Social Gaming: Big Business on Mobiles
With the advent of 3G services, Social Gaming is at its “point of inflection”.
Game developers in India are looking at mobile phones as a new platform to launch new games as successful 3G bidding and arrival of smartphones are beginning to give social gaming a much needed fillip. The other factor that enhances social gaming as a market has been the reducing cost of ownership of smartphones. Demographically, 70% of the social gamers are Males and most of them in the 15-24 years bracket.
The social gaming market worldwide is estimated at $60 million, of which the mobile gaming market is registering a 45% CAGR. Globally, Gaming is expected to become a billion dollar industry by 2012. In India the social gaming industry is still in nascent stages but is expected to multiply 6 times in the next 3 years to Rs.1,500 crore which would contribute nearly 13% of the overall mobile VAS market in the country. Currently, the mobile gaming market is 3% of the mobile VAS market in the country. This growth will be possible as 3G rollout will push the current 5 crore social gaming active users by 300% to 20 crore active gamers.
The big names in the business are all launching their Mobile social networking gaming platforms:
1.ibibo.com is planning to make all its games available on the mobile network
2.Aircel and Airtel are pushing social and mobile gaming as means to drive their GPRS/online traffic
3.Gaming is one of the big categories in the Ovi mobile store
4.ADAG has also launched Jumpgames to tap into mobile social gaming network
5.Indiatimes launched a mobile game based on the movie I hate love stories
6.Zapak is also in talks with mobile operators for specific mobile gaming
7.Contents2win has launched a Mahabharata based soccer game.
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