The number of people paying to download mobile games has dropped sharply in the five major European markets, according to the latest figures from ComScore M:Metrics.
The news was revealed in Informa Telecoms & Media's Mobile Media publication, based on data from August 2007 and September 2008.
Specifically, the number of people paying to download mobile games dropped by an average of 10 per cent across the five countries, with Germany and Spain seeing declines of nearly 20 per cent.
If true, it's a huge, huge problem for the mobile games industry, which has been masked by the upbeat talk of revenue growth from major publishers like EA Mobile, Gameloft and Glu Mobile.
One cause is clear: free games. According to the research, the number of people downloading free games in Germany and Spain now outnumber those paying for games, while in the UK there are two thirds as many free downloaders as paying customers.
ComScore's Alistair Hill tells Mobile Media that mobile game piracy is an issue for the industry: "You just have to do a search on Google for free mobile games,'" is his quote.
The news may finally spur an industry debate on the impact of piracy on the mobile games market - an issue that few publishers have been willing to talk about publicly (although some, like Fishlabs, have started experimenting with using pirated sites as a legitimate distribution channel for their titles).
Clearly, new services like the App Store, which improve the purchasing experience for mobile gamers, may help. But the research should be a prod for all elements of the industry to redouble their efforts in 2009.
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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.)
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