Research: The Challenges for New Mobile Gaming Platforms

From ResearchandMarkets: By 2008 the global mobile games market had stagnated. Growth in the operator distributed mobile games market, which peaked at over 50 per cent in 2004 and 2005, had fallen to 10 per cent, and is expected to drop to just 7 per cent in 2009. Device fragmentation, and the top publishers' dominance over operators' portals, had created an ecosystem in which it was difficult for all but the biggest players to generate significant income.

In July 2008 Apple launched its App Store, for which games quickly proved popular. With over 1bn applications downloaded in the first 10 months and 70 per cent of revenues going to publishers/ developers, the iPhone platform and the App Store business model and retail channel have proved that there is a significant market for mobile games outside of operators' portals.

As this business model challenges the relationship between operators and publishers, and smartphones, that can provide advanced gaming capabilities, grow in popularity, more players will try to emulate Apple's success. Two platforms that have the potential to boost the mobile games market outside operators' portals are Nokia's N-Gage, and Google's Android. Though neither of these has yet got the necessary combination of ingredients to be a true rival to the iPhone/App Store combination in the mobile games market.

Despite the growth of new platforms, it is the Java games market that will continue to provide the biggest revenues. As more small publishers, that have been unable to achieve significant revenues with network operators, leave this space, the top publishers will be presented with the chance to increase their dominance of this market.

Key Findings:

- Apple's App Store is already having a significant impact on the mobile games market. Games for the iPhone generated globally over $100m revenues in H2 2008 and it took 10% of the North American mobile games market.

- As device manufacturers, operators and platform providers launch their own stores, seeking to emulate the success of the App Store, Screen Digest expects more mobile games publishers to abandon or reduce development of Java games for operators' portals.

- Despite growth in revenues in 2008, the impact of new platforms meant that the top three mobile games publishers failed to increase their market share.

- While many players will try to mimic the success of Apple's App Store, as yet, none has the necessary ingredients to match Apple. Platform specific and on-device application stores have the greatest chance of success in the mobile games market.

- Although the application store business model and high-end platforms are attractive to publishers (better share of revenues, more receptive audience, control over pricing and ability to innovate), the operator distributed Java games market will, in the short-to-medium term, remain the largest market.

- Of the top three publishers, Gameloft has best positioned itself to take advantage of the boost new platforms have given the market, though EA Mobile, with its catalogue of popular licensed and parent company games, has the necessary titles to match this success. More