VentureBeat

Electronic Arts is expanding its grip on the mobile gaming market with its acquisition today of Hands-On Mobile Korea for an undisclosed price.

The deal gives EA a strong presence in the fast-growing South Korean mobile games market, adding to the strong share EA Mobile already has in the U.S. and Europe.

Hands-On Mobile Korea’s hot game is Heroes Lore. EA did not buy the rest of San Francisco-based Hands-On Mobile (formerly known as Mforma), the owner of Hands-On Mobile Korea.

Hands-On has raised more than $100 million in venture backing since its founding in 2001. Its investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, General Catalyst Partners, eFund and Institutional Venture Partners.

EA Mobile revenues were $155 million for the year ended March 31, 2008, about 4 percent of EA’s overall revenues. In the first calendar quarter of 2008, EA said its mobile revenues were 18 percent higher than its nearest competitor.

The deal will give EA Mobile a stronger international footprint and put pressure on rivals such as Digital Chocolate, Glu Mobile, and GameLoft.

Mobile operators can no longer avoid the free voice calling that comes with voice-on-the-Internet (VOIP) protocol. They might as well embrace it. And the start-up iSkoot says it has a version of mobile VOIP service that could even make wireless carriers some money.

Mark Jacobstein, CEO of iSkoot, told the audience at the eComm conference last week that mobile VOIP is here to stay. That topic will continue to be in the news this week at the Voice on the Net (VON) Spring VON.x 2008 show at the San Jose Convention Center this week.

“Operator-friendly VOIP is no longer an oxymoron, ” said Jacobstein.

When Apple launched the iPhone, AT&T certainly didn’t want anyone to make free phone calls over the Wi-Fi high-speed wireless Internet connection on the iPhone. VOIP would simply allow consumers to bypass its fee-based wireless calling network. It just results in lost minutes for the carrier, and the calls clog the thin data channels of the carriers, resulting in poor voice quality for the calls, Jacobstein said.

But iSkoot’s VOIP service with wireless calling “is peanut butter and chocolate,” he said. Basically, you load the iSkoot software onto any regular cell phone with a regular calling plan and a data service subscription.  It connects to ebay’s Skype calling service, the leading  VOIP service with  276 million  registered users. Read the rest of this entry »