Kongzhong
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kongzhong Corporation is a Chinese company that provides value-added services including video games via the Internet and various mobile networks. These include or included mobile web content,[1] such as mobile message boards, WAP websites, and electronic books;[4] ring tones;[5] ringback tones;[6] mobile games;[1] and Internet games.[4]
| Kongzhong | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 空中网 | ||||||
| Literal meaning | Air Networks | ||||||
| |||||||
While the company was making subscription-based mobile games as early as 2005,[6] its mobile games business expanded with the 2012 acquisition of Noumena[4] AKA Nuomina, developer of a "cross-platform mobile game engine" that allows games to be played on Android, iOS, and with HTML5.[7] Some early mobile games were coded in Java.[7]
The company doesn't confine itself to mobile games exclusively. It has a license to operate World of Tanks, other Wargaming properties, and Guild Wars 2 in China.[8] It also operates a handful of self-developed titles.[4] The company derives revenue from some of these massively multiplayer online games, such as World of Tanks, through the sale of virtual goods.[4]
A pioneer mobile value-added services provider, the company's first such products were for WAP. Kongzhong has, as of 2007, a partnership with Opera Software that allows a mobile version of the latter company's Opera browser to be downloaded in China.[9] Kongzhong may have patterned its early mobile business model off of Japanese companies[10] that successfully provided WAP-based value-added services to a domestic audience in the 1990s and early 2000s. Between 2005 and 2007 the company was being described as a provider of 2.5G mobile value-added services.[11]
Founded by serial entrepreneur Nick Yang in 2002 with venture capital funding, he may no longer be able to play an active role.[2]
In 2013 the company participated in an effort to locate a Flying Tigers P-40 thought to have crash landed in a Yunnan province lake in 1942.[12]
A securities class-action lawsuit against Kongzhong Corporation was settled for $3.5 million in 2006.[13] The complaint stemmed from a perception that prior to the issuance of an IPO, the company likely provided a misleading prospectus.[13]
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