14 DAY TRIAL // According to research conducted by Telephia, the world's largest provider of consumer research in the telecom and mobile media markets, on-portal mobile game revenue jumped to $151 million in the fourth quarter of the last year, which means it has increased with 61 percent compared to the same period in 2005.
Around 17.4 million mobile consumers downloaded a mobile game in that period, 45 percent more than the 12 million recorded in 2005. Also, mobile games haven't only been downloaded by the typical demographic of men aged from 18 to 24 years old.
It has become much broader, including woman users and people of all ages. Sixty five percent of games were purchased by women while forty percent by users within the 25-36 years old range.
"The mobile game industry has seen strong growth very quickly with titles that appeal to a broad demographic. However, the industry is faced with a new challenge in order to sustain its growth. Several new mobile content services such as mobile video and full-track music are also competing for the mobile consumers' attention and wallet," said Kanishka Agarwal , Vice President of Mobile Content, Telephia.
Taking this into account, nearly 90 publishers are not racing to grab a broader piece of the market. EA Mobile is in the lead with nearly 28 percent of the total revenue, while Gameloft and Glu Mobile are sharing the second place with 11 percent each. Others like Namca, I-play, Digital Chocolate, Hands-On Mobile or Capcom follow, recorded revenues between 2 and 6 percent.
Compared to games on the PC, games on mobile are a much more enjoyable experience for more types of users, mainly because of their simplicity and user-friendliness. With most of them being quite fun and easy to understand, while also enabling the user to play on the go (while in a bus, on the street and so on), it's not hard to understand why most people will use their mobile phone for gaming and fun whenever they can, and thus want to purchase and download games for mobile.