Market research company Newzoo has published new insights into the UK’s mobile gaming market. The number of mobile gamers in the UK has grown by 18% year-on-year to 23.9 million people, with 75% of them playing on smartphones and 17% on tablets.
Paying players have increased by 24% to 9.2 million people in the UK; 39% of all mobile gamers.
Over a quarter (27%) of UK gamers - 4.9 million people - play on an iPhone, with an additional 3.4 million people playing games on an iPod Touch and 2.9 million using an iPad.
In March 2012, Apple iOS devices earned 94% of mobile revenue generated by the top 200 grossing games across Apple and Google application stores. Most of this money is spent within games rather than on game purchase.
Peter Warman, CEO of Newzoo, said “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. I can hardly imagine any other company in the world that would be able to get away with this, including Google and Microsoft. Facebook can come a long way but Amazon clearly has the best chance and is proving this as we speak. The Kindle Fire, being the runner-up tablet in the US only 3 months after launch, has single-handedly doubled Android’s share of revenues in the US compared to European countries. It will do the same in the UK soon after launch, but the rest of Europe might be a different story.”
