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Mobile social gaming giant The9 entered into a 100 million dollar partnership with a number of venture capital funds in an effort to break into the mobile casino software development industry.

A newly formed Chinese venture capital fund, Fund9, announced plans to invest upward of $100 million into The9 Limited (NASDAQ:NCTY) to infuse its mobile software development department. The company plans to use the investment to branch out into Android mobile gambling software as well as Android casino platforms. Apart from social network games, which are The9’s core business, the company plans to develop mobile casino platforms as well. The9 utilized a cross-platform approach before, issuing games for iPhone and iPad and then adding Android games to its palette.

This approach helped social network gaming to grow to over 68 million players utilizing mobile platforms, and already created over two hundred games on Android. The software company recognizes Android mobile casino games as an unsaturated niche industry with huge potential, and plans to utilize their vast experience to create original 3D casino games for the Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system.

Fund 9 was created as a joint venture between China Renaissance, K2 Ventures, Chengwei Ventures and China Rock Capital Management. The fund plans to invest in individual developers working from home to build custom applications. The developers will work under the guidance of The9, along with a project manager and other independent contractors. The model of using independent contractors has been gaining traction as more and more companies realize the benefits of a collaborative effort using social media. Developers and Mobile Games will be handpicked on the basis of their performance, number of downloads and talents of creators and will be localized in China. Fund9 plans to focus exclusively on Android mobile apps, game engines, and platform technology developers.