January 30th, 2008 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Research & Stats | No Comments »
Juniper Research’s Dr. Windsor Holden released a report in which they
expect the North-American market for mobile games to reach a value of
more than $ 3 billion by 2012.
In 2007, the mobile games market in North America is valued by Juniper at $ 800 million. Around 18 million consumers in the area rent of purchase mobile games at least once a year. This number is set to increase over the next five years due to improvements in the user interface, all-you-can-eat data packages and the introduction of trial versions for subscription based mobile games.
“This ‘try before you buy’ strategy not only makes the customer more comfortable about purchasing a particular title: it also makes him or her more familiar with mobile gameplay per se and will provide further encouragement for the consumer to seek out additional titles in the future.” said Dr. Windsor Holden.
In the report, Holden also warns about poor marketing. A lot of consumers are just not aware of new mobile games being available on their handsets. Also, he recommends that publishers focus on lifestyle games. To expand the mobile gaming demographic.
Even though the growth of the North American market is important, it will keep trailing the Chinese and Western-Europe markets the coming five years. Ad-funded mobile gaming will take up 30% of the market by 2012. Also, the increase in quality of the games will allow publishers to set higher price points.
White papers and further details of the study ‘Mobile Games: Subscription & Download 2007-2012 (Fourth Edition)’ can be freely downloaded from http://www.juniperresearch.com.
