple mobile apps at the same time — for example, you can browse the web, chat, and check your email at the same time. It opens up the possibilities of large tablet screens, which always seem restricted by operating systems that only focus on one app at a time. Even with Apple's multitasking iOS 4.0 update, the iPad still doesn't juggle multiple apps in a way that naturally fits into my workflow. For tablet makers, Cornerstone offers a unique layer on top of Android that will help their tablets appear different from the competition. And for users, it will mean they'll have access to better multi-tasking capabilities on Android long before release of Android 3.0, which was just recently delayed for smaller developers. Onskreen says that Cornerstone will be easily upgraded to support Honeycomb when it's released. The company plans to release a beta version of Cornerstone in four weeks. Seattle, Washington-based Onskreen has been around for six years, and also offers mobile analytics and an app store. The company says it's profitable and bootstrapped itself to success.
Companies: Apple, Google, Onskreen
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| Voice SMS gets a boost as Bubble Motion nabs $10M Posted: 30 Mar 2011 07:00 AM PDT
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company technology allows users to click, record and send voice-recorded messages to one or several recipients, all without placing an actual call. Dubbed Bubbly, the system enables any mobile phone user (on one of our operator networks) to dial a simple short-code (*7*) and record their status update in their own voice. Immediately, every one of their followers are notified via an SMS that they simply click on to hear the update instantly – from celebrities, community members, friends and family. The company said that unlike like standard text messaging, SMS you can record have the added benefits of adding the emotion, nuance and inflection that are often missing from simple texts. The company was awarded a patent in November for its work creating the mobile messaging system known as "Voice SMS." The application of the patent could have implications for some of Silicon Valley's marquee-name companies and impending deals. Apple acquired voice-based search company Siri in April of 2010, and others like Yahoo and Google have poured money into voice-enabled search options. The patent could also have a direct impact on companies that focus solely on voice-based SMS like Vlingo and Kirusa. The fight over who will bring an easy, one-touch way to communicate via voice-recorded messages as simply as sending a text has been heated, as companies around the world have raced to be the first to patent their own in-house technology. This is Bubble Motion’s second round of funding since pivoting to focus on mobile social media, when it initially raised $6 million in early 2009 from Sequoia Capital. This round was led by Singtel's venture capital fund Innov8, with participation from Infocomm Investments and existing investors Sequoia Capital, Palomar Ventures and NGC. Companies: Bubble Motion, Bubbly, Google, Infocomm Investments, kirusa, ngc, Palomar Ventures, Sequoia Capital, singtel, Siri, Vlingo, Yahoo
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| Handbags at dawn: Tesla sues TopGear for libel Posted: 30 Mar 2011 06:37 AM PDT
Telsa is now sueing the BBC for libel and malicious falsehood over this episode, which you can see below. The company claims that Clarkson falsely claimed that the car ran out of charge after 55 miles and the brakes were not functional. The BBC says that it will be “vigorously defending” the claims. GreentechMedia describes the case as “the best libel suit in Britain since Oscar Wilde and the Marquis of Queensbury went at it.” Although extremely entertaining for the rest of us, I fear that this case may not turn out well for Telsa. For those of you not familiar with TopGear, it features a trio of badly dressed men of a certain age engaged in a series of ever more zany challenges which incidentally involve cars. A typical episode has the presenters racing across the arctic or through New York city without a GPS system. The presenters are annoying, opinionated, funny, love supercars and hate hybrids (they are not called “petrolheads” for nothing). They have been in trouble before for offending women, Mexicans and Robin Reliant owners. Expecting Jeremy Clarkson to give an objective review of an electric car is like expecting Charlie Sheen to spend a quiet night in playing scrabble. It’s easy to understand why Telsa is upset about what they see as false claims by TopGear in an episode which continues to air. However, if you watch the segment in full you can see that Clarkson was, in many ways, surprisingly enthusiastic about the Tesla. On the range claims, Telsa says “The Roadster has been certified under UN ECE R101, the EU regulation for measuring electric vehicle range, at 211 miles. Of course, a car driven aggressively will get reduced mileage as Top Gear found.” Racing a Lotus Elise around a track probably qualifies as aggressive. TopGear is about entertainment, not serious motoring advice. I watch it and I drive a bike. By taking this case, Tesla may end up being seen as earnest and humourless, i.e. exactly what TopGear accuses EV (electrical vehicle) advocates of being, and exactly the image Telsa is trying to change. People: Jeremy Clarkson
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| MIT researcher shows how to measure emotions with technology (video) Posted: 30 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PDT
Researchers have shown they can use technologies to measure your emotional state of mind for market research, educational, and medical purposes. The technology could ultimately become part of a larger set of tracking tools that will help companies tailor products and services more precisely to people they’re targeting. Rosalind Picard, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Affective Computing Research Group, gave a speech at the Web 2.0 Expo show in San Francisco yesterday where she spelled out how it is possible to capture someone’s vital stats in real time to decipher his or her emotional state. Picard and her researchers have figured out a number of ways to measure emotions, including putting palm sensors on volunteer subjects. The data can be put on a graph which can show off their emotional peaks and valleys; the researchers can get an exact match for the peaks and valleys by looking at a video that is synchronized with the graph.
