Worldwide mobile game revenues grow to $5.4B in 2008

Worldwide mobile gaming revenues increased more than 20 percent in 2008 to an estimated $5.4 billion according to a new report issued by market analysis firm Juniper Research. While the North American and Western European mobile games markets slowed markedly last year, Juniper credits the global revenue increase to strong growth across the Indian subcontinent, where sales more than doubled in 2008; in addition, revenues grew more than 20 percent in Africa, the Middle East and developing nations throughout the Asia Pacific region. The Far East and China is now the largest regional market in terms of games downloads, with Juniper forecasting the Indian subcontinent will overtake Western Europe to emerge as the second-largest mobile gaming market by 2010.

Juniper notes that while Java downloads declined in both North America and Western Europe, the growth of iPhone game downloads via Apple's App Store offset the dropoff. According to Juniper, the levels of gameplay per download on iPhone were substantially higher than for any other handset. With a growing percentage of the game development focusing its efforts on iPhone, Juniper suggests operators in the U.S. and Europe must reduce their demands on game revenue share to encourage programmers to create titles for rival platforms. Juniper also anticipates ad-funded titles will comprise more than half of all games downloaded by 2012.

For more on the Juniper mobile games report:
- read this release [1]

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