FAST GROWING Brit company Player X has acquired its Spanish equivalent, Gaelco Moviles, in a cash deal. The move coincides with Player X announcing it is splitting itself into two.

As of yesterday, one arm of the company became Player X Distribution while a second new arm has been created called Studio X.

Studio X will be left to concentrate on generating "targeted media centric" games, although it will also be charged with producing the content for Player X's mobile TV offerings – Zapper TV and Geek TV.

The INQ suspects, however, that the real thrust behind Player X's activities will be to build its presence in distribution. The Gaelco acquisitions had shades of Arun Sarin's mobile operator ploy.

Most established mobile network operators - like Vodafone - are moving into the 'emerging markets' to sustain their growth.

While Player X is painting the purchase of Gaelco as rounding out its reach by adding distribution in Southern Europe, Player X jefe, Tony Pearce, says the deal will "open up another gateway into Latin America."

You don't have to be the Brain of Britain to work out that all of South America with the notable exception of Brazil speaks Spanish and Player X has just acquired an entire Spanish-speaking team.

Gaelco's existing client base is pretty impressive anyway seeing that it includes Vodafone, Optimus, Bouygues Telecom, Wind, TMN, Optimus and Telefonica – owner of Oh Dos.

Somewhat co-incidentally the INQ learns that Player X's party-meister and one-time INQ hack, Paul 'Monty' Munford is heading for the Indian sub-continent for a year's chill-out period.

These days with the Net being everywhere, Monty isn't really going to escape. It's a bit of an extreme way of avoiding the chaos that is Barcelona' s Mobile World Congress next year, though. µ