What: After plummeting earlier in the week as its new Katy Perry Pop game suffered a lackluster start, shares of Glu Mobile Inc. (GLUU) were up 11.2% as of 3:00 p.m. EST Wednesday.
So what: With last Thursday's launch of Katy Perry Pop, Glu Mobile hoped to rival the runaway success of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. The Kardashian game, for its part, quickly rose after its own debut last year to be the No. 1 most-downloaded free iOS app, then enjoyed sustained momentum even into the early part of 2015.
Unfortunately Katy Perry Pop is nowhere to be found in the top free apps on Apple's app store as of this writing, and seems to have lost momentum even from its status as the 54th most downloaded free iOS app as of Monday afternoon.
As a result, Glu Mobile stock had already fallen more than 30% between Monday's open and Tuesday's close. So Wednesday's comparatively small bounce offers little consolation for investors who've held shares of the freemium game specialist over the past few days.
Now what: This doesn't bode well for Glu Mobile's future, especially considering the company counted on continuing its streak with several other titles featuring celebrities including Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj, Kylie Jenner, and Jason Statham.
That's not to say Glu Mobile can't make up ground riding the success of other popular franchises like Cooking Dash and Deer Hunter. But if its celeb-centric games can't help propel Glu Mobile back to sustained, profitable growth, I fear Glu Mobile stock could fall much further from here.