Picard showed video of a girl with a sensor that measures her skin conductivity, which records sweat levels and can be correlated to stress. The video shows that the girl’s stress levels go up when she gets on a swing and then subsides the more she gently rocks on the swing. Sensors can give warnings about babies who are about to cry as well (although you have to make sure that the baby doesn’t eat the sensor).
Picard also showed how market researchers can make use of the technology by gauging the emotional reaction of an audience for a commercial or a movie. Of course, there’s lots of privacy concerns here so the technology has to be used with the consent of the user. A webcam can also show how much somebody smiles while watching something. This link lets you analyze your smile as you watch a commercial in front of a webcam.
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| Today’s napkin entrepreneuers take to the Web Posted: 30 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PDT (Editor's note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This story originally appeared on his blog.) The barriers for starting a company have come down. Today the total available markets for new applications are hundreds of millions if not billion of users, while new classes of investors are popping up all over (angels, superangels, archangels, and even seraphim and cherubim have been spotted.) Entrepreneurship departments are now the cool thing to have in colleges and universities, and classes on how to start a company are being taught over a weekend, a month, six weeks, and via correspondence course. If the opportunity is so large, and the barriers to starting up so low, why haven't the number of scalable startups exploded exponentially? What's holding us back? It might be that it's easier than ever to draw an idea on the back of the napkin, it's still hard to quit your day job. One of the amazing consequences of the low cost of creating web and mobile apps is that you can get a lot of them up and running simultaneously and affordably. I call these app development projects "science experiments." These web science experiments are the logical extension of the Customer Discovery step in the Customer Development process. They're a great way to brainstorm outside the building, getting real customer feedback as you think through your ideas about value proposition/customer/demand creation/revenue model. They're the 21st century version of a product sketch on a back of napkin. But instead of just a piece of paper, you end up with a site that users can visit, use and even pay for. Ten of thousands of people who could never afford to start a company can now start several over their lunch break. And with any glimmer of customer interest they can decide whether they want to:
But it's important to note what these napkin projects/test are not. They are not a company, nor are they are a startup. Running them doesn't make you a founder. And while they are entrepreneurial experiments, until you actually commit to them by choosing one idea, quitting your day job and committing yourself 24/7 it's not clear that the word "founder or entrepreneur" even applies.
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| Apple’s WWDC tickets sell out in less than a day — is it another jab at game conferences? Posted: 30 Mar 2011 01:17 AM PDT
This isn’t the first jab Apple has taken at a video game conference, either — it announced the release of the next iteration of its tablet computer, the iPad 2, during the Game Developers Conference in early March. Apple’s press event took place at around the same time Nintendo took the stage for a keynote address at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Calif. One of Apple’s largest success stories on the iPhone is its massive game library. That includes the likes of casual games like Angry Birds and Popcap’s strategy game Plants vs. Zombies. But the mobile phone also sports some more “hardcore” games like Epic’s Infinity Blade and a mobile version of the parkour extravaganza Mirror’s Edge. Those are the kinds of games that are highlighted at E3, which is typically one of the largest and most extravagant events for triple-A titles in the industry. But the conference has traditionally shied away from games on mobile devices like the iPhone — instead focusing on the major consoles and handheld systems like the 3DS and Sony’s next generation portable device, the NGP. That could be frustrating for Apple, which might take the chance to show its gaming clout at WWDC this year after pulling a substantial number of developers to the conference — and likely away from E3, because there is a lot of money to be made making iPhone apps. Apple might announce that it will delay the release of the next version of the iPhone's software, iOS 5.0, until the fall. Apple typically holds an iOS preview event in early spring — last year it showed off multitasking in iOS 4.0 at the beginning of April. While primarily an event for developers, Apple has also made major announcements at past WWDCs. In addition to iOS and iPhone announcements, the 2011 WWDC will also feature over 100 technical sessions to help developers get the most out of Apple's platforms, as well as Apple's annual Design Awards for iPhone, iPad, and Mac OSX apps. Companies: Apple
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| India’s Games2win raises $6M for casual online games Posted: 30 Mar 2011 12:43 AM PDT
Since being founded in 2007, the Mumbai-based company has built a library of 400 lightweight games that are played by an audience of more than 20 million consumers a month. The funding show that game investors — always searching for the next Zynga or FarmVille — are moving into emerging territories as gaming spreads across the globe.
