iPhone now accounts for 10% of the US mobile gaming market

A report from media research firm Screen Digest has concluded that new smartphone platforms will drive the growth of the mobile gaming market. Anyone interested in the mobile gaming or smartphone markets over the last few months would have assumed that, but the research did throw up some interesting figures.

According to Screen Digest, Apple devices pulled in $100 million through gaming apps alone during the final 6 months of last year. That accounts for a tenth of the entire North American mobile gaming market. The mobile gaming market had been slowing down, but the prevalence of gaming apps on smartphones has boosted the industry again. Screen Digest says that it’s not just due to the ease of downloading games over the App Store, but also because of the relative cheapness of the gaming units – you can expect to get a diverting game on your iPhone either for free, or for a tiny charge.

Via Fierce Mobile

From the report:

“At the moment Apple is out in front in terms of user experience, range of content and in generating consumer and developer interest in mobile games for its devices,” said Screen Digest research analyst Jack Kent. “While the market for mobile games on the App Store is strong, iPhone users still only account for a tiny proportion of the market. In Q4 2008, iPhone shipments made up less than 2 percent of total handset shipments. Handset manufacturers and network operators currently adopt a ‘one store for all’ approach although platform-specific and on-device stores stand the best chance of success, as far as mobile games are concerned.”

What we think?

It’s no secret that mobile gaming has really been boiling over since applications really took off – it’s also no secret that the iPhone revitalised the almost-dead application market. With large gaming companies like EA investing more heavily in the smartphone platform, I reckon you can expect to see mobile gaming become a significant percentage of the overall gaming market in the next few years.