Telephia: Mobile Game Market is Growing Rapidly with Purchases Soaring 53 Percent During Q1 2006
While M:Metrics claims the market for mobile games is stagnating, according to new research from Telephia, "mobile game sales continue to show strong performance during the first quarter of 2006, with wireless consumers buying more than 8.2 million games on their phones in March, up 53 percent from 5.4 million in January 2006. The number of unique mobile game buyers also jumped significantly, surging 44 percent from nearly 3.5 million in January to five million in March."
Table 1: Monthly Mobile Game Purchases and Number of Total BuyersThe Telephia report found that "EA Mobile, I-Play, Gameloft, Namco, Hands-On Mobile, Glu Mobile, THQ Wireless, Oasys Mobile, Sony Pictures Mobile, and Mobliss were the top 10 revenue generators, accounting for 75 percent of mobile game industry revenue."
(U.S.)
Jan-06 Feb-06 Mar-06 Percent Growth
(000) (000) (000) Jan-Mar 2006
Game Purchases (Sales) 5,399 6,530 8,247 53%
Game Buyers (Audience) 3,475 4,282 5,003 44%
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Source: Telephia Mobile Game Report, January-March 2006
Kanishka Agarwal at Telephia said, "The true measure of performance for a publisher or a game title is the revenue it drives from purchases,. Measuring the industry's performance based on downloads alone is irresponsible and misleading, especially given the extent of free trials in this rapidly growing industry."
Agarwal added, "During the first quarter of the year, nearly 12 percent of all game downloads were free, with extreme variability from one publisher to another. For example, 49 percent of Glu Mobile's downloads were free of charge, while Hands-On Mobile had less than one percent of its downloads for free."
Table 2: Top Mobile Game Publishers by Revenue Share (U.S.)Agarwal said, "Capturing actual purchase behavior from consumer bills is essential for accurate measurement. Publisher share based on survey claims of downloaded titles is very inaccurate due to limitations of survey respondent recall of details. For example, consider a game like Solitaire where there are 14 different titles from 9 different publishers in the marketplace. At best, survey respondents may be able to recall downloading Solitaire, but not the specific title or publisher. Hence, it is not possible to precisely assign a survey claim of a Solitaire download to a specific publisher, resulting in inexact publisher share numbers."
Percent
of
Share of Share of Downloads
Revenue Downloads w/No
Publisher (%) (%) Charge
--------------------------------------- -------- ---------- ----------
1. EA Mobile 30.8% 27.4% 8.3%
2. I-Play 8.2% 6.9% 0.0%
3. Gameloft 8.0% 6.7% 4.6%
4. Namco 7.7% 8.0% 0.0%
5. Hands-On Mobile 6.2% 5.7% 0.1%
6. Glu Mobile (w/iFone) 5.3% 7.8% 49.2%
7. THQ Wireless 2.6% 1.8% 0.0%
8. Oasys Mobile 2.3% 4.3% 57.0%
9. Sony Pictures Mobile 2.1% 2.1% 0.0%
10. Mobliss 2.1% 2.6% 0.0%
TOTAL SHARE 74.5% 72.5%
--------------------------------------- -------- ---------- ----------
Source: Telephia Mobile Game Report, Q1 2006
Telephia ranked "Tetris (5.2%), Tetris Deluxe (3.6%), Bejeweled (2.6%), JAMDAT Mahjong (2.2%), and Ms. Pac-Man (2.0%) as the top five mobile game titles in terms of revenue share. Telephia is able to separate Tetris from Tetris Deluxe, two very different game titles priced very differently. Survey-based claims are unable to separate Tetris from Tetris Deluxe due to recall limitations."
posted by John @ 8:57 AM
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