San Francisco based social gaming firm Zynga has snapped up Canadian app developer Five Mobile with plans to extend its reach beyond the confines of Facebook.
Five Mobile’s team will be integrated into Zynga’s new Toronto office, which doubles as a development center.
With tablets becoming an ever growing phenomenon and smartphones showing no signs of decline, Zynga has been making maximum efforts to invest in mobile gaming companies, to reduce its reliance on Facebook, where it currently makes the majority of its cash selling virtual goods in games like Farmville.
Just last week the firm filed for an IPO valued at a whopping $1 billion, despite the fact Zynga freely admitted it had “limited experience developing games for mobile platforms.”
Having said that, the company went on to say it was planning to devote “substantial resources to the development of our mobile games.”
The statement is certainly not an understatement, with Zynga having already acquired 14 previous companies over the last 13 months. Though Zynga will not disclose how much it paid for Five mobile, one can only hope – in Farmville terms – that the firm turns out to be a veritable cash cow.
