Spice Labs, the mobile applications venture from the Spice Group recently announced that its portfolio of mobile applications has reached 10 million downloads on the Blackberry platform. Spice Labs CEO Dr. Abhinav Mathur told MediaNama that the company has also reached 7 million downloads on the Nokia Ovi store; their applications are both paid and free, but (as expected) free applications account for around 90% of the downloads. Hangman remains the top application, but a few are catching up quickly, including BattlesUnlimited (Battleship), Memory is starting to kick in. Jigsaw and Snake are doing well. It's the simple mass market games that are doing well. Extracts from our conversation: MediaNama: You're creating apps for popular, well known games, but what about creating original gameplay? Dr. Mathur: We're trying to give a better experience for the same game, ensuring that they're available at multiple places, and we have a deeper engagement with the consumer, with daily updates, and word-packs. We are also looking at opportunities for creating IP. We are starting to discuss that internally, and creating a game framework for multiplayer gaming. The second thing that we're doing is looking at whether we can become a catchnet for other game prodivers, and we can provide their games to our platform. MediaNama: But application stores are geared towards supporting individual developers. Why would they work with you? Dr. Mathur: Dr. Mathur: if focus is not on monetization, then they would go with independent approach. But more focused teams like ours can provide…
