January 24th, 2008 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Research & Stats | No Comments »
After three years of research, The Multimedia Research Company (TMRC)
has completed their second expanded review of the global mobile games
industry.
To complete this research, the company profiles almost 2,000 companies that are actively trading in the mobile gaming industry like distributors-aggregators, publishers, developers and portals (DAPP’s) from 93 countries. With their database, TMRC expects to be ahead of the competition. TMRC offers the database for sale on their website; www.multimedia-research.com.
‘Greater Europe’ reinforces its lead in the Global Mobile Games Industry
Despite the well documented lead held by Japan and South Korea up to the year 2000 today’s newly expanded ‘Greater Europe’ (comprising Western European plus the old Eastern bloc territories, including Russia), has gradually increased its commercial base to 863 Mobile Games DAPPs, making it the largest regional total in the world and more than the Americas and South Korea / Japan combined.
Over the last two years more than half the world’s new Mobile Games enterprises have been created in Greater Europe. We are certain that the diversity created by the region’s 48 countries has acted as an expansive and creative force for the industry as a whole.
Having said that the Japanese and South Korean mobile games industries are more advanced in terms of market maturity and corporate consolidation, resulting in fewer and often larger organisations.
Mobile Games Enterprises: The World’s Lead Territories
In terms of individual countries the greatest numbers of Mobile Games enterprises are presently to be found in the USA, the UK, China (including Hong Kong) and South Korea, with Japan currently ranked a distant fifth, only just ahead of Germany.
In the USA and UK many Mobile Games enterprises were initially comparatively small, but predatory acquisitions, mergers and alliances have been commonplace in the past four years. As a consequence the US now boasts some of the largest individual mobile games enterprises, with THQ Wireless and, of course, Electronic Arts, the world’s largest games software company, (following its acquisition of Jamdat in 2005) being standout examples.
At the same time new frontiers have opened up in the Far East and Asia. China (where the total of 140 enterprises includes 45 based in Hong Kong) leads the way, ahead of India (58), Taiwan (29), Singapore (27), Thailand (21) and Malaysia (20).
Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe Russia (60 DAPPs) has emerged as the lead territory, with Poland (37 DAPPs) ranked a distant second, whilst both the Czech Republic and the Ukraine are vying for third place, each having 23 DAPPs.
Some of the large online games companies, which dominate Far Eastern gaming, have also secured strong footholds in the mobile games space by acquiring those enterprises which offer a complementary fit. Tom Online in China, with its acquisition of a majority stakeholding in Indiagames Ltd in December 2004, was a case in point, although it has since surrendered its interest in the company to UTV Software Communications.
With Mobile Games activities now present in 93 countries, the industry has at long last assumed the status of being a truly global phenomenon. Helping to extend its territorial reach even further has been the recent surge in D2C Portals, which are now impacting countries previously untouched by mobile games.
Advanced Mobile Games Specialisms
Aside from the development of simple 2D, single player casual games, or rudimentary Q&A MMS and SMS mobile games, our research remit was widened in the second half of 2007 to accommodate developers’ advanced mobile games specialisms.
52% of the 1,403 developers worldwide now offer 3D gaming capabilities, whilst 43% offer multiplayer games development (typically ranging from simple ‘Pass and Play’ games, through to sophisticated online / connected games (30%)).
In the meantime 7% have developed ad-funded or ad-supported mobile games (Advergames). Given that the first mobile game to feature advertising appeared in 2001 when Small Planet created a Pepsi Football promotion in Finland its progress to date can only be described that of “a slow burn”. However, following the launch of the first ad-supported game download portal in 2006
