Global mobile gaming revenue to grow 50%, says Gartner

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(Wireless News via NewsEdge) As consumer awareness grows and publishers release more content, worldwide mobile gaming end-user revenue will grow from $2.9 billion in 2006 to $9.6 billion in 2011, according to Gartner.

Worldwide mobile gaming revenue is on pace to total $4.3 billion in 2007, a 49.9% increase from 2006.

'Given the ubiquity of mobile phones in many markets and the ease of game-play, mobile gaming is expected to reach more of the global population than has been the case for traditional PC and console gaming,' said Tuong Huy Nguyen, senior research analyst at Gartner. 'This will catapult mobile gaming revenue beyond that from mobile TV and adult content, but we still expect it to lag behind mobile music, since music is a more familiar form of entertainment.'

For this forecast, Gartner defined mobile gaming as video games on mobile phones. This includes preloaded software on mobile hone, games downloaded for use offline, as well as games requiring access to online resources and those purchased on removable media, such as flash memory cards.

The revenue figures do not include demos and preloaded and pre-bundled games because there is no direct consumer revenue component to these.

As operators relax their control over networks, publishers have taken the opportunity to take a more active role in marketing mobile games, capitalizing on their expertise to maximize distribution and education about available content, Gartner further said.

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