Video: DeNA CEO Tomoko Namba’s Interview at LeWeb’10

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Tomoko Namba, the CEO of Japanese mobile social gaming giant DeNA (and one of my personal heroes), gave a pretty interesting interview at web industry conference LeWeb’10 earlier this month. LeWeb organizer Loic LeMeur asked her for a full 20 minutes about her company’s history, present and future plans
Namba, speaking in excellent English, doesn’t reveal any secrets, but especially for those of you unfamiliar with Japan’s huge mobile social gaming sector (the biggest in the world), the interview should be relevant. She mainly speaks about Mobage, DeNA’s mobile social gaming platform (which she repeatedly calls a “social network” by the way).
What’s particularly interesting is her mentioning that

  • her 99% domestic and mobile company boasts a US$4 billion market cap at the Tokyo Stock Exchange
  • there is no “Zynga for smartphones” yet
  • Mobage makes an insane US$1.2 billion revenue with 22 million members
  • DeNA, unlike Zynga, sees itself as an open platform provider (DeNA doubles as a provider of games on its own platform, so Mobage is more like Facebook and Zynga rolled into one)
  • her company will continue to globalize, as Japan’s mobile industry is rapidly moving towards smartphones

Here’s the interview:

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