Japan's DeNA Buys Mobile Game Firm Ngmoco - PC Magazine

Japan's DeNA mobile games company said Tuesday that it will acquire American mobile gaming company ngmoco, and add it to its stable of gaming platforms.

Terms of the deal were not announced by ngmoco.

DeNA will pay $300 million in its shares, stock options, and cash in November to buy ngmoco and will pay up to an additional $100 million if the company meets performance milestones. Part of the deal is dependent on ngmoco's earnings for 2011, Reuters reported.

"ngmoco will lead DeNA's efforts in the Western world, including launching a new western smartphone version of the incredibly successful Social Games Network, Mobage (we say "Mo-ba-gae") that we're building together with DeNA," co-founders Neil Young, Bob Stevenson, Alan Yu and Joe Keene wrote in a blog post.

Ngmoco designs games like GodFinger and WeFarm for the iPhone and iPod touch. The company said it plans to add them to the Mobage network of games, which are all tied together via a connected service.

Ngmoco said its are played more than 50 million minutes a day and have been downloaded more than 60 million times on Apple's iOS devices. The company's Plus+ social network has over 13.5 million registered users, with more than 50 million friend connections and has been installed more than 86 million times, it said.

Ngmoco also said that it continues to plan to expand its service beyond iOS devices into the Android OS, with the first games being delivered in the fourth quarter.

"We've also got exciting news for developers & our plus+ partners," the company added. "We're going to be opening up our platforms and frameworks, allowing them to access both the technologies and traffic that power ngmoco & DeNA products globally. By integrating the native libraries and technologies that power our leading ngmoco family of games & our plus+ network with the Mobage SDK, we'll create the Open Mobage Smartphone SDK. Developers who target this platform will gain access to the APIs, Libraries & Services that power the leading smartphone games, effortlessly bring their applications to both iOS & Android and get immediate access to a community of tens of millions of users both here in the West and Japan."

Developers can sign up for the beta at the Web site.

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Indian Firms in Talks to Sell iPhone - Wall Street Journal

MUMBAI—Two Indian wireless operators are in talks with Apple Inc. to offer a version of the iPhone based on code division multiple access, or CDMA, technology, people familiar with the matter said.

Apple is in talks with Reliance Communications Ltd. and Tata Teleservices Ltd., whose networks run on CDMA technology. The discussions come amid news that Apple is making a CDMA version of its iPhone that Verizon Wireless will sell early next year in the U.S.

"Tata has been in talks with them [Apple] for four to five months now," one of the people familiar with the negotiations said. It is unclear though when any launch may take place, these people said.

Anand Baskaran, an Apple spokesman for India, declined to comment.

Separately, Apple is adding two more iPhone carriers in Germany. Telefonica SA's O2 and Vodafone Group PLC both said Tuesday they will sell the iPhone 4 within the next weeks in Europe's largest economy, ending the exclusivity of Deutsche Telekom AG ahead of the Christmas holiday season.

In India, Apple's iPhone is currently available through operators Bharti AirTel Ltd. and Vodafone Essar Ltd., a unit of Vodafone, which offer services under the global system for mobile communications, or GSM, technology. Vodafone is also joint owner of Verizon Wireless with Verizon Communications Inc.

Launching a CDMA phone will give Apple access to more customers in the world's fastest-growing telecom market, which is adding around 18 million users a month. India currently has about 670 million wireless users, of which roughly 20% use CDMA phones. GSM phones make up most of the market.

For the two local operators, offering a CDMA iPhone would help them battle shrinking revenues and margins due to intense competition. Currently, the cheapest iPhone in India costs more than $670 and is considered expensive for a country where 42% of the population earns less than $1.25 a day.

Still, analysts say Apple may find it tough to generate significant revenue from a CDMA-based iPhone in India given that it is not as widely used as a GSM phone, and because there is stiff competition for smartphones from companies including Nokia Corp., Motorola Inc., HTC Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. and Research In Motion Ltd.

Moreover, Google Inc. is pushing to its presence in India through little-known Indian handset makers that are poised to launch low-cost devices that include its Android operating system in coming months.

"While the possibility of a CDMA iPhone through Reliance Communications or Tata would help Apple, it is unlikely to generate significant volumes in India," said Daryl Chiam, a senior analyst at research firm Canalys.

Apple accounted for less than 1% of India's smartphone market share in the first half of 2010, said Mr. Chiam, adding that in contrast, Nokia shipped 1.8 million smartphones in India and accounted for 71% of the market during that time.

—Archibald Preuschat and Kenan Machado
contributed to this article.

Write to Romit Guha at romit.guha@dowjones.com and R. Jai Krishna at krishna.jai@dowjones.com

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NYPD: C-4 in NYC cemetery first found last fall - The Associated Press

NYPD: C-4 in NYC cemetery first found last fallBy COLLEEN LONG (AP) – 27 minutes ago

NEW YORK — Police say an employee doing gardening work dug up a garbage bag containing military-grade explosives at a historic Manhattan cemetery last summer but left it at the site. It remained there until a volunteer told authorities about it on Monday.

The C-4 plastic explosive is more powerful than TNT. It requires a detonator, or cap, to explode and police said no caps were found at the scene.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the worker dug up the bag at New York City Marble Cemetery last year but left it sitting near a fence.

A volunteer cleaning up over the weekend found it, and initially left it there before informing police Monday morning.

Kelly says the material is the same as what was used in the 2005 London transit bombings.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

NEW YORK (AP) — A caretaker doing gardening work at a historic cemetery dug up a plastic garbage bag containing military-grade explosives last fall and left it at the site, where it remained until a volunteer told authorities about it Monday, setting off a big police response.

The employee found the C-4 last year after digging down about a foot into the ground at New York City Marble Cemetery on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. It contained eight sticks of the explosive, but Kelly said they couldn't have gone off because there were nothing to detonate it.

It was unclear how long the bag had been at the cemetery, but "we believe it's been there for a significant period of time," Kelly said. He said it appeared to be military-grade explosive similar to the material used in the 2005 London transit bombings, but that there were no suspicions of terrorism in connection to the discovery.

The caretaker left the bag on the property, by a fence in the back. A volunteer came across it over the weekend, and initially also left it there before calling police on Monday. Authorities closed down nearby streets as they investigated.

C-4 is a plastic explosive that is more powerful than TNT. It's commonly used by the military, because it is easy to shape and relatively hard to set off by accident. C-4's main ingredient is RDX, which is also used in fireworks.

It is relatively insensitive to impact, friction or fire, although large quantities can explode if burned. Even shooting it with a rifle won't trigger the reaction. Only a detonator or blasting cap will do the job properly. Less than a pound of C-4 could potentially kill several people, and several blocks of C-4, weighing about 1.25 pounds each, could potentially demolish a truck.

Kelly said the material from the cemetery was being taken to the police range where explosives are tested. Authorities also were digging around in the cemetery to see if any more material was found.

A call to the cemetery seeking comment was not immediately returned.

Police were also looking into two messages that were found in the area to see if there was any connection. One, written in chalk on the sidewalk near the cemetery, said, "I really hope one of you finds this." The other, a note placed on a police car at the precinct near the site, made a reference to Jesus Christ being kept out of the neighborhood, and was signed by someone identified as "Jesus Christ."

(This version CORRECTS that explosivs were found last summer, not last fall.)

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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