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Media analyst Screen Digest has released a report breaking down the mobile games market shares of several smartphone devices, including Apple’s iPhone.
The report finds that the iPhone leads overall sales numbers across all smartphone platforms, earning more than $100 million in revenue and accounting for 10% of all mobile games sales in North America in the second half of 2008.
Screen Digest notes that the introduction of competing devices and storefronts has the potential to boost the sagging mobile games market. Analysts find that growth in the operator-distributed mobile games segment has fallen to 7 percent in 2009, as compared to its peak of over 50 percent throughout 2004 and 2005.
The introduction of devices like the iPhone, Android, and N-Gage has since spurred domestic and overseas mobile games sales, however. Games sold through smartphone application storefronts accounted for 15 percent of all mobile games sales in 2008 in North America and Europe.
Though it’s believed that the new platforms will help grow the mobile games market as a whole, Screen Digest predicts that Apple is likely to maintain its lead in the smartphone segment in the immediate future.
“Whilst Nokia’s N-Gage games platform and Google’s application store Android Market also have the potential to grow the market for mobile games outside operators’ portals,” the report reads, “it is Apple that has the key elements to retain its position at the head of the market.”
The Java market continues to earn the largest revenue share in the mobile games industry. Screen Digest believes that smaller publishers will soon “reduce or abandon” development of games for release through operator-run portals, however, as smartphone platforms offer “a greater share of revenues, a more receptive audience, and a wider array of content.”
[...] Report: iPhone Sales Account for 10% of North American Mobile Games Revenue “Screen Digest’s report finds that the iPhone leads overall sales numbers across all [...]