Mobile gaming is on the rise, with almost a quarter of mobile phone users - that's 57 million consumers spread across feature and smartphones - in the five biggest European countries playing a game every month according to analyst company comScore.

It's also growing at a rate of 51% year-on-year.

Kicking off the Mobile Games Forum 2011, comScore vice president, Mobile Europe Jeremy Copp gave a talk entitled Mobile Gaming: State of the European Market.

Just over 10 million users play a mobile game at a frequency that comScore peculiarly calls 'almost every day'.

Around 10 percent of mobile gamers play 'at least once each week', 15 percent play 'once to three times a month', while the remaining 25 percent 'play once a month'.

ComScore bases its analysis on a monthly audience recall survey when it asks tens of thousands of users about their mobile habits.

Out of the box

Of course, games that come pre-installed on handsets remain the most popular way to access content.

Around 17 percent of EU5 mobile phone users have played such games, while around 10 percent of people have downloaded a game.

Of those downloads, 45 percent are paid downloads, while the remainder are either trial or free versions.

Yet, for those people who have downloaded a game, 12 percent download five or more games every month, while 60 percent downloaded two or less. 31 percent of gamers have more than five games installed on their device.

Make me smarter

The main driver for gaming is the switch as Europeans transition from feature phones - such as Nokia's Series 40 devices - to smartphones such as iPhone and Android.

Indeed, 2011 will be the first year where smartphone sales are higher than feature phone sales in Europe.

There are no surprises that iPhone an overall range of devices is the most popular with six million users, although the Nokia 5800 is the single most popular gaming device with 1.9 million gamers.

Users with smartphones are much more likely to play games however with 58 percent of iPhone and 54 percent of Android owners playing games.