One in Five are mobile gamers, will the iPhone change this?

Mike Bantick
Thursday, 03 July 2008 12:49

IT Industry - Market

The mobile gaming market in Western Europe is expected to grow from $701 million in 2008 to $862 million by 2011. The North American market is projected to grow from $845 million to approximately $1.2 billion in 2011.

The gap between North American and Western European mobile-gaming revenues is expected to widen over the forecast period as more users in North America adopt mobile data services in general.

“As voice revenues decline, mobile operators need to find ways to offset this downward trend, and mobile gaming has considerable growth potential," Mr. Nguyen said. "Mobile gaming has evolved from being a bundled freebie to a stand-alone value-added service, as well as a growing source of data revenue for operators and publishers alike. Increased consumer uptake and new players, business models and devices will help further this market in the future."

This Gartner report was collated late in 2007, but has the gaming goal posts moved with the introduction and increased use of smart phones such as the Apple iPhone?

With feature rich API’s built into today’s mobile devices, it is easy to imagine the blurring of lines between gaming, business and personal use for such devices.

The iPhone itself has prompted some queries of high profile game designers, traditionally looking at PC, home consoles, or portable game devices, about how they would approach development for a smart-phone.

id Software (Doom, Quake, Castle Wolfenstein) co-founder John Carmack told Slashdot back in March that id Software would look to develop for the iPhone.  "The ability to distribute larger applications than the over-the-air limits and effectively market your title with more than a dozen character deck name, combined with the reasonable income split make this look like a very interesting market," he says.

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