M:Metrics: Fortunes 'Mixed' For Mobile Games

The good news: More people are playing mobile games.

The bad news: The percentage of players downloading new mobile games isn't going up.

According to research firm M:Metrics, nearly three fourths of the 98.4 million people in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States that played a mobile game in December played a game that was found natively on the device, demonstrating, in M:Metrics' view, an untapped potential for downloaded content.

M:Metrics reports that 38.5 million, or 8.8 percent of, mobile subscribers played a game they had downloaded and stored on their phone. That number has been relatively flat from the year before, when 35.3 million, or 8.7 percent, played a downloaded game.

Some stats:

Monthly Mobile Game Consumption (as Percent of Mobile Subscribers):
December 2007

 

"One of the greatest challenges facing publishers by the growing adoption of smartphones is the wide availability of free or pirated content for these devices," said Seamus McAteer, chief product architect and senior analyst, M:Metrics.

What would that be the case?

"While these devices lend themselves to mobile media consumption, the openness of smart platforms opens up the Internet and frees consumers from the operator deck," observed McAteer. "To succeed in such a market game publishers will have to foster new models that may include subscriptions to online gaming communities, ad-funded or subsidized gaming, and physical distribution."

In BRANDING UNBOUND the book, I talk to McAteer about the longer term potential for premium content. He's a bullish, but pragmatic sort (and pretty funny, too). But I'm skeptical this new report is revealing potential as much as lack of interest or awareness.

When it comes to games and other content, there's clearly a lot of growth potential - just, perhaps not as much for game (and video) as some would want to believe.

Look at other stats from the new report:

Mobile Subscriber Monthly Consumption of Content and Applications
M:Metrics Benchmark Survey (Percent of Mobile Subscribers): December 2007

Note the high percentage of people who have sent or received video, and compare that to those who have watched video.

There's awareness - it takes a lot more to create and send a video than watching video - but little interest.

What if people know they can download mobile games, but just haven't seen anything interesting, or are unaware that there are sources other than carrier decks.

That's sort of what McAteer's saying, of course.

But playing a game on a tiny handset screen isn't much more fun than watching TV/video on one.

Time will tell if mobile consumers are game for games, or whether the play's not the thing many hope it is.

Read more about the report, here.

And read more about BRANDING UNBOUND the book, here.

                         

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