14 DAY TRIAL // On Wednesday, comScore, Inc. unveiled the results of a new study on mobile gaming, showing that the market has a great potential, even if the number of U.S. mobile gamers decreased last year. According to the company, the decline was driven by a 35 percent decrease of mobile gaming on feature phones, which account for 80 percent of the market, although the number of gamers on smartphones increased by 60 percent.
“Although the number of mobile gamers has declined in the past year, there is reason for significant optimism about the future of this market,” said Mark Donovan, comScore SVP Mobile and senior analyst. “As the market transitions from feature phones to smartphones, the dynamics of gameplay are also shifting towards a higher quality experience. As a result, we can expect to see a profound increase in adoption of this activity, both in terms of audience size and overall engagement.”
Smartphone subscribers will drive the mobile gaming market upwards, comScore states, noting that these users are more likely to play games on their handsets. When compared to feature phone users, smartphone owners are three times more likely to play games on their devices at least once a month, the company states. Moreover, they are five times as likely to play games every day, it seems.
At the same time, the study shows that smartphone users would install far more games on their handsets, as 27.3 percent of them have already installed at least one game. In comparison, only 5.6 percent of feature phone subscribers made the same move. One third of smartphone subscribers playing games on handsets have more than five titles installed, a much higher percentage when compared to the less than one percent feature phones having this number of games installed.
“Smartphones offer a more accessible and compelling mobile gaming experience that is enabling adoption of this behavior, even among consumers who have not traditionally been gamers,” added Donovan. “Marketers and advertisers ought to be paying close attention to the opportunity this presents for reaching consumers in new and engaging ways in a cross-platform environment. The potential for highly creative marketing efforts is exciting.” More details on the study are available here.