Zynga is looking for a new victim: budget up to $1.8 billion (UPDATE)

The truth is told: “appetite comes with eating“: less than a month after the OMGPOP takeover, Zynga is already in search of another prey. But this time she is ready to spend much more than $180 million.

The company’s entry on the stock exchange last year had a positive effect on the appetites of the social giant. Moreover, she has serious cash: $1.8 billion, some of which, as it became known recently, Zynga plans to spend on expanding its studio portfolio. 

“We like to find cool, experienced teams that share our goals and our worldview,” Mark Pincus, who heads Zynga, said in connection with this news to Bloomberg. Knowing the company’s past, you can’t argue with this: over its five-year history, it has acquired no less than 11 different studios.

And now the main question is: who will become the new victim of the social tycoon? 

Experts from Inside Mobile Apps suggested that Zynga is looking at those companies whose games have a large LTV, or whose services it could integrate with its gaming platform in the long term (hello, Instagram). In addition, they felt that since the acquisition of OMGPOP was aimed at strengthening the mobile direction and cross-promotion, the future purchase should strengthen Zynga’s position where it still feels insecure: namely, the mobile sector, not connected with Facebook and a young gaming platform zynga.com .

And yet who?

Inside Mobile Apps advises Zynga to take a closer look at companies developing games for Android, rather than buying another iOS developer. After all, it is this platform that currently dominates not only in the United States, but also in markets such as Korea and, attention, China. 

So, if Zynga decides to buy a world-famous studio, and besides, it puts its projects, first of all, on Google Play, then this will help the social tycoon expand his own user base far beyond the United States.

An undoubted plus will be if the company is Asian: This will strengthen Zynga’s not yet very, let’s say, solid positions in the markets of South Korea and Japan.

Plus, we must remember that in the casual sector of mobile games, the company is doing well, so its next acquisition may well be a company whose games are aimed at a hardcore audience. 

Based on all these prerequisites, Zynga may be interested in the following mobile companies:

1. Gamevil is a South Korean company whose portfolio includes: ZENONIA, Plants War, DESTINIA, Air Penguin and many others. At the moment, there are as many as two of her projects in the box office top 50 Android games. Gamevil’s market capitalization is estimated at $326 million.

2. DroidHen – For many months now, DroidHen games have been constantly hanging in the tops. One of them is the current box office hit Defender II.

3. Creative Mobile is an Estonian team responsible for the very popular Drag Racing. Given the small size of the studio, Zynga can count on a relatively low price. 

Yes, many more obvious candidates were not included in this list, because, as they again claim on Inside Mobile Apps, information passed that they had already managed not only to receive an offer from Zynga, but also to reject it.