Game on! (your phone)

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports about the increase in consumers using their handset for mobile gaming. Citing a recent survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, The Associated Press and AOL, "Nearly one of every four cell phone owners – 22 percent – plays games. An additional 12 percent said they would like to play games, but their phones don't include that feature."

The article looks at the history of mobile gaming and according to M:Metrics, "About 16 million Americans play games that they have downloaded to their phone each month. Each month, those phone owners will buy between 5 million and 6 million new games."

While most games are network operator decks, Kanishka Agarwal at Telephia remarked "a small but growing number of games are bought from Web sites not affiliated with carriers." He said, while off-portal games may be less expensive than those from a carrier, there's less quality control, “less certainty of what you are going to get."

Agarwal also said, “Women play more mobile games than men. The younger generation is driving a lot of this. At $5 or $6 a game, it's a little bit of a pricey medium for them right now. But this is a generation that was born with cell phones in their hands.”