The company was started by serial entrepreneurs Alok Kejriwal (pictured below) and Mahesh Khambadkone. They’ve got more than 70 employees cranking out games for the company’s portal. And the games have also been licensed by web publishers such as Yahoo.com, Viacom Kids and the Discovery Channel. Kejriwal said the company will likely expand to around 120 employees.
Rivals include Addicting Games, Miniclip, Spil Games and others. Companies: Clearstone Venture Partners, Games2win, Silicon Valley Bank, Spil Games People: Alok Kejriwal, Mahesh Khambadkone
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| Is Microsoft marching fast into NFC mobile payments? Posted: 30 Mar 2011 12:10 AM PDT
Citing two unnamed sources, the publication said that mobile payments technology will be included in new versions of Microsoft’s mobile operating system as part of an effort to be more competitive against Google’s Android software and Apple’s iOS (the software for iPhones etc.). If Microsoft moves fast, that could be a bold move that it needs in order to offer something that its rivals aren’t yet doing. The race to embrace mobile commerce — an industry seeing explosive growth right — is at the center of our VentureBeat Mobile Summit, on April 25-26. Mobile payments, including the mad rush to push NFC, is one of the five themes of the event: We've carefully invited what we think are the top executives in mobile to discuss the biggest challenges of the day which, if solved, can lead to much faster growth in the industry. And at our payments session, Microsoft will be there. But we’ll have everyone else at the table, from Visa's head of mobile products, to the CEO of Dynamics Inc., — the disruptive credit card company that launched last year — and Verizon, which has a related initiative it is unveiling soon. (If you think you should be part of the discussion, you can apply for a ticket.) Microsoft has lots of partners for Windows Phone software, such as HTC, Samsung and Nokia. But it is in danger of being an also-ran in smartphones and tablets because it hasn’t been competitive. Only last fall did Microsoft do a major relaunch of its phone software with the debut of Windows Phone 7. The software will implement near-field communication capability. With NFC, phones with special wireless chips in them can establish short-range contact with wireless readers at checkout counters. Mobile phones could then be used to pay for physical goods at stores with a simple wave of the hand. Making a phone that can do this requires hardware, software, and security infrastructure. On top of that, merchants have to deploy the NFC readers. Gartner predicts huge growth in mobile payments. The market researcher expects mobile payments to rise from $32 billion in 2010 to more than $245 billion in transactions in 2014. Google has made NFC part of its Android devices and introduced the first Android phone with NFC in December. Apple is reportedly working on it as well. IDC estimates that Android will have 39.5 percent of the mobile operating system market this year, Apple will have 15.7 percent, Research in Motion will have 14.9 percent for its BlackBerry phones, and Microsoft will have just 5.5 percent. ABI Research said that NFC phones will double in 2012 from 35 million shipped in 2011.
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| Another day, another deal for Facebook’s Zuckerberg? Posted: 29 Mar 2011 11:00 PM PDT
Or not. A patron of Palo Alto Sol on California Avenue told VentureBeat that Zuckerberg sat at a table in the back of the restaurant with one other man and appeared to be signing papers. At one point, Zuckerberg was overheard saying, "So we'll do it at $5 billion?" A request for comment was sent to Facebook spokespersons. The company has not yet responded to the inquiry. We don’t now what this deal is about. But the funny thing with Facebook, which is valued at $50 billion based on its last funding in January, is that $5 billion isn’t a large amount of money. If Facebook is acquiring another company, the purchase price is well within Facebook’s ability to pay, at least in stock. Thus far Facebook’s acquisitions have been in the tens of millions price range, so this type of transaction would be a significant departure. If Facebook is raising that much money, then that’s a lot. (Facebook last raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs and DST). Does anybody know what Zuckerberg was signing? If you were Mark Zuckerberg, what would you do with $5 billion? If you’ve got a guess, please leave it in the comments. Companies: Facebook People: Mark Zuckerberg
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| Google launches in-app purchases that will make mobile apps more money Posted: 29 Mar 2011 08:51 PM PDT Android app developers can rejoice now that Google has launched a new mobile billing system that will help them make a lot more money.
Android developers had to wait a long time for the capability, but now they will likely launch more apps and games on the Android platform and hope for better returns. One reason is that free-to-play games attract a wider audience than those that require an upfront payment. Half of iOS’s top 25 games are now free-to-play games. Google’s partners for in-app billing include hit makers Glu Mobile, Disney’s Tapulous, ComiXology, and Trendy Entertainment. Google takes 30 percent of all transactions, just as Apple does. Apple implemented in-app billing in the fall of 2009, giving iPhone developers a new business model that stabilized their companies and allowed them to grow much faster in comparison to Android developers. Game maker Rovio, for example, launched its popular Angry Birds game on Android, but it had to use a free ad-based model because in-app purchases weren’t possible. The growing number of Android phone models has encouraged developers to make apps for it nonetheless, but the arrival of in-app billing should make a big difference in how much developers are willing to invest in making apps for the platform.
