Preliminary stats show O2 leading UK download market

With mobile market research firm M:Metrics set to move into the UK marketplace in the coming months, the firm's chief product architect Seamus McAteer announced some surprising preliminary results from its research at the Mobile Games Forum in London this week.

Addressing a packed audience of industry professionals, McAteer warned that the figures he was presenting were subject to change before the research was officially launched, but even with that stern caveat, they make for interesting reading.

According to M:Metrics' data, the UK has a market of 1.7 million consumers downloading game content to their handsets, out of 43 million mobile subscribers - meaning that mobile game downloading has a market penetration of just under 4 per cent.

Of the main mobile networks in the UK, O2 has the highest volume of downloads on its network, with subscribers there 44 per cent more likely to download a game than subscribers on Vodafone's network.

At the other end of the spectrum, Virgin Mobile - which is essentially a reseller service and is currently in talks to be taken over by cable TV and broadband operator NTL - has the lowest penetration in terms of game downloads.

McAteer made a special mention of the 3 network, which was the UK's first 3G service and remains the one most overtly targeted at the consumer market. While this network lags in terms of overall subscribers, and thus its impact on the market overall, he noted that a 3 subscriber is 169 per cent more likely to download a game than one chosen at random - making this growing channel into an important one for the business.

M:Metrics is widely seen as one of the most reliable sources of information regarding mobile game consumption among US consumers, and will launch its UK data service, which is based on the same system as the US service, at 3GSM next month in Barcelona.