In-Stat claims US mobile gaming market is worth $1bn

Analyst In-Stat has released a new report claiming that the US mobile gaming market is already a billion dollar industry.

The real question is whether it's a growing industry though: there've been widespread reports that the US market has stalled - with publishers including Glu Mobile and Gameloft reporting sluggish growth in the region.

Meanwhile, In-Stat's survey of 2,000 US consumers apparently found that 29.5 per cent of them play games on their mobile handsets.

That sounds about right - earlier this year M:Metrics claimed that around 30 per cent of mobile users play games in most countries.

Meanwhile, In-Stat's consumer survey also found that 20 per cent of US mobile gamers download games from websites other than their carrier's portal.

Elsewhere in the report, the same old industry challenges rear their head, perhaps hinting why growth is stalling in the US.

"The mobile gaming development industry is highly fragmented due to the wide variety of mobile operating systems, available handsets, and lack of industry standardization," says analyst Jill Meyers.

"This fragmentation has resulted in mobile developers and publishers making the difficult decision of spending finite resources developing games on the platforms they believe will have the best chance of success."