RIM acquires Scoreloop to drive social gaming

BlackBerry desperately needs developers flocking to Android and iOS

RIM announced Wednesday that it has acquired social gaming company Scoreloop. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The purchase comes just two days after Apple at WWDC revealed iMessages, a new app for iOS devices that acts much like an iPhone version of BlackBerry Messenger. Besides just being able to message other users on Apple products, and completely for free, iMessages allows for sharing of content, like map, contact data and multimedia.

But it’s not just iMessages that’s a thorn in RIM’s side. It’s the entire changing mobile industry. The latest data we have says that Google’s Android owns 36.4 percent of smartphone subscribers and Apple owns 26.0 percent, both relatively new to the arena compared to RIM. That aging smartphone maker can now only claim 25.7 percent of the market, a 4.7 percent drop from only three months earlier.

It’s going to take a lot more than just one fresh startup to get RIM back on its toes, but it’s definitely a start.

Headquartered in Munich, Germany, Scoreloop is a social gaming company that doesn’t develop its own games. Instead, the startup offers a free SDK to developers to help them add social elements to their games, manage in-app billing and increase distribution. The company also provides related services like the Go Android Program, which ports iOS games to Android for free.

“As part of RIM, we’ll be in the unique position to integrate deeply into BlackBerry platforms to take mobile gaming to the next level together,” said Scoreloop CEO Marc Gumpinger. “We’ll continue our cross-platform approach, but you’ll see that our BlackBerry approach will be unparalleled.”

Scoreloop currently supports iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7 and Samsung’s bada.

From the looks of it, Scoreloop’s job at RIM will be to drive developer interest in creating games and other applications for the BlackBerry, an interest that has waned as Android, iPhones and iPads rose to prominence. Ask any developer and you’ll find that they most often create apps first for Android and/or iOS, then Windows Phone 7, and then RIM after that.

Not a pretty picture. Let’s see if RIM can save the sinking ship.