Now mig33, open to Indian developer community

MUMBAI, INDIA: After launching its developer program globally last month, mig33, the largest mobile-first community in Asia, announced the availability of developer program in India.

Started in 2005, mig33 is a virtual world built for mobile phones accessed via GRPS connection or mobile Internet, where users can create avatars, communicate with other users in-real time, buy and present virtual gifts to others. It has a number of chat rooms and community groups for users to interact and make friends.

Also read: mig33 GREE offers platform for social game developers

According to Chris Chandler, mig33 vice president — Business Development, the developer program will allow third-party developers to build or develop games and apps for mig33.

“This will allow users to play games with their friends in the virtual world of mig33. It’s the same kind of model used by Zynga on Facebook. The developer program will allow Indian developers to reach out to global audience through their games and apps,” Chandler said.

For the developer program, mig33 has joined hands with Japanese partner GREE that will allow mig33 and GREE platform to have a common API for smartphone. This will create a set of standards for developing games, applications and designs and more so it will make easier for programmers or developers to write codes and share them.

“At first the program will target social games and apps for mig33 network,” Chandler informed. In terms of monetization and business scope, mig33 has a virtual economy based on credit purchased online.

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Over 40 millions virtual gifts were sold on mig33 last year, enticing developers, handset makers, content providers and merchants to develop business channels in the virtual world.

Beside mig33 and GREE, China’s Tencent has partnership with GREE, which is a big encouragement for developers. The trio of mig33, GREE and Tencent has in total audience of over 800 million waiting to be explore by developers.

mig33 has about 50 million registered users, and among them a very large user base comes from Indonesia, followed by India and other Asian communities living in Asia, Middle East and South Africa.

Currently, mig33 has signed 12 corporate developers globally, which also includes Mumbai-based Nazara Technologies. At present, mig33 is offering four games on its users.

“There are lots of small group of developers based in Asia, which are working for large development companies and therefore mig33’s developer program will help to provide a platform to build games and apps beyond Facebook,” Chandler pointed out.

According Chandler, mig33 is largely focusing on emerging markets, where JAVA-based mobile phones and applications are highly used.

“In these emerging markets, people use low-cost handsets with GPRS connection to access Internet but they have very limited entertainment content available to them, as most companies target people with high-end smartphones and forget other users,” he observed.

Interestingly, for Chandler, India’s 3G revolution is not of much concern as he pointed out that mig33’s application is designed for EDGE platform that allows people to access mobile Internet in tier 2 or 3 cities and towns. However, he stressed that the cost of Internet access on mobiles should be less so that more and more people can use it.

Moreover, mig33 applications have been pre-loaded with many Indian mobile brands such as ZEN, Lemon, Spice and others to help users with easy access.