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Superdata estimates Clash of Clans will generate $1.8 billion in 2014

Just keeps on growing

Superdata estimates Clash of Clans will generate $1.8 billion in 2014

As with many infographics, it's not clear where the information has come from, but Superdata has made a big claim about Supercell's success in 2014.

It ranks the top three mobile games during the year by revenue as follows.

  • King's Candy Crush Saga is said to have generated $1 billion
  • GungHo Online's Puzzle & Dragons is estimated to have generated $1.5 billion, while
  • Supercell's Clash of Clans is rated at a massive $1.8 billion.

Back of a fag packet

To put the claim into some sort of context, Candy Crush and Puzzle & Dragons were the first two mobile games to generate $1 billion in revenue, and because both King (NYSE:KING) and GungHo (TYO:3765) are floated companies - on the New York and Tokyo Stock Exchanges respectively - it's relatively easy to estimate how much these games could have generated.

Hence these figures are not unreasonable, or surprising.

But the Clash of Clans' total seems high.

Interestingly, despite being privately owned, Supercell did announce its 2013 financials in early 2014, revealing that Clash of Clans and Hay Day generated $892 million.

(Now it's 51 percent owned by Softbank, it's not clear whether the company will announce its 2014 figures, however.)

Big growth

Now, if we assume that Clash of Clans generated all of Supercell's 2013 revenues, its year-on-year growth for 2104 would be 100 percent. This is a minimum figure.

Conversely assuming Clash of Clans generated the half of Supercell's 2013 revenues, 2014 revenue of $1.8 billion suggests year-on-year growth in the order of 300 percent. This is the maximum.

Still, given that another market prediction is that the mobile games market in 2014 would be worth $25 billion - from Newzoo - and given that according to App Annie, Supercell is the world's top grossing games company across Google Play and App Store - with King #2 and GungHo #3 - perhaps the figure isn't so ridiculous as it first appears.

 


Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.