Companies: comiXology, Disney, Glu Mobile, Google, Tapulous, Trendy Entertainment
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| What’s Ev Williams working on that’s “bigger and better” than Twitter? Posted: 29 Mar 2011 07:06 PM PDT
Williams (pictured) said that he has essentially handed over all control of the company to Costolo, who he says he has no doubt will make Twitter “bigger and better.” The departure will also be freeing him up to work on new ideas — which begs the question, what could be even “bigger and better” than Twitter? He did not outline what that project will be, only that it has now captured the majority of his attention. So what’s next for the one of the “cool kids” of Silicon Valley? Well, Williams said he initially left Blogger, which was acquired by Google, when it seemed like it was “on solid ground and in capable hands.” Now that he feels Twitter is just as healthy, he admitted his mind had “started to wander” after Costolo took over. Williams made it clear, however, that he won’t be a stranger at Twitter anytime soon. Wrote Williams in his post:
Yesterday, Twitter announced that co-founder Jack Dorsey had returned to the company to lead its product efforts, and it basically admitted that Williams was no longer involved on a day-to-day basis. There’s supposedly a lot of tension between the pair, because Williams and the board basically pushed Dorsey out so Williams could take over as CEO, and it seemed like Costolo was bringing back Dorsey at Williams’ expense. The news also comes a week after Internet behemoth AOL announced that it had hired Stone, another founder of Twitter, as a "social impact advisor." Stone is currently creative director at Twitter, where he oversees new product development, vets and proposes fresh ideas for the five-year-old start-up, and just generally functions as"the voice of the company and brand." Companies: aol, Blogger, Google, Huffington Post, Twitter People: Biz Stone, Dick Costolo, Evan Williams
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This week’s tax question:
Every day, new headlines hit about how 
This discussion about mobile payments is one of the five themes we're focusing on at the 
He says "obsession with NFC" is unjustified because it still hasn't shown how it is better than existing technologies. When I talked with him, he'd just participated in a panel on payments at the CTIA conference in Orlando, where a moderator asked about NFC over and over, as though it was the panacea to mobile payments. "Everyone is jostling for position," he said, "but will people actually use this thing?"
Nintendo said that its U.S. launch of the new 3DS gaming handheld — which lets players see images in stereoscopic 3D without special glasses — was the best it ever had.
Tired of Android tablets that all look the same? 
Voice and text messaging provider 
Measuring emotions isn’t as hard as it sounds.
Picard, who is also chief scientist and chairman of 
Picard also showed a girl during a recital day at elementary school. The stress of performing a recital is clearly visible on a graph measuring the girl’s emotions. She relaxes for a while, but her stress level goes up when the girl suffers a bullying experience from another student.
Tickets for Apple’s Worldwide Development Conference (WWDC), its annual conference geared toward developers for its operating systems, 
India is growing fast as a modern entertainment market. That has enabled 
The games are simple cartoon style Flash games with titles such as Baby’s Day Out, Pretty Penny, and Funny Classroom 3.
Investors include Clearstone Venture Partners and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB India). Kejriwal says that Games2win’s titles are “snacky” games that people play when they’ve got spare moments of time. Games2win plans to use the funding to further expand into online games and target the 400 million teens and tweens (ages 8 to 12) on the web or mobile devices. Lately, Games2win has been releasing its Android and iOS (Apple’s mobile operating system for iPhone etc.) at the same time as it debuts is Flash versions on the web.
Rajan Mehra of Clearstone Venture Partners said that Games2win has momentum and opportunity in the Indian market for casual and social games, now hitting its “hyper-growth.” Kejriwal said that there are “oceans of consumers” in emerging markets that are likely to become profitable for game companies over time. Even if those consumers want to play games for free and pirates steal the games to post on their own sites, Games2win has figured out how to monetize them through ads. For instance, the company’s 
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg dined at a Mexican restaurant in Palo Alto this evening in what may have been a $5 billion deal-making session.
Today, Google launched the Android Market’s in-app billing system –similar to what’s been on Apple’s iPhones for more than a year already. The system lets users buy something from within an app instead of having to leave that app to complete the transaction. That’s a big deal because it enables the free-to-play business model, where users can use an app for free and then pay real money for virtual goods in small transactions. The system basically gives developers equal opportunity to make money, whether they’re on Android or Apple’s iOS mobile operating system.
Calling all mobile executives: This April 25-26, VentureBeat is hosting its inaugural 
Ev Williams, the cofounder of microblogging service | You are subscribed to email updates from VentureBeat To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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