One Third of Adults in U.S. and U.K. Play Games on Mobile Phones: Survey
One third of the U.S. and U.K. adults are mobile phone gamers, according to PopCap Games, a developer, publisher and operator of casual video games.
Among mobile phone gamers, mobile phone is the primary gaming device, surpassing video game consoles and PCs in less than two years. Smartphone owners are the most avid consumers of mobile games, according to the survey conducted by Information Solutions Group.
More than half (52 percent) of the 2,425 survey respondents said they played a game on a mobile phone in the past. 73 percent of U.K. respondents played a mobile phone game at least once, compared to 44 percent of U.S. residents surveyed.
“Mobile games are, along with social games, the hottest sector of the video game industry by far,” said Dennis Ryan, EVP of Worldwide Publishing at PopCap (News - Alert), which earns a third of its revenues from sales of mobile games like Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies.
“As more people purchase smartphones and the entire process of finding, purchasing and playing mobile games becomes as simple as browsing the Internet, the mobile games market is going to accelerate even more,” Ryan added.
About 92 percent of smartphone gamers say they play at least once a week. 45 percent say they play daily compared to 35 percent of all mobile phone gamers. In the 2009 survey, only 13 percent of mobile phone gamers said they played daily, and 40 percent said they played weekly.
Among all mobile phone gamers, 50 percent said the amount of time they spend on games increased over the past year. Among smartphone owners the figure climbs to 63 percent. In 2009, 20 percent of mobile gamers said their consumption of mobile games had increased.
A recent survey said though most young adults in the United States possess countless technological gadgets, currently the most popular gadget on the market among this age group is cell phones. Other popular gadgets that most young adults own besides cell phones are computers, followed by digital music players, and then game consoles and electronic book readers.
Rajani Baburajan is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Rajani's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Jennifer Russell
