US social mobile gaming network PlayPhone has been investigating the breakdown of the mobile gaming market.

It's surveyed 1,000 American mobile gamer as part of its Mobile Gaming Chronicles, to get an idea about challenges and opportunities.

Interestingly, it found the overall gender split was 68:32 in favour of women.

Of those women who played for at least one hour a day, 62 percent were married, with 46 percent aged between 40 to 64 and 36 percent aged between 40 and 54.

Gen Y spenders

However, looking at who was prepared to spend more than $10 on mobile games, 64 percent were aged between 25 to 39; a completely different group.

More specifically, 48 percent of such spenders were aged 30 to 39.

Perhaps this situation is related to the finding that 72 percent of the survey weren't comfortable about entering their credit card details into an app.

More generally - and related to PlayPhone's announcement that it's hooking up with Tango - was the news that 47 percent of the survey said that they were likely to download a game if they received an invite via a mobile messaging service.

And as we already know, gamers are social. Half of mobile gamers who played for more than three hours per week said they had been invited to play a game via a messaging invite.