November 12th, 2004 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Research & Stats | No Comments »
According to the latest Mobinet study of 4,500 mobile users in 13 countries by A.T. Kearney, a consultancy, and the Judge Institute of Management at Cambridge University, the number of people who download games to their phones grew in the past year to 10% of the world’s 1.7 billion mobile users, exceeding the number of console users.
The fragmented mobile-games industry is consolidating fast, and there are more higher quality games based on big franchises such as Spider-Man. Jamdat, a mobile-games firm, went public in October. Most tellingly of all, the big boys are moving in. “There is the potential for a massive market in the future,” says Bruce McMillan of Electronic Arts, the world’s biggest games publisher, “so it makes sense for us to have a stronger presence.” Yet Screen Digest, a consultancy, reckons that the value of the mobile-gaming market will only exceed $1 billion for the first time this year. Small change next to the film business