Free mobile game site booms, IDC predicts success for subscription model

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 03 January 2007 02:46

Your IT - Mobility

Cellufun, LLC, a one year old provider of free real-time multiplayer games for cellphones hit 1.5 million unique visitors in December. Meanwhile IDC is forecasting boom times for US providers of subscription-based mobile games.

According to Cellufun CEO, Arthur Goikhman, "A bit more than a year ago, when we rolled out our first game, we were getting 300 mobile game downloads a day. Today, we're getting as many as 20,000 a day. We are serving as much game content as any major wireless carrier, and are on track for 1.5 million visitors and 10 million page views for December 2006."

Cellufun says its casual multiplayer games appeal to a wide international audience of all ages; its games have been downloaded in more than 130 countries. It boasts more than 20,000 games on its site and says it has several games scheduled for release in early January of 2007. Details are available at http://www.cellufun.com and on the WAP portal at http://wap.cellufun.com.

Meanwhile IDC is forecasting that the number of cellphone users in the US purchasing mobile games will grow more than 16 percent annually to nearly 50 million customers by 2010.

IDC says a recent survey found that 11 percent of respondents purchased at least one game for their wireless device in the third quarter of 2006, spending an average of $US13.00 on wireless games.