Reliance Targets Us Mobiles With Jump Games

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Reliance targets US mobiles with Jump Games

21 Aug, 2008, 0636 hrs IST, ET

NEW YORK: Reliance ADA Group's media and entertainment division is launching Jump Games USA, a publisher and developer of mobile video games, in its latest effort to expand into the United States.

Reliance Big Entertainment, which has been working to build up a name in Hollywood, said on Wednesday that Jump Games is "aggressively looking" to buy mobile content licenses and brands for distribution to mobile phones worldwide.

The company, which has licenses to create and sell games worldwide using popular brands such as Manchester United Football Club, did not give details of acquisition targets.

Jump Games, which has set up its US headquarters in Chicago, expects "partnerships and alliances with America's biggest firms will be critical" to expand here with "both organic as well as inorganic" growth, Reliance said.

It said Jump Games had appointed Amit Khanduja, a former Sun Microsystems Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co executive, as executive vice president for the Americas. In May Reliance, controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani, signed deals with eight Hollywood production houses run by A-list actors, including George Clooney's Smokehouse Productions, Tom Hanks' Playtone Productions and Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment.

The company is also expected to clinch a deal with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen to set up a new studio that would split Spielberg and Geffen from Paramount Pictures, sources familiar with the deal have told reporter.