M:Metrics : Mobile Games Data

When the VP of Corporate Communications from a company like M:Metrics contacts you, you know you should take a look at what they have to say – that is exactly what has happened in this case!

M: Metrics have some interesting data on Mobile Gaming as a whole, contextualised by the recent “launch” of N-Gage (as Stefan reported on). Stats-a-plenty below:

According to M:Metrics, in February:

• 48.4 million people played a mobile game
• 20.2 million played a game they previously downloaded
• 7.6 million downloaded a new game

These numbers are all up from the same period last year (February 2007),
when:

• 45.2 million played a mobile game
• 18.5 million played a game they had previously downloaded
• 6.8 million downloaded a new game

Among Nokia (NYSE: NOK) owners,in February, 20.1 percent (5.9 million people) played a
mobile game, against a market average of 21.4 percent. Other Nokia stats:

• 6.2 percent of Nokia owners played a game they had previously downloaded (versus 8.9 percent market average)
• 2.7 percent downloaded a new game (versus 3.4 percent market average)

“Nokia is currently underperforming in the games market today primarily due
to the fact that the US market is flooded with low-end, free Nokia phones
that came with carrier contracts,” said Mark Donovan, senior analyst,
M:Metrics. “Today, N-Series devices are still quite expensive and are not
widely distributed in carrier channels, resulting in low market adoption.
However, among those toting high-end Nokia devices on the Symbian operating system, 30.8 percent played a mobile game, indicating that mobile gaming is a popular activity on these phones.”

It will be interesting to see in a year’s time, how N-Gage (which is currently limited to very recent Nokia NSeries devices) has affected the stats – will it be measurable, one wonders – probably, if Nokia have anything to do with it!

If you want to check out M:Metrics’ site, you can go here.

[Via: M:Metrics]