UPDATED 13:09 EST / FEBRUARY 02 2011

Zynga Turns to Android 3.0 for Social Mobile Gaming Boom

Words With Friends, the popular multiplayer word game for the iPhone and iPad, offered by Zynga, will be available on Android phones and tablets later this month, making it the latest Zynga title to make its way to Android devices.  The game currently has over 10 million players and Zynga expects the numbers to increase.

‘Zynga is dedicated to making its games available anytime and on any device regardless of platform,’ said David Ko, Senior Vice President of Mobile for Zynga. “Bringing Words With Friends to Android means our players will have the ability to play and engage with even more of their friends and family wherever they are and whenever they want.”

The Android platform will enable Zynga players to interact with more family members, friends and random players using iOS devices. Zynga also allows players to play up to 20 games at a time, features push notifications and chat capabilities within the game. Initially, Zynga will launch the Android version of the game for free, and later offer an ad-free premium version. Until now, Zynga was reluctant to move onto the Android platform, as it was ‘difficult to monetize,’ but given Google’s latest improvement with Honeycomb 3.0, Zynga’s had a change of heart.

Social gaming is making some pretty pennies for publishers and distributors at the moment, and Zynga announced its latst acquisition last week, further expanding its hold on the growing industry.  The lucky developer to join the Zynga family is social mobile game house Area/Code, producer of Drop7 and CSI Crime City.

Today also brought news of DeNa’s social gaming platform, Mobage-town, amassing 22 million users in Japan and reaching revenues of $359 million, up 153% from the same quarter in 2009. Still in Japan, Gree, the mobile gaming platform operator agreed to develop a mobile social gaming platform for Tencent Holdings, enabling the former to deliver its games to the 120 million Chinese mobile game users it will target.


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