Apple iPhone shows impressive growth in US gaming market share

Apple iPhone Gaming Market Share 2009

Figures are in for the last 12 months of the gaming market, and Apple is posting some impressive results. In one year Apple’s share of the US gaming market has grown 500%. I can only imagine that we should see similar results in Europe and elsewhere.

As of today more than 30,000 game titles exist in the iTunes App Store, which launched in July 2008. Games consistently dominate the Top Paid and Top Grossing Lists there. Meaning that the game category in the App Store is by far the most lucrative of all it’s sections.

What the figures actually translate to is that Apple’s share of the entire revenue of the US gaming industry has grown from 1% to 5%. This is all while the entire market actually shrank in size from $11 billion in 2008 to $9.9 billion in 2009. The figures that Flurry Analytics have published are based upon publicly available data provided by NPD, in major part through Gamasutra’s “Behind The Numbers” series.

Peter Farango of Flurry remarked that “Controlling 5% revenue of a $10 billion industry in just a year and a half is significant.” He also noted interestingly that “From a market share perspective, console games lost ground to portable platforms and iPhone.”

What this report and the figures therein clearly show is that the iPhone and iPod are a gaming platform to be reckoned with in the entertainment marketplace. Sony and Nintendo should be concerned about this. But most likely Sony more, as their recent relaunch of their mobile gaming device, the PSP Go, is floundering.

Comparing the iPhone against Sony and Nintendo games sales shows that Apple has taken nearly twenty percent of the portable market in 2009, largely at the expense of the Sony PSP.

Michael Pachter, managing director at Wedbush Morgan Securities and a prominent video game analyst, suggests that the “iPod touch is the most dangerous thing that ever happened” to game publishers.

Not quite sure what he means there, but we get the gist!

It seems obvious to me that the iPad is going to bridge the gap even further between mobile and consoles, as developers push the limits with a larger more powerful device. So the traditional console market place could be in for more of a shakeup over the coming 12 months.

How about you? Has the iPhone and iPod revolutionised your mobile gaming world?
Do you think the iPad will shake things up further?

Full report here : [blog.flurry.com]

Michael Pachter’s comments : [tuaw.com]

GamaSutra : Behind the Numbers : [gamasutra.com]

Image: [Flurry Analytics]

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