M:Metrics On Measuring Mobile Games Market Share

RCRWireless has a piece by Seamus McAteer of M:Metrics about measuring the market share of mobile games companies. There are some interesting stats (US retail revenues from mobile games totaled about $500 million in 2006 after growing 30-40 percent; there were 1200 titles on offer in December compared to 911 in January; At the end of 2006 M:Metrics counted 36 publishers with ten or more titles on operator decks) but the most interesting part of the piece is how M:Metrics gets its data, and how it should be regarded. “Each month we derive estimates for new purchases of game titles from our survey of about 12,000 mobile subscribers aged 13 and higher in the United States. Survey respondents who purchased a new game are presented with titles based on their device, operator and genre of game downloaded.” They also keep track of what the carriers are offering on their decks and where the games are being offered…top of the list or bottom, or in “What’s Hot” categories.
The article ends: “While this data is instructive directionally it should not be used as a hard measure of market share. Instead tracking premium placement and changes in relative position on operator portals is a better way to understand which publishers are gaining ground.”

Comments have been disabled for this post