Mobile games revenues DOWN says new report
iSuppli is more pessimistic about the industry's growth
Just the other day, we were reporting on Juniper Research's predictions that mobile games will be generating $10 billion of revenues by 2009.
Now another analyst, iSuppli, has come out with different research, predicting that just $6.6 billion of games will be sold by 2011, and claiming that revenues actually fell during the second quarter of this year.
Specifically, iSuppli states that while revenues from mobile games grew by 11 per cent in the first quarter, they then fell by nine per cent in the second quarter.
It's not that surprising, since the peak time for mobile game sales tends to be January, when everyone's still trying out the new phones they got for Christmas. However, iSuppli has still described the fall as a "significant blow" to the industry's momentum.
"We're going to see if it's seasonality or if the games aren't compelling enough," iSuppli analyst David Carnevale. "While the third quarter performance and the fourth quarter outlook appear optimistic, the pace of growth is slowing, causing great concern to content providers."
Why are we bothering you with all these financial predictions? Well, they're hugely important in their impact on the kind of games you'll be playing in 2008 and beyond.
Carnevale's suggestion that game quality is negatively affecting sales may push publishers into exploring new technologies – from connected features and camera stuff through to GPS and motion-sensing – as well as increasing their efforts to raise awareness amongst mobile users about the current crop of games.
