Thursday, June 21, 2012

(BN) Zynga Hiring Engineers in China as Sina Deal Boosts Mobile Users

Zynga Hiring Engineers in China as Sina Deal Boosts Mobile Users

June 21 (Bloomberg) -- Zynga Inc., a San Francisco-based maker of social games, is hiring more engineers in China as a partnership with the nation's biggest microblogging service operator allows it to gain smartphone users.

"Mobile is fast growing globally for us," Andy Tian, general manager at Zynga China, said in a phone interview yesterday. Zynga has more than 100 employees in Beijing, he said, declining to disclose how many the company plans to add.

Zynga has been adding games for use on smartphones and tablets as users shift away from playing on personal computers. The gamemaker last week introduced its "Draw Something" mobile game for Sina Corp.'s Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging service in China with more than 300 million registered users.

More users now access Sina's Weibo service on mobile devices than on PCs, Charles Chao, chief executive officer at the Shanghai-based company, said in February.

Apple Inc. last week said it will offer increased access to Chinese Internet services including Sina Weibo in the next upgrade of the software that runs its iPhone smartphone and iPad tablet.

Zynga fell 1.3 percent to $5.89 in New York trading yesterday, taking its loss for the year to 37 percent.

Daily active use for Zynga social games fell 8.2 percent in May, Doug Creutz, an analyst at Cowen & Co. in San Francisco, said in a June 12 report.

The U.S. company gets most of its revenue from games played by users of Facebook Inc.'s social network, which is restricted in China.


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