Skip to main content

Growing Adoption of Smartphone Content

While more people are playing mobile games than ever before, the percentage of people downloading a new game did not increase over the past year in the United States and Western Europe, according to the latest M:Metrics market study.

Nearly three fourths of the 98.4 million people in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the U.S. that played a mobile game in December played a game that was found natively on the device -- demonstrating an untapped potential for downloaded content.

M:Metrics reports that 38.5 million, or 8.8 percent of, mobile subscribers played a game they had downloaded and stored on their phone, that number has been relatively flat from the year before, when 35.3 million, or 8.7 percent, played a downloaded game.

Only 14.4 million, or 3.3 percent of, mobile subscribers in the United States and Western Europe downloaded a game in the month, versus 14.6 million (3.6 percent) in December 2006. At 12.7 percent, Spain has the highest penetration of those playing a downloaded game, and the highest rate of mobile games downloads, at 5.6 percent. France lags all other markets, at 3.5 percent playing a downloaded game and 1.3 percent downloading a new game in the month.

"One of the greatest challenges facing publishers by the growing adoption of smartphones is the wide availability of free or pirated content for these devices," said Seamus McAteer, chief product architect and senior analyst, M:Metrics.

Smartphones have become increasingly mainstream, due to an influx of consumer-friendly productivity devices such as the BlackBerry Pearl, and Samsung Blackjack, as well as media-centric devices such as the Apple iPhone and Nokia N-Series handsets.

Smartphone owners are more avid users of mobile content than are owners of feature phones, and this usage extends beyond e-mail and mobile browser usage to gaming and other forms of mobile entertainment. For example in the UK about 17 percent of smartphone owners played downloaded games in a month during the fourth quarter of 2007 compared with 9.8 percent of non-smartphone owners, reports M:Metrics.

"While these devices lend themselves to mobile media consumption, the openness of smart platforms opens up the Internet and frees consumers from the operator deck," observed McAteer. "To succeed in such a market game publishers will have to foster new models that may include subscriptions to online gaming communities, ad-funded or subsidized gaming, and physical distribution."

Popular posts from this blog

Digital Talent Demand Exceeds Supply in Asia-Pac

Even the savviest CEO's desire for a digital transformation advantage has to face the global market reality -- there simply isn't enough skilled and experienced talent available to meet demand. According to the latest market study by IDC, around 60-80 percent of Asia-Pacific (AP) organizations find it "difficult" or "extremely difficult" to fill many IT roles -- including cybersecurity, software development, and data insight professionals. Major consequences of the skills shortage are increased workload on remaining digital business and IT employees, increased security risks, and loss of "hard-to-replace" critical transformation knowledge. Digital Business Talent Market Development Although big tech companies' layoffs are making headlines, they are not representative of the overall global marketplace. Ongoing difficulty to fill key practitioner vacancies is still among the top issues faced by leaders across industries. "Skills are difficul

How Cloud Fuels Digital Business Transformation

Across the globe, many CEOs invested in initiatives to expand their digital offerings. User experience enhancements that are enabled by business technology were a priority in many industries. Worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow 21.7 percent to a total of $597.3 billion in 2023 -- that's up from $491 billion in 2022, according to the latest market study by Gartner. Cloud computing is driving the next phase of digital transformation, as organizations pursue disruption through technologies like generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), Web3, and enterprise Metaverse. Public Cloud Computing Market Development "Hyperscale cloud providers are driving the cloud agenda," said Sid Nag, vice president at Gartner . Organizations view cloud computing as a highly strategic platform for digital transformation initiatives, which requires providers to offer new capabilities as the competition for digital business escalates. "For example, generativ

Mobile Device Market Still Awaiting Recovery

The mobile devices market has experienced three years of unpredictable demand. The global pandemic, geopolitical pressures, supply chain issues, and macroeconomic headwinds have hindered the sector's consistent growth potential. This extremely challenging environment has dramatically affected both demand and supply chains. It has led to subsequent inflationary pressures, leading to a worsening global cost of living crisis suppressing growth and confidence in the sector. In tandem, mobile device industry stakeholders have become more cautious triggering market uncertainties. Mobile Device Market Development Operating under such a backdrop, the development of mobile device ecosystems and vendor landscapes have been impacted severely. Many of these market pressures persisted throughout 2022 and now into 2023, borne chiefly by the smartphone market. According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, worldwide smartphone shipments in 2022 declined 9.6 percent Year-over-Year