Mobile Gaming Set to Boom

With the launch of a range of "smart phones" to rival the iphone's capabilities, the public's capcity to participate in mobile gaming has dramatically increased in the last couple of years. Sure, we've been able to play snake or some kind of Tetris rip-off for years on our mobile phone. But too many people have been reluctant to pay for substandard games, or havent had the willingness or know-how to get online on their phone to download it. That's meant the mobile gaming market has been difficult to take off: tiny screens, control issues with small handset buttons and low graphics capacity all meant that it's been difficult to really get going. Nokia's N-Gage gaming phone was the first effort to really bring gaming onto the mobile phone but didnt see the boom that i'm sure nokia had hoped.

The launch of smart phones such as the iphone however means that all of the above issues are to some extent solved - Bring on the games!

Online media and online marketing publication eMarketer has come up with a set of predicted figures to showcase what they perceive as the start of the boom of the mobile gaming market.

They predict that the numbers of worldwide mobile gamers will rise from 2007s 155million to 204 million in 2008 and up to 500 million in 2012

The definition of mobile gamers used is those that have either paid to download or play a game, or those that have played ad-supported mobile games

eMarketer have also predicted that the US, a traditional source of revenue and sales for many products, will not account for a lot of these players:

"The US will never become a gigantic mobile game market on par with India and China (with their huge populations) or Japan (with its fanatical gaming user base), but the US mobile gaming market does exist in the world's largest interactive advertising economy," says Mr. Gauntt.

The far east market, with its traditional early adoption of new technology and notably advanced handsets and handheld technology already are expected to form, at least to start with, the significant part to the mobile gaming market.

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