Electronic Arts (EA)’s Casual Entertainment Label division EA Mobile announced the availability of its popular games on smartphones, including BlackBerry devices and Symbian- and Windows Mobile-based phones, which it demonstrated at CTIA (News - Alert) Wireless 2008. It also has said it plans to develop similar applications for Apple’s iPhone.

 

Electronic Arts is a California-based interactive entertainment software company, which develops, publishes, and distributes interactive software globally for video game systems, personal computers, cellular handsets, and the Internet. Some of its brand names are EA SPORTS, EA, EA SPORTS BIG and POGO.

 

“With smartphones becoming everyday devices, we are excited to offer the fun, and high quality of EA Mobile games to a growing and important worldwide market,” said Travis Boatman, Vice President of Worldwide Studios for EA Mobile. “Offering top titles for the most popular smartphones, and our recent announcement that we will develop for the iPhone (News - Alert), reflect our focus and commitment to emerging platforms and markets.”

 

“More people are consuming mobile games than ever before,” said Seamus McAteer, Senior Analyst for M:Metrics. “Last month, 7.5 million people downloaded and played a game on their phone, outnumbering other mobile activities, like listening to music and participating in social networks. Smartphone users, in particular, are avid consumers of games, with 7.3 percent downloading a game in the month — more than double the market average.”

 

EA Mobile has offered many hit titles for the open Symbian (News - Alert) operating system, many of which are already available and popular in European markets.

 

“Mobile convergence has arrived and EA Mobile is taking it by storm by bringing its top-selling branded games to Symbian OS,” said Jerry Panagrossi, Vice President and General Manager of North American Operations, Symbian. “With shipments of Symbian smartphones reaching over 200 million to date and consistent year-over-year growth, the commercial opportunity for providing compelling content is clear. We look forward to collaborating further with EA Mobile on bringing many more leading game titles to Symbian smartphones around the globe.”

 

EA Mobile has worked closely with BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (News - Alert) (RIM) in order to make many of its hit titles available for BlackBerry smartphones as well. For instance, Tetris, Bejeweled, SCRABBLE, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07, SimCity Societies, and MONOPOLY HERE & NOW, are currently available to BlackBerry (News - Alert) users.

 

EA Mobile says it plans to flood the market with a wide range of games for smartphones to take advantage of consumer demand.