Muse.On-The.Net

A new Juniper Research report predicts the North America mobile phone game market will grow from under $800 million in 2007 to over $3 billion by 2012. While this growth is attributed to several factors, key amongst them are:

• Try before you buy. “The ‘try before you buy’ strategy not only makes the customer more comfortable about purchasing a particular title; it also makes him or her more familiar with mobile gameplay per se, and will provide further encouragement for the consumer to seek out additional titles in the future,” says report author, Dr. Windsor Holden. PlayFirst, a technology created by Kalador Entertainment, enables existing games to be converted into free trials automatically, without source code changes. Games can be demoed, then purchased directly from the phone. Once purchased, the game is full-featured without additional download requirements. The ease of PlayFirst encourages consumer adoption.
• The proportion of ad-funded mobile game downloads in North America is predicted to grow to 30% by 2012. FreePlay technology, as used by MobileRated, enables existing games to be converted into free games with in-game advertising. Consumers can play the games - for free - as long as they choose to view ads. They may at any time purchase the game outright, removing the ads from the product permanently. This option provides the best of both worlds.

As mobile phones improve and expand in capabilities, consumers will find more and more uses for this ubiquitous devices. Already over 18 million Americans have downloaded or rented a mobile phone game at least once per year. This number is expected to rise dramatically over the next 5 years. One warning from the report is that developers will have to be careful to market their products sufficiently to get noticed. The breath of offering is huge and growing, and without proper exposure, products will languish and developers will fail. However, for those that succeed, the rewards will be lavish.