Soft-World International Corp (智冠科技), the nation’s top game developer by sales, yesterday said it may achieve record revenue this year as the company plans to roll out 20 new smartphone games.
Royalties paid by Chinese partners may also help boost the company’s revenue this year to exceed last year’s NT$11.01 billion (US$363.74 million), Soft-World International chief financial officer Chung Hsing-po (鍾興博) told an investors’ conference.
“Smartphone games will be our priorities this year,” Chung said.
“While the traditional video-gaming market will remain, the growth potential in the mobile-game market is considerable in the next three to five years because of the growing penetration of smartphones,” he added.
Soft-World’s smartphone game sales contributed more than 50 percent of the firm’s total sales last quarter, up from a 10 percent share a year ago, Chung said.
In October last year, the company signed a contract with Japan’s Line Corp to sell game credits for its mobile game apps, which helped boost the company’s sales to NT$1.01 billion in November last year.
As of February, Soft-World’s “MyCard” game credit card had been widely used by more than 400 game developers globally, including Japan’s Line and the US’ online social networking company Facebook Inc, he said.
In February, the company saw sales expand 41.45 percent year-on-year to NT$1.4 billion, and Chung said the rising sales of game credits would allow the company to see monthly sales stay above the NT$1 billion level throughout this year.
Meanwhile, in a bid to grow sales, Soft-World from this year will start licensing its intellectual property (IP), particularly those used to develop mobile-game products, to industry partners, Chung said.
Soft-World is able to collect at least 10 million yuan (US$1.6 million) in royalties from its industry partners per case, Chung said, adding that the company had reached deals with two Chinese rivals for its IP license.
Due to expansion in sales, Soft-World’s net profit is estimated to exceed last year’s NT$369 million, with earnings per share higher than the NT$3.01 last year, he added.
Soft-World shares closed up 6.7 percent at NT$106 in Taipei trading yesterday, while the benchmark TAIEX gained 0.36 percent.
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