Skip to main content

Japanese smartphone market doubled in 2013

Smartphone games now account for 50 per cent of entire games market

The market for smartphone games in Japan almost doubled in size last year, reaching $5.4 billion in total sales.

According to data released by the Japanese internet firm CyberAgent, the domestic smartphone game market generated ¥546.8 billion ($5.4 billion) in 2013, an increase of 178 per cent over the ¥307.2 billion earned in the prior year.

And the smartphone market now represents a more significant percentage of the software market as a whole. In 2013, the entire Japanese software market was worth ¥1103.6 billion ($10.8 billion), so smartphone games accounted for around 50 per cent of the whole. In 2012, it was only 30 per cent.

However, this rate of growth is expect to slow over the next few years, rising to around $6.5 billion in value in 2014, $7.4 billion in 2015, and $8.2 billion in 2016.

Thanks Dr Serkan Toto.

Read this next

Matthew Handrahan avatar
Matthew Handrahan joined GamesIndustry in 2011, bringing long-form feature-writing experience to the team as well as a deep understanding of the video game development business. He previously spent more than five years at award-winning magazine gamesTM.
Related topics