According to a new report by Juniper Research, soaring usage of social gaming will push the global market for virtual goods bought from mobile social media services from $3 billion this year to $4.6 billion by 2016. Needless to say, we have the sharp rise in smartphone adoption to thank for this trend, even though at the moment virtual goods are mostly bought in Japan and China.
Tablets will also help drive this market forward, offering a “significantly better user experience” for social gaming than smartphones.
However, companies selling virtual goods through mobile apps will soon have to give up 30% of revenues to app store providers like Apple and Google. They will fight for their own channels but as we know – most users prefer grabbing their apps (and conducting in-app purchases) directly from the AppStore or Android Market.
Some other findings from the report include:
- Spend on advertising targeted at tablets is expected to account for almost half of total mobile social media advertising spend by 2016.
- Far East & China will continue to account for the lion’s share of mobile social media revenues, followed by North America.
And as usual, you can get additional information from Juniper’s website.