Jamdat Mobile Inc.’s acquisition of the “Tetris” license last week, coming on top of a March license signed with Major League Baseball, has helped solidify the Los Angeles-based video game developer’s position in the U.S. cell phone game market.

Jamdat shares jumped more than $2 after it announced the Tetris deal and upped its first-quarter revenue estimate to $15 million from $14.1 million. Jamdat said the Tetris puzzle game where players arrange falling electronic blocks would add 10 cents a share to its earnings this year.

While the market for mobile games video games that are played on cell phones is much smaller in the U.S. than in Asia or Europe, it is finally beginning to show signs of growth. Companies are attracting funding, and Jamdat, which went public last year in a $61 million initial offering, has so far been the biggest player in the space.

Jamdat, which declined comment last week, projects 2005 revenues of between $60 million and $62 million, up from $36.5 million last year and $13.3 million in 2003.

That’s a sizable chunk of the growing U.S. market for video cell phone games, which climbed to $345 million in 2004 from $91 million in 2003, according to International Data Corp. IDC projects that the market will expand to $600 million this year, as wireless carriers roll out more ancillary services for their cell phone subscribers.

“Jamdat has the dominant position in North America, and they’re trying to leverage that,” said Kevin Dede, wireless analyst with San Francisco-based Merriman Curhan Ford & Co. “But the market is still very new. I think as it develops, it will attract more people.”Worldwide, video cell phone games are expected to generate $4 billion in revenues this year, according to telecom consulting firm Adventis. Asia and European markets developed faster because standards among various phones are more uniform.

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The full version of this story

is available in the April 25 edition of the Los Angeles Business Journal.