June 19th, 2007 by Anonymous Blogger Posted in Analysis & Editorial | No Comments »
Gartner has let loose new speculations on the mobile games market. Next to their expectations for 2011, they announced a 49.9% market growth in 2007 alone!
The growth in 2007 will lead the mobile gaming market to a value of about $ 4.3 billion. With this growth in mind, they calculated an even bigger increase all the way up to $ 9.6 billion by 2011 (non-consumer billed downloads are of course not calculated).
A big part of the mobile market share will belong to the Asian territory where the value for this year is expected at $ 1.8 billion and a growth of 255.55% will be established until $ 4.6 billion in 2011.
Compared to Asia, Western Europe will not see much growth. With a value of $ 1.5 billion currently, Gartner expects the growth to be only 133.33% which translates to a value of $ 2 billion. In response to the interview, 10% of the consumers claim to have played or downloaded a mobile game in the past month. The biggest part of them (4 out of 5) obtain their games through the operator deck.
North America is a whole other story. Though the start is a bit slow, the market shows big potential. Gartner expects the market to grow 237,13% which means the biggest growth percentage is in the US. On the other hand, it means the market will grow from $ 716.9 million to $ 1.7 billion in 2011, which makes Asia the overall winner.
“Given the ubiquity of mobile phones in many markets and the ease of game-play, mobile gaming is expected to reach more of the global population than has been the case for traditional PC and console gaming,” said Tuong Huy Nguyen, senior research analyst at Gartner. “This will catapult mobile gaming revenue beyond that from mobile TV and adult content, but we still expect it to lag behind mobile music, since music is a more familiar form of entertainment.”
“One of the things driving mobile gaming in developed markets is the availability of faster processors in mobile devices, which enable faster response times, 3-D graphics and advanced sound capabilities, as well as less-expensive and bigger storage capabilities for memory-intensive games,” said Nick Ingelbrecht, research director at Gartner. “At the same time, simple stripped-down games that capitalize on location-awareness and personal interaction are interesting for aficionados.”
“In game-hungry markets like Australia, we estimate that approximately 10 percent of mobile Internet users are regular gamers (comprising an enthusiastic subset of cellular users). This percentage will grow as advanced device functionality spreads through the product tiers to
support a richer gaming experience,” Mr. Ingelbrecht said.
Gartner also took a close look at what sells best. There seems to be a huge difference in European demographics here. For example, the UK consumers love mobile puzzle and sports games while the Germans prefer quiz and strategy games (must be in their blood).
“Even though customers are increasingly coming back to operators’ portals, operators themselves do not have mobile gaming as their first priority,” said Jessica Ekholm, senior research analyst at Gartner. “For them, mobile TV and mobile music have taken center stage.”
“Network speeds and 3G deployments have also had an impact on mobile gaming update and data adoption in general,” Mr. Nguyen said. “2.5G data rates have made downloading, and especially browsing, tedious, deterring significant adoption of mobile games.”
