In a sign of the growing importance of the mobile gaming sector, market researchers at GfK M² today revealed that consumers in the U.K. are spending more to download games to their handsets than they are on downloading ringtones, music or video content. In fact, according to GfK’s data, the mobile gaming market is worth nearly four times the current market value of full music tracks, and eight times the current video download market.
For the last fiscal year ended March 31, 2007, GfK found that consumers in the U.K. spent £83 million (about $165 million) on mobile games, compared to £76 million (about $151 million) on ringtones and just £23 million (around $46 million) on music. Trailing the mobile pack were video downloads at £11 million and wallpapers at £10 million.
GfK also noted that mobile network operators are dominating the market. Almost 90 percent of games downloaded/sold in the last year were through this channel. In addition, GfK said the top 10 games account for a third of the total revenue of the mobile gaming market and just three games published in the last year accounted for 60 percent of total sales of games.
“A year ago there was less activity in the mobile gaming market as well as poor phone functionality, limited game offerings and perceived high prices,” commented Aaron Rattue, Business Group Director GfK M². “In the last year mobile gaming has really taken off and now leads the mobile content market in terms of the amount of money consumers are spending. Clearly, gamers are happy to pay to download, with half of all the games downloaded to a mobile phone in the last year costing £5 or more.”