I believe that children are the future … of making money on smartphones and tablets.
Tel Aviv’s TabTale is one of the top publishers of educational games for children in the world, and today it is announcing its acquisition of Las Vegas-based Sunstorm Games. Like its new parent company, Sunstorm deals primarily in apps for kids, and it has more than 100 games already on the market. This will fold the Sunstorm’s library of formerly competing games into TabTale, adding around 5 million monthly active Sunstorm players. Mobile gaming is an enormous business worth that could hit $30 billion this year — and children make up a big portion of that audience.
“We followed Sunstorm’s activity for a while and reached the conclusion that acquiring Sunstorm and working alongside its talented team will not only enrich our portfolio but will also expand our worldwide reach,” TabTale chief executive officer Sagi Schliesser said in a statement. “Sunstorm Games has a proven loyal fan base, similar to that of TabTale. We look forward to collaborating with Sunstorm and continuing to develop the best mobile games for our loyal customers.”
Sunstorm is the third acquisition for TabTale this year. Prior to this, the Israeli publisher had purchased the Chinese developer Coco Play and Serbian studio Level Bit. But Sunstorm is the first time it will have a team in North America. That’s important because the company does the majority of its business in the U.S. The publisher says it has 40 million monthly active players who have downloaded its apps more than 600 million times, and the U.S. makes up the bulk of that. Having a studio that already has a built-in audience in this market will enable the publisher to continue growing in the States.