Telephia reveals increase in US mobile game downloads

Mobile industry performance analyst Telephia has revealed a surge in the purchase of mobile games from US consumers, which reached 8.2 million in March and has climbed by 53 per cent since the start of the year.

The Telephia survey monitored almost 35,000 mobile phone bills from US consumers, further extending its analysis to measure the performance and market share of key mobile publishers and the popularity of specific game titles.

According to the survey, EA Mobile leads the way with 30 per cent of overall market revenue, followed by I-play with 8.2 per cent, Paris-based Gameloft with 8 per cent and Namco with 7.7 per cent.

The bottom rung of the top five publishers was taken up by Hands-On Mobile and Glu Mobile, generating 6.2 and 5.3 per cent of market revenue respectively. The remainder of the top ten publishers - accounting for 75 per cent of market revenue for mobile games for the quarter - includes THQ Wireless, Oasys Mobile, Sony Pictures Mobile, and Mobliss.

Telephia has also detailed the top five most popular games for the quarter in terms of revenue share - EA's Tetris leads with 5.2 percent, followed by Tetris Deluxe (3.6 per cent), Bejeweled (2.6 per cent), Jamdat Mahjong (2.2 per cent) and Ms Pac-Man (2 per cent).

Kanishka Agarwal, VP of new products at Telephia, commented: "The true measure of performance for a publisher or a game title is the revenue it drives from purchases. Measuring the industry's performance based on downloads alone is irresponsible and misleading, especially given the extent of free trials in this rapidly growing industry."

Agarwal noted that almost 12 per cent of game downloads were free, with tremendous variability between different publishers. Telephia maintains that, due to limitations of survey respondents' recall abilities, analysis of actual telephone bill activity it essential in order to provide accurate measurements of performance and market share.