Game Over, Android: Apple Has 84% Of Mobile Gaming Revenue

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Newzoo_Mobile_Gaming_2012_USA_hr copy

Let’s hear that again. Apple is taking in 84 percent of all mobile gaming revenue in the US.

With all the fooferaw about how many more Android handsets are selling than iPhones, it’s easy to think that Apple may be on the way out. Not so, says a new report from NewZoo, a market research company in the gaming space.

According to the report, the number of US mobile gamers has gone from 75 million to 101 million, with 69% playing on smartphones and 21% on tablets. The biggest segment of growth, though, is in the segment of paying gamers. Newzoo reports that the number of paying players has grown to 37 million US mobile gamers, which is 36% of all mobile gamers. That’s a lot of paying customers.

How is this even possible? “When analyzing Apple’s successful monetization, there is one dominant factor outside of differences in audience demographics and preferences: Apple requires users to connect their credit card information directly to their account, thus creating a seamless purchase experience,” said Newzoo’s CEO Peter Warman. “I can hardly imagine any other company in the world that would be able to get away with this, including Google and Microsoft.”

Bottom line, this new report points to the fact that while Android has made headway quickly, especially with Amazon’s new tablet, Apple still rules the roost with mobile gamers, and paying mobile gamers at that. It’s satisfying to read this hard data and know that our own opinion of how much better the iOS hardware and app ecosystem is, at least for now, is backed up with numbers.

Whether it’s the fact that Apple makes it easy to purchase small-ticket gaming apps, or just that consumers see iOS apps as inherently better experiences, the fact remains that Apple is still the big dog in the yard.

Source: VentureBeat

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