Data & Research

10 key stats about the US mobile games market

M:Metrics spills the beans

10 key stats about the US mobile games market
Fresh from being acquired by ComScore for $44.3 million, M:Metrics gave a presentation at the BREW 2008 show in San Diego, outlining some key stats about the US mobile games market.

Hats off to Mark Donovan, CMO and senior analyst at the company, for doing his presentation rather than scooting off to the beach to count his (presumed) pots of cash.

Rather than reproduce all 35 slides from his presentation, here's 10 of the most interesting points made by Donovan:

1. Operator market shares

In March 2008 (well, a three-month average to the end of March), Verizon generated 27% of game downloads, compared to AT&T's 23%, T-Mobile's 17%, Sprint's 14% (ouch!), Boost's 6%, Alltel's 4% and the 9% from other US operators.

2. How often people play

Tracking US mobile gamers, 21% play almost every day, while 30% play at least once a week, and 49% play 1-3 times during the month.

3. BREW gamers are younger, more female and 3G than Java

This was a big surprise, so check the stats. 39% of people who bought a BREW game in March were 18-24, compared to 32% for Java. In fact, more than 50% of BREW game purchasers were under 24.

Meanwhile, the Java gender split was 53% male and 46% female, compared to BREW's 47% male and 54% female. Donovan suggested that this may be because women refuse to put up with a "crappy" merchandising experience.

Oh, and 76% of Java game purchasers in March were on non-3G handsets, compared to just 29% of BREW purchasers.

4. Could the credit crunch hurt mobile game sales?

50% of mobile game purchasers make more than $50,000 a year, while 17% of BREW purchasers make more than $100,000 (the equivalent percentage for Java purchasers is 16%).

Donovan wondered aloud what the credit crunch will mean for these high-income mobile gamers - will they spend less money on mobile games due to the financial uncertainty / tighter purse strings? Publishers, file this away as your excuse next time results don't live up to expectations...

5. LG handsets are huge for BREW gaming

Donovan showed a slide of the top five handsets ranked by number of game purchases on Verizon Wireless in February 2008, and four of 'em were LG phones.

Top of the list was the LG VX9900 enV, with an estimated 297,393 purchases that month. It was followed by the Motorola RAZR V3M (239,475), the LG VX8300 (142,513), the LG VX10000 Voyager (119,210) and the LG VX8500 Chocolate (95,850).

6. The funnel effect for mobile games

In March 2008, M:Metrics estimates that 47.7 million Americans played any mobile game on their phones. 33.8 million played preloaded games, 20.2 million played a downloaded game, 7.7 million actually downloaded a new game, and 5.7 million purchased a new game.

The two million gap between those last two stats, according to Donovan, is mostly people who downloaded a trial game, but didn't then purchase the full version. A small minority of it is people downloading ad-funded free games, but it's very small.

7. Ways people are discovering mobile games

How are people finding the mobile games that they buy? According to Donovan, 40.2% say they found it through their phone - usually an operator portal or BREW storefront.

However, 17.7% bought via a trial version, 13.8% discovered games on websites accessed through their PC, and 11.9% found games via a link within another game on the device (the 'Get More Games' type feature that several publishers have introduced).

Donovan suggested that publishers who aren't making trial versions or offering these kinds of links should change their ways. What they shouldn't do is splash cash on traditional ads - the likes of TV (3.6%), magazines (2.8%), radio (2.1%) and newspaper ads (1.4%) pale in comparison.

8. Operator decks are crowded

I remember sitting in interviews and conference sessions several years ago with operators promising to carefully manage their portals to ensure customers weren't overloaded with choice.

Well, so much for that. M:Metrics tracked 945 games on T-Mobile USA's deck, 530 on AT&T's, 399 on Verizon's and 349 on Sprint's.

9. Big publishers securing premium deck slots

Yes, okay, this isn't going to shock anyone, but it's nice to have the numbers. 75% of premium deck slots go to the top 20 publishers in the US.

EA Mobile alone hoovers up 24% of these premium slots, way ahead of nearest rivals Gameloft (11%), Glu (8%) and Namco (8%).

Superscape and THQ Wireless got 5% (presumably that means Glu should now have 13% after buying the former), while Vivendi Games Mobile, I-play, Capcom and Sony Pictures all bagged 4% of the premium slots.

Compare that to actual purchases made in April 2008. EA snagged 26.5% of mobile game purchases in the US that month, compared to 14% for Glu and 11.8% for Gameloft. The Superscape deal closed in late March, so I'm not sure how much of Glu's total is down to that.

Namco snagged 4.5% of purchases in April, followed by Hands-On (3.8%), Capcom (3.3%), I-play (2.7%), Gosub 60 (2.6%), Konami (1.8%) and Digital Chocolate (1.8%).

Note the performance of Hands-On, Gosub 60, Konami and DChoc despite their lack of premium slots, and the relatively poor performance of THQ Wireless, Vivendi and Sony Pictures.

10. The old classics are still selling on BREW

Read this recent M:Metrics Top 10 list of BREW games by sales in the US, and wonder what happened to all the rich 3D stuff:

Tetris

Bejeweled

Pac-Man

Tetris Mania

Blackjack Hustler

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

Frogger

Monopoly Here & Now

Zuma

Monopoly
Contributing Editor

Